Summary/Abstract
This report, which brought together experts from several EASAC member academies, assesses the potential of carbon dioxide removal technologies on the basis of recent peer-reviewed literature. The report shows that technologies capable of taking out CO2 from the atmosphere are certainly no ’silver bullet‘—a point that should drive policy-makers to renewed efforts to accelerate emissions reduction. At the same time, however, humanity will require all possible tools to limit warming, and these technologies include those that can make some contributions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere even now, while research, development and demonstration may allow others to make a limited future contribution. Therefore, the report concludes it is appropriate to continue work to identify the best technologies and the conditions under which they can contribute to climate change mitigation, even though they should not be expected to play a major role in climate control at the present time.