Lawrence Livermore Labs released a first-of-its-kind "The Roads to Removal Report", a national-scale analysis, outlining pathways for carbon dioxide (CO2) removal to help the United States reach its climate goals. Thirteen academic research institutions and 68 subject matter experts from across the nation collaborated for more than two years to research and write the Roads to Removal report with Senior Staff Scientist Dr. Jennifer Pett-Ridge as the Lead Author. 

The Carbon Negative Shot was launched in 2021 to identify technologies that can remove a billion tons of CO2 annually for less than $100 per ton of CO2 removed. In "The Roads to Removal Report", they have identified multiple options to meet this ambitious goal in every region of the U.S., showing that over a billion tons of CO2 can be removed annually, albeit with no one-size-fits-all solution.

A major takeaway from the report is the potential of immediate ecological solutions alongside the long-term opportunities presented by direct air capture technologies that require further development and scaling, which will likely unfold over decades. These diverse 'roads to carbon removal' will be particularly crucial for addressing industries that are difficult to decarbonize for net zero to be achieved.

“The biggest takeaway for me is that it’s possible to scale up CDR in the near term without competing with our efforts to decarbonize our economy in the US, and we need to start now,” said Corinne Scown, Deputy Director for Research of the Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts (EAEI) Division at LBNL.

Other key findings include: 

• CO2 removal will be necessary to address remaining emissions after full grid decarbonization.
• Each method could provide large-scale CO2 removal by 2050, but opportunities, costs and co-benefits differ by region.
• Cropland soil and forest based carbon storage approaches are ready to scale now.
• DACS and BiCRS can offer significant removal capacity by 2050, but need further development and scaling.
• In a cost-optimized scenario, 1 billion metric tonnes of CO2 removal per year can create about 440,000 long-term jobs.

Read more in the full report here: https://roads2removal.org/

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