❌ Monday myth buster: we are prioritising carbon removals over emission reductions ❌

😱 Few things I hear regularly are less grounded in reality than this one. The facts? Carbon dioxide removals (CDR) accounted for 0.14% of climate finance in 2024. Emission reductions received 99.86%!

💰 In fact, I would argue the exact opposite: we should collectively prioritise CDR significantly more in climate policy and investment than we currently are.

🎯 As a reminder, net zero will require around 90% emission reductions and 10% carbon removals. These are indicative numbers based on common IPCC scenarios. Funding should reflect these percentages. And we are currently far off that.

🤑 I appreciate that a new DAC facility might get more attention than a new wind farm, but we should not mistake attention for priorisation. Fact is, way too little funding is going towards CDR today and - unless we ramp that up significantly - there is no way on earth CDR will be able to take care of 10% of the job of stabilising our climate.

📊 As for the data (all 2024): I used Nat Bullard’s numbers for overall climate investments ($2,090b) and CDR.fyi data for CDR financing ($3b). And I was generous, including offtakes for CDR which were $2b in 2024 (but not offtakes for clean electricity on the other hand). Taking these out, the data would look even more stark (0.04%/99.96% instead of 0.14%/99.86%).

❓ What am I missing? Am I comparing apples with apples? What do you think?

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