Bill Hare is CEO and founder of Climate Analytics, and Claudio Forner is head of climate policy at Climate Analytics.
To address climate change, the answer should be relatively simple: governments need to decarbonise their economies by first focusing on stopping the burning of fossil fuels. But we are currently facing a crisis involving the land sector that could put the 1.5˚C warming limit at further risk.
The scientific community is clear that including land and forest carbon storage together with fossil fuels and other emissions in national single national targets – as some governments are doing – will likely allow for greater emissions of fossil fuel carbon. This will hinder our ability to limit warming to 1.5°C, and in the worst case it may become impossible. We explain why in a recent report.
Two examples illustrate the scale of this crisis. Australia and Brazil are relying on their reported land carbon sequestration to meet a substantial part of their 2030 and/or 2035 climate targets, significantly reducing the crucial cuts needed in fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
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Let’s be clear: the idea that land-based carbon removal/sequestration can “offset” CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels is scientifically flawed. For all practical purposes, fossil fuel CO2 emissions are irreversible. They can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, whereas land-sector “offsets” or “sinks” are impermanent – especially when considering the increasing number of wildfires around the planet.
And this is not the only issue: there’s a range of other substantial problems that have been analysed in the scientific literature.
Under the Paris Agreement’s emissions reporting rules, governments are allowed to equate fossil fuel emissions and the drawdown of CO2 by some natural carbon sinks – like the boreal forests – as a one-for-one trade, as set out in this recent paper published in Nature. This means a country could appear to have ‘achieved net zero’ while still contributing to ongoing warming, as emissions continue to rise amid increased tree planting and forest protection.
Carbon fertilisation confuses the numbers
Many countries, particularly developed-country governments, are using ‘managed land’ definitions to claim that carbon uptake from their forests and other ecosystems is additional because of direct human activities, when much of it may be just passive carbon uptake due to atmospheric CO2 fertilisation and other effects caused by fossil fuel emissions. For example, increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere lead to increased growth by plants and more carbon uptake – a phenomenon that is not the result of active forest management.
One recent estimate is that about 44% of the additional carbon sequestered in the terrestrial ecosystem since the 2000s is due to the carbon fertilisation effect which, in turn, is mostly due to fossil fuel emissions. A substantial fraction of this would be counted within government accounting frameworks for their reporting of what’s called ” LULUCF” (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry).
A clear example is Australia, which, in recent years, has continually revised both its historical and projected land sector emissions and in particular carbon sequestration, to the extent that it can now claim to have nearly reached its 2030 target, while barely taking any new action to cut fossil fuel emissions.
In the case of Brazil, its 2035 NDC is cast in net emission terms and does not differentiate between the contribution of its land sector and the fossil fuel sector, making it impossible to work out what, if anything, is actually going to be done.
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This year, Brazil will be hosting COP30 – but the LULUCF accounting in its 2035 NDC is opaque, at best, while its energy sector emissions continue to rise. The Climate Action Tracker has always excluded LULUCF from its country analyses for all the reasons cited above, set out in detail here, and Brazil’s 2035 NDC is a perfect example of the rationale for this decision.
Forests: carbon sink or source?
There are similar issues with the countries that encompass the northern boreal forests. In this report on the contribution of these forests to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C warming limit, we found that global models assessing carbon emissions and sequestration from forests differ substantially from land sector emissions reported by governments.
Governments’ national inventories show the land sector as a global sink, but the global models show it as a source of emissions. The difference between the two is marked: roughly the equivalent to the entire emissions from the US in 2023.
We set out a clear list of recommendations in our report, starting with a call for governments to first focus on decarbonising their economies, and for them – and corporations – to set separate targets for land use sinks, to transparently communicate how much they intend on relying on sinks to reach their climate targets – otherwise known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
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Instead of deploying what increasingly look like creative accounting tricks, governments must get on with the job of prioritising fossil fuel emission reductions.
Alongside clearly accounting for LULUCF, governments also need to commit to ending deforestation by 2030 and set out how and when they plan to cut their emissions to net zero, including their planned use of carbon trading to help them get there.
Without enhanced transparency and a fossil-first approach to emission reductions, the land sector could drive overall emissions higher. But with concerted action to halt deforestation and restore carbon sinks, land has an important role to play in reaching net zero and keeping the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C warming limit within reach.
The post Why governments should not hide behind forests to meet their emissions goals appeared first on Climate Home News.
