Taxonomy of CDR side effects
The new study “A taxonomy to map evidence on the co-benefits, challenges, and limits of carbon dioxide removal” provides a new taxonomy of nearly 400 side effects of six carbon dioxide removal methods. Machine learning was used to process almost 15,000 peer-reviewed studies and to systematically map recent evidence on co-benefits, challenges, and limits of land-based CDR.
There are detailed studies for Europe, but relatively little information for Africa and South America. This underrepresentation of Africa and South America is critical, as these regions are considered essential for the deployment of CDR in many mitigation pathways and, therefore, require urgent further investigation. This is especially the case since the few available studies for these regions mostly highlight negative implications.
The study, to which CDRterra researchers Ruben Prütz, Sabine Fuss and Sarah Lück contributed, provides entry points for future analyses that can build on this literature-based taxonomy of side effects to fill remaining knowledge gaps. It was created as part of the CDRterra project CDRSynTra.
