Life cycle assessment of negative emission technologies for effectiveness in carbon sequestration

Abstract

As climate change and emissions targets tighten, negative emissions technologies (NETs) will play a crucial role in making sure global temperature rises do not exceed Paris Agreement goals. There are a variety of NETs that can be used to abate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but it is uncertain which are more effective, and by how much, as well as what the net GHG removal is as all NETs will emit GHGs and other pollutants throughout their life cycles. We conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare four NETs: afforestation/reforestation, enhanced weathering, direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. These are compared on their life cycle impacts to climate change, land use change and toxicity (human and terrestrial). We find that the most effective NET is afforestation/reforestation for the environmental impacts considered while enhanced weathering and direct air capture are less effective. However, when the rate of carbon removal is considered, we find that afforestation/reforestation is much slower than the other NETs. Therefore, while it has the lowest impacts to the environment, either long time frames or large-scale implementation is needed for it to match the capacity of direct air capture or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.