Professor Ottmar Edenhofer will examine why large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is essential for meeting climate targets and establishing a third pillar of climate policy alongside abatement and adaptation.

The main barriers to technology development and deployment are institutional, economic, and political. Prof Edenhofer will present market and governance solutions, including innovative “clean-up certificates” and a European Carbon Central Bank to manage net-negative emissions within carbon market frameworks. By “cleaning up” the atmosphere, CDR can also help reduce free-riding incentives in international climate co-operation. Prof Edenhofer will identify planetary carbon management as the central challenge of 21st-century climate policy.

Climate targets cannot be met without large-scale removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. Even with rapid innovation, projected levels of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) remain far below what is required to stay within internationally agreed temperature limits. The main barriers are no longer technical alone but institutional, economic, and political – reflected in governance gaps that undermine incentives to invest in and deploy CDR at scale. By “cleaning up” the atmosphere, CDR can also help reduce free-riding incentives in international climate cooperation. Recent research therefore identifies CDR as a necessary third pillar of climate policy, alongside emissions reduction and adaptation, and as a critical enabler of net-zero and net-negative pathways.

Prof Edenhofer will argue that scaling CDR requires new market structures and durable institutions. He proposes clean-up certificates – rights to emit coupled with binding future removal obligations — offer a pathway to integrate removals into carbon market frameworks like the EU Emissions Trading System and make the transition more flexible and cost-effective. Because this system depends on long-term credibility, he calls for a European Carbon Central Bank to issue and manage these certificates, oversee net emissions quantities, and correctly value different types of removals. Viewing CDR as a planetary carbon management system reframes climate policy around the 21st century’s central task: designing the governance needed to enable net-negative emissions.

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