Challenge prizes for negative emissions Sarah Holliday (Nesta Challenges), Scott Milne and Matthew Joss (Energy Systems Catapult) December 2020
To meet the UK’s climate targets, we need approaches to capture and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in addition to curbing emissions. Challenge prizes could help accelerate new solutions to achieve negative emissions at the scale and pace needed to meet our targets. • The UK has committed £800m to carbon capture and storage infrastructure, but most of these technologies only succeed in reducing future emissions. • To limit global heating to 1.5 °C, we need to go further by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to achieve net-zero emissions. • Challenge prizes could help support innovators to develop new negative emissions technologies and techniques, helping to accelerate these solutions and make them economically viable.
Our vision To meet the UK’s net zero greenhouse gas emissions target by 2050, it is clear that reducing current and future emissions alone will not be enough. Even including efforts to capture CO2 emissions from power plants through carbon capture, usage and sequestration (CCUS), we still urgently need to invest in ways to remove carbon already in the atmosphere in order to meet our targets. Challenge prizes could support the rapid development of these negative emissions technologies (NET), as well as nature based solutions (NBS) and other approaches