Why governments should not hide behind forests to meet their emissions goals
When carbon dioxide (CO2) is released from a factory or power plant, the gas can be captured and permanently stored underground, preventing it from driving climate change.
This is the idea underpinning carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is at the heart of many nations’ net-zero plans.
Influential organisations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), describe CCS as “critical” for cutting emissions from key sectors – and for helping to avoid dangerous global warming.
In particular, capturing CO2 is seen as one of the only viable options for decarbonising some of the world’s highest-emitting industries, such as cement production.
The UK, for example, has committed to investing as much as £21.7bn over the coming decades in its nascent CCS industry, as part of the nation’s net-zero strategy.
Yet, in the UK and elsewhere, there has been a backlash against plans for CCS.
Citing high costs, ties to the fossil-fuel industry and a “history of poor performance”, critics describe CCS as a “dangerous distraction” or a “false climate solution”.
Time and again, the outlook for the roll-out of CCS has been scaled back, as the technology has failed to deliver as quickly as expected – and as policy support has wavered.
Furthermore, critics state that the technology remains “unproven” on the scale required to make a meaningful impact on global emissions.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief explores the role CCS is expected to play in achieving net-zero, its record to date and the reasons it has been criticised, using the UK as an example.
What is CCS?
CCS involves capturing CO2 emissions released from a large source, such as a gas power plant or a cement factory.
The CO2 is separated from the facility’s exhaust stream, generally using a chemical solvent, before being compressed into a liquid and transported via pipeline or vehicle. The CO2 is then stored by injecting it into underground reservoirs, such as depleted oil fields or saline aquifers.
The term “CCUS” is sometimes also used, referring to the “utilisation” of CO2 to make products, including fertilisers, fuels or building materials. Such uses do not necessarily lead to permanent emissions cuts, as the CO2 can end up later being released back into the atmosphere.
(“CCS” is used in this Q&A, unless quoting another organisation that specifically refers to “CCUS”.)
The infographic below shows the stages of capturing CO2 and transporting it to be either stored or used in other applications.
Carbon capture technology was originally rolled out at US and Canadian oil wells in the early 1970s as a way to achieve “enhanced oil recovery”. This involves injecting captured CO2 into depleted wells – a process that stores CO2, but also helps to extract more oil.
This remains, by far, the most significant end use for captured CO2 worldwide, with around three-quarters of it used for this purpose.
Moreover, most of the CO2 currently captured is a by-product of gas purification – the process by which fossil fuels such as methane are separated from other, unwanted substances. Selling this CO2 can make such gas projects more economically viable.
Therefore, as shown in the chart below, which is based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, the majority of CO2 that is both captured and used today helps the fossil-fuel industry to extract and sell more oil and gas.
CCS was first proposed as a way to deal with CO2 emissions in a 1976 academic article, which imagined injecting the captured gas into the ocean.
It is only since the early 2000s that CCS has gained traction as a proposed climate solution, with a 2005 “special report” by the IPCC exploring the topic. At that time, the authors note there were just three small-scale projects trying to capture and permanently store CO2.
Installing CCS at factories or power plants and permanently storing the CO2 would mean that, in theory, such facilities could continue using fossil fuels without contributing to climate change.
Such applications are often mentioned alongside two related technologies, both of which could be used to “suck” CO2 out of the atmosphere and, thus, deliver “negative emissions”.
One is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Crops absorb CO2 as they grow and BECCS involves a power plant burning these crops, then storing the resulting CO2.
The other technology is direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are classed as “CO2 removal”, as they involve absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere using plants or machines and then storing it permanently.
By contrast, CCS installed at a factory is considered a way to avoid CO2 emitted by that specific facility from entering the atmosphere. This Q&A focuses on such applications, which account for the vast majority of existing and planned CCS.
How much CCS capacity has been built so far?
As of February 2026, there were a total of 75 operational CCS projects around the world. As noted above, almost all of them are at fossil-fuel extraction and processing sites, according to the IEA’s database.
Together, these projects capture 62.5m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) each year. This is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Ecuador.
(This compares with the 22 CCS projects, promising to capture 40MtCO2 annually, that were operational or under construction as of 2014.)
As the chart below shows, the amount of CO2 currently being captured and stored is a tiny fraction of the total emissions from fossil-fuel use.
In a 2020 report, the IEA explained that the “story of CCUS has largely been one of unmet expectations: its potential to mitigate climate change has been recognised for decades, but deployment has been slow”.
