Ideas and perspectives: Synergies from co-deployment of negative emission technologies

Abstract

Abstract. Numerous publications propose the deployment of negative emission technologies, which intend to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere with the goal to reach the 1.5∘ target as discussed by the IPCC. The increasing number of scientific studies on the individual potential of different envisaged technologies and methods indicates that no single method has enough capacities to mitigate the issue by itself. It is thus expected that technology portfolios are deployed. As some of them utilize the same environmental compartment, co-deployment effects are expected. Those effects are particularly important to evaluate with respect to additional CO2 uptake. Considering soils as one of the main affected compartments, we see a plethora of processes which can positively benefit from each other, canceling out negative side effects or increasing overall CO2 sequestration potentials. To derive more reliable estimates of negative emission potentials and to evaluate common effects on global carbon pools, it is now necessary to intensively study interrelated effects of negative emission technology deployment while minimizing negative side effects.