News Release 2-Jun-2026
Carbon dioxide removal will need to scale faster than solar to meet climate targets
Reports and Proceedings
University of Oxford

New global report warns of a 5 billion tonne carbon removal shortfall by 2050
Oxford, 02 June 2026: The 3rd Edition of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report finds that national pledges fall short of pathways limiting warming to 1.5°C this century by more than 5 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year by 2050. Closing this gap would require carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to grow at rates comparable to, or faster than, the most rapid clean energy transitions in history, including solar power and electric vehicles.

Cutting emissions remains the first and most important priority for tackling climate change. Most progress in limiting warming will come from reducing emissions, while CDR will help address emissions that are hardest to eliminate. However, for as long as any emissions continue, CDR will be needed to halt the rise in global temperature. Delaying emissions cuts by a decade, for example, would warm the planet by about 0.15°C and increase the need for CDR later this century.

Today, the world removes about 2.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere each year, almost all of it through land-based actions such as restoring forests. Novel technologies that use machines or minerals to lock away carbon only account for around 0.1% of total removals – but have been growing at 40% per year. At the same time, activity behind the scenes is also growing; research funding, trial projects and startups focused on CDR have all increased, and investment in CDR now makes up around 3% of overall investment in climate tech, rebounding last year even as wider climate investment has slowed.

Despite this momentum, the authors warn that today’s CDR system is fragile. In recent years, only about 20% of planned novel CDR capacity has actually been delivered, highlighting how challenging it is to bring new projects forward into operation. Dr Morgan Edwards, Lead Author and Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison said, “Growing investment in CDR will depend on expectations of future demand, but those expectations are fragile. Activity is highly concentrated in a small number of countries and approaches. That creates real vulnerability – local changes in policy or market signals risk slowing progress globally”.

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