Ministers and senior leadership at the COP27 announcement of the CDR Launchpad on November 17, 2022. Pictured from left to right: Japan Deputy Director-General for Environmental Affairs Shinichi Kihara; Denmark Head of Department in the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities Asser Rasmussen Berling; Canada Assistant Deputy Minister for Environment and Climate Change Stephen de Boer; U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm; U.K. Minister for Climate Graham Stuart MP; Iceland Special Envoy for Climate Benedikt Höskuldsson. CDR Launchpad founding members not pictured: European Commission and Norway.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, removing billions of tonnes of CO2 directly from the air is necessary to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. To help us get there, yesterday at COP27, the Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Mission launched their first ‘Sprint’ project – the creation of a CDR Launchpad.
The CDR Launchpad is a coalition of governments who will work together to accelerate the pace of CDR advancements by investing in demonstration projects and sharing lessons learned.
The Launchpad goals are threefold and include driving down the costs of CDR technology to less than US$100 per tonne, enabling CDR to scale to at least a gigaton per year globally within two decades, and ensuring CDR solutions advance in a way that protects the environment and communities in which they are deployed.
First-wave members who have joined the Launchpad include Canada, the European Commission, Japan, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Launchpad is a call to action and both Mission Innovation members and non-MI members are encouraged to join.
Launchpad members commit to building at least one 1,000+ tonne CO2 per year CDR project by 2025 and collectively contributing at least $100 million by 2025 to support CDR pilot projects and demonstrations globally.
The members will also provide in-kind support to advance robust measurement, reporting and verification efforts for CDR projects through a new working group within the Mission. The Launchpad members will work together to increase the demand for CDR solutions by supporting efforts that link companies’ set climate goals to CDR projects.
The efforts made by this coalition will help increase the number of pilot-scale tests and demonstrations of CDR technologies by ten times from 2022 levels within three years, and grow the number of full-scale commercial CDR projects to more than a dozen within six years. These tests and demonstrations—coupled with cooperative information sharing—are critical steps toward enabling the necessary rapid and responsible scale-up of CDR projects globally.
Read more about the CDR Launchpad here.
Watch the recorded event here!
Read more about how the CDR Mission is taking action here.