A wave of interest in CCS in the 2000s, largely from countries in Europe and North America, focused on enabling coal power plants to continue operating with lower emissions.
This interest largely petered out, as plummeting renewable energy costs weakened the case for coal plants with CCS. Today, there are only seven operating CCS-coal plants worldwide – five in China, one in the US and one in Canada.
Yet the Paris Agreement in 2015 – and the national net-zero targets that followed – highlighted the need for deep emissions cuts in sectors that previously expected to continue emitting for decades. This, once again, has fuelled interest in the use of CCS.
In recent years, there has also been growing interest in producing low-carbon “blue” hydrogen from gas with CCS.
Hydrogen is widely seen as key for decarbonising certain sectors – particularly in industry – but analyses suggest that it may be difficult to make sufficient “green” hydrogen using renewable power on the timescales required.
As the map below shows, most CCS capacity is based in the US and Canada, with other major fossil-fuel producers such as Norway, Brazil and the Gulf states also contributing.
A surge of projects have entered the global CCS pipeline in recent years. According to the IEA, 93.7MtCO2 of capture or storage capacity is under construction as of February 2026 and another 1,279.6MtCO2 is in the “planning” stages.
“Planned” projects include any initiative at early concept, feasibility or engineering study stages and the industry has a long history of projects being cancelled or delayed.
Nevertheless, this pipeline of projects could lead to a large expansion of facilities dedicated to permanent CO2 storage that does not involve extracting more oil.
The planned projects – if they are realised – would also include significant growth in sectors where CCS is virtually non-existent, such as steel, hydrogen and cement production, as shown in the chart below.
What role is CCS expected to play in reaching net-zero?
It will be impossible to stop dangerous climate change unless the world reaches net-zero emissions, according to the IPCC. The amount of global warming – and whether the Paris Agreement temperature target can be met – depends on when net-zero is reached.
Many global pathways that have been set out for achieving net-zero, including a majority of the IPCC-assessed pathways where global warming is limited to 1.5C, rely on the use of CCS at fossil-fuel plants and industrial sites.
“These models have been quite instrumental in bringing CCS back onto the agenda,” Lina Lefstad, an ecological economist at Lund University, tells Carbon Brief.
Influential organisations relying on CCS in their net-zero scenarios range from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) through to the oil company Shell. The IEA has stated that net-zero would be “virtually impossible” without CCS.
These scenarios often include 10s to 100s of times more CCS capacity being built in the coming decades. The IEA includes 1.7GtCO2 being captured by 2035 in its net-zero scenario – nearly 30 times more than is captured today.
(Some of the much higher numbers in scenarios assessed by the IPCC have been dismissed by experts as implausible, especially given the slow rollout of CCS to date.)
When considering CCS for both emissions cuts and removals, Dr Jennifer Roberts, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde and deputy director at the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC), tells Carbon Brief the situation is clear:
“From an IPCC climate modelling perspective…reaching net-zero without CCS is far more expensive, disruptive and potentially out of reach.”
This does not mean that it would be impossible to reach net-zero without using CCS. However, net-zero scenarios that use little or no CCS rely on dramatic changes elsewhere, such as much lower global energy demand.
Net-zero scenarios often include a crucial role for CCS in “hard-to-abate” sectors, referring to activities that lack available, low-cost options to fully decarbonise. In particular, CCS is widely seen as vital for decarbonising parts of heavy industry.
The IPCC sixth assessment report (AR6) summary for policymakers calls CCS a “critical mitigation option” for some sectors, including cement and chemicals. The technical summary of the AR6 Working Group III report says that “CCS will be required to mitigate remaining CO2” in industrial sectors.
The IEA describes CCS as “virtually the only technology” that can significantly cut cement emissions, which account for around 7% of the global total. (Much of this CO2 comes from chemical processes, meaning it would still be released if the industry was electrified.)
Yet, the understanding of “hard-to-abate” emissions is changing, as alternatives to CCS become cheaper and increasingly available. As a result, CCS has become a less attractive option in some sectors, as well as being seen as less vital in some others.
Carbon Brief analysis shows that the IEA has reduced its outlook for CCS in the power sector by a third, compared to its expectations in 2021, as the chart below shows.
This reflects both slow progress in deploying CCS and rapid cost reductions in renewables, which make running gas or coal power plants less attractive.
