How businesses can contribute to carbon sequestration

As the Inter­gov­ern­ment­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) reminded us in 2018: lim­it­ing glob­al warm­ing to +1.5°C by 2100 will require a rig­or­ous decrease of our emis­sions but also the devel­op­ment of meas­ures to increase car­bon sequest­ra­tion. Yet, it should be noted that only car­bon sequest­ra­tion poten­tials asso­ci­ated with the use of bioen­ergy with car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (BECCS) as well as plant­ing new trees were con­sidered in these models. 

Accord­ing to Cli­mate Action Track­er, we are cur­rently still on track for a rise in tem­per­at­ure of 2.7°C–3.1°C¹. In this con­text, vari­ous recent pub­lic­a­tions high­light the cru­cial role of tech­no­lo­gic­al² advances and nature-based solu­tions. Data sug­gests that, if imple­men­ted, nature-based solu­tions could help reduce tem­per­at­ure by 0.4°C in a glob­al warm­ing scen­ario of +1.5°C by the year 2100³.

How­ever, these nature-based solu­tions would not be able to con­trib­ute this much in the case of a +3°C tra­ject­ory. Indeed, the capa­city of car­bon sequest­ra­tion in bio­mass would be altered by rise of tem­per­at­ures that is too high. And, con­trary to cur­rent mod­els, the range of nature-based solu­tions is much broad­er than just the use of BECSS and affor­est­a­tion (i.e. plant­ing trees). Oth­er nature-based solu­tions avail­able fall into three cat­egor­ies: (1) con­serving cur­rent car­bon stocks (e.g., by stop­ping defor­est­a­tion), (2) restor­ing degraded eco­sys­tems, and (3) imple­ment­ing new prac­tices that store car­bon. In this art­icle I will focus on this third solution. 

Increas­ing car­bon sequest­ra­tion

As an example, imple­ment­ing new farm­ing prac­tices in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, such as cov­er crops or rehab­il­it­at­ing degraded soils, would make it pos­sible to cap­ture approx­im­ately 0.8GtCO2/year⁴ on a glob­al scale (com­pared to ~42GtCO2 emit­ted in 2017)⁵. Fur­ther­more, a nation­al-scale dia­gnost­ic per­formed in France con­firmed the exist­ence of a max­im­um poten­tial⁶ of 29 MtCO2/year – equi­val­ent to 39% of French agri­cul­tur­al emis­sions in 2016 (exclud­ing land use). To roll this out on a nation­wide scale would involve imple­ment­ing new meas­ures such as extend­ing the use of inter­me­di­ate crops, agro­forestry prac­tices, adding tem­por­ary mead­ows and increas­ing the dur­a­tion of their use. 

Moreover, vol­un­tary car­bon mar­kets are one of the main ways to pro­mote car­bon sequest­ra­tion efforts. The word “mar­kets” is used in the plur­al because exchanges between pro­ject lead­ers and buy­ers are done at dif­fer­ent scales – either inter­na­tion­al or loc­al. At the inter­na­tion­al level, car­bon pro­jects are backed by labels and recor­ded in a registry sys­tem to ensure the trace­ab­il­ity of cred­its and trans­ac­tions between sub-nation­al act­ors (com­pan­ies, private indi­vidu­als…) loc­ated in dif­fer­ent regions of the world. 

Between 2018 and 2020, 401MtCO2 of car­bon cred­its were issued on the inter­na­tion­al vol­un­tary mar­kets⁷. The aver­age price observed for these car­bon cred­its, across all cat­egor­ies, is 2.7€/tCO2 while pro­jects involving car­bon stor­age in the forest industry hold the top pos­i­tion with an aver­age price of 7.5€/tCO2. These prices remain low, how­ever crit­ics often point out the lim­its of such invest­ments in these pro­jects. Par­tic­u­larly when they are used as an easy, low-cost way to demon­strate an ambi­tious cli­mate strategy without tak­ing sig­ni­fic­ant CO2 reduc­tion measures. 

Mobil­ising car­bon label certifications 

One of the trends iden­ti­fied for vol­un­tary car­bon mar­kets by 2030⁸ is a rise in demand for loc­al car­bon pro­jects – mean­ing ini­ti­at­ives developed in the buyer’s coun­try – which res­on­ate more with the expect­a­tions of com­pan­ies. The price of car­bon cred­its com­ing from these mar­kets could vary between 40€/tCO2 and 75€/tCO2⁹ which would be more in line with the iden­ti­fied costs for the devel­op­ment of car­bon sequest­ra­tion pro­jects. This is par­tic­u­larly true for the French agri­cul­tur­al. Half of pro­jects would gen­er­ate costs estim­ated at ~49€/tCO2. These pro­jec­tions are in line with the dynam­ics observed in recent years which show a rise of car­bon label cer­ti­fic­a­tions at the nation­al level in Europe but also on oth­er con­tin­ents¹⁰.

Thus, the devel­op­ment of cer­ti­fic­a­tion labels, like the Label Bas-Car­bone in France, are a chance for com­pan­ies to explore poten­tial oppor­tun­it­ies that already exist in their value chains. These mech­an­isms make it pos­sible for com­pan­ies to ini­ti­ate pro­jects while hand­ling poten­tial risks asso­ci­ated with these (non-per­man­ence, addi­tion­al­ity, uncer­tainty). In oth­er words, it makes it pos­sible to take action, while provid­ing a frame­work to make the most of these efforts. 

The advant­ages asso­ci­ated with an invest­ment in such pro­jects are numer­ous: bet­ter upstream man­age­ment of the value chain, a reduc­tion of emis­sions out­side a company’s strict peri­met­er but still with­in its value chain, con­tri­bu­tion to glob­al car­bon neut­ral­ity, strength­en­ing ties with raw mater­i­al pro­du­cers and devel­op­ing a ter­rit­ori­al foothold. Upstream know­ledge of a company’s value chain is also a pre­lim­in­ary step to face anoth­er chal­lenge: increas­ing its resi­li­ence in the face of cli­mate change, through adapt­a­tion measures. 

We must remain real­ist­ic: the access to vol­un­tary car­bon mar­kets to sup­port the fund­ing of car­bon sequest­ra­tion pro­jects is not a mir­acle solu­tion to align all com­pan­ies on a track of 1.5 °C. Non­ethe­less, this frame gives com­pan­ies the oppor­tun­ity to strengthen their value chain and to handle the risks asso­ci­ated with such prac­tices. This is part of a wider range of levers that com­pan­ies have at their dis­pos­al to begin the trans­ition towards a low-car­bon mod­el. We must cap­it­al­ise on this!