Focus Issue on CDR

The Environmental Research Letters (ERL) – Focus Issue on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), developed by CDRmare in cooperation with our collaborating program CDRterra, is now online: https://iopscience.iop.org/collections/erl-230825-334 

Scope of the focus issue:

The Paris Agreement of 2015 set the goal of limiting the increase in global mean temperature to „well below 2 °C“ compared to pre-industrial levels and of „pursuing efforts“ to limit the temperatureincrease to even 1.5 °C. The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms: limiting the rise in average global temperature to 1.5 °C will require so-called „negative emissions“ in addition to the drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Negative emissions refer to the active removal of CO₂ (Carbon Dioxide Removal, CDR) from the atmosphere and its long-term storage. Implicitly or explicitly, all countries following the Paris Agreement’s aims thus committed themselves to CDR to compensate for hard-to-abate residual emissions with their net-zero goals. However, a broad spectrum of options ranging from ecosystem-based to technical methods on land and in the ocean exist or are being explored. Each of the methods has potentials, which may scale up more or less quickly over time also depending on the implementation context, has risks, e.g., concerning the permanence of the CO₂ storage, and side-effects, which could create synergies but also trade-offs with other sustainable development goals or other societal interests. It is thus crucial to establish a solid science basis for decision-making concerning potentials, risks, and side-effects of the individual CDR methods and their potential co-application, but also concerning overarching questions of political and institutional feasibility, social acceptance, justice and ethics.

This focus issue collection welcomes contributions which cover the following:

• CDR as pathway to mitigate the increasingly drastic consequences of human-made climate change and to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.
• Whether and to what extent CDR methods can play a significant role in the removal and storage of CO₂ from the atmosphere, individually and as part of portfolios, and how this potential changes over time (due to climate impacts or due to efforts to scale methods up).
• Considerations on the linkages with and impacts of CDR on the environment, including Earth system feedbacks, economics, society, and governance considerations. We seek contributions both on these individual dimensions and how they impose possible constraints on the feasibility of CDR as well as on the interactions of the dimensions.
• Developing of appropriate approaches for monitoring, attributing, and accounting for carbon storage in a changing environment – the prerequisite for certification and incentivization of CDR.
• Developing and applying assessment frameworks that allow, e.g., political decision-makers to evaluate CDR pathways across all relevant dimensions.

Submission process:

This is an open call, everyone is invited to submit their manuscripts whose work fits within the scope of this focus collection. Thus, submission is not limited to CDRmare or CDRterra members. Submissions will be handled on an individual basis upon submission, so the focus issue will not delay the review and publication process. All focus issue articles are subject to the same review process as regular articles. Authors are invited to contact one of the guest editors, or the journal team, to discuss the suitability of their work prior to submission.

Please submit your article via our online submission form. You should submit the appropriate article type for your submission then choose ‚Focus on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)‘ from the drop-down menu.

Deadline for submissions:

The target deadline for submissions is 31 May 2024. We encourage early submission where possible, as articles will be published on acceptance without being delayed by other papers in the collection.

Please submit your article using the online submission form. Indicate the appropriate article type for your submission then choose ‚Focus on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)‘ from the drop-down menu.

Feel free to share this announcement within your CDR networks.

Please contact Chris Schelten, if you have further questions.

Editorial Board

• Andreas Oschlies, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany
• Julia Pongratz, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
• Sabine Fuss, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Germany
• Matthias Honegger, Perspectives Climate Group, Germany
• Matthias May, University of Tübingen, Germany
• Nadine Mengis, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany
• Christine Merk, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Germany
• Gregor Rehder, Leibniz-Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Germany
• Daniela Thrän, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany
• Martin Zimmer, Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Germany