New organization to measure whether companies’ carbon removal plans actually work

Carbon removal is exactly what it sounds like: taking planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it away in plants, or soil or the ocean. It might sound cool, but right now there isn’t a great way to prove that a company’s ambitious carbon removal plans will actually work.

This is where the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative comes in. It’s a new nonprofit that just launched in the U.S. this week.

The environmental argument for carbon removal is straightforward: fewer greenhouse gasses in the air means the planet warms less.

The economic argument is … well … “there’s really no natural market for it,” said Anu Khan, the founder and executive director of the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative. “We do it because it has a benefit to the climate and to the public.”

Khan expects that the removal industry will need carrots — think low-carbon incentives — and sticks — like pollution penalties — to get rolling.

As for her organization’s role? “Carbon removal requires the ability to count the carbon, so that’s what we’re helping with,” she said. That will help assess whether a company’s process is working, Khan added.

Carbon removal can be controversial, according to Stanford climate scientist Rob Jackson.

“I used to think that sucking greenhouse gasses back out of the air distracted us from the real job of cutting emissions,” he said, “but decades of inaction convinced me that to maintain a livable climate, we’ll need both.”

Jackson is hopeful financial pollution penalties could help. He’s less hopeful though that they’d gain much political traction in the U.S.