Work is underway to develop a carbon removals strategy. The strategy will guide decisions about how we, as a nation, build a more diverse portfolio of activities that remove carbon dioxide from the air and oceans.
Carbon dioxide removals (removals) are activities that draw CO2 from the air. They store it in biological or geological reservoirs or in long-lived products.
Removals are essential to achieving our near-term emissions budgets and our 2050 emissions target. In the long term, beyond 2050, removals are the only way the world can achieve net-negative emissions and reverse the rise in global atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.
The carbon removals strategy will help guide decisions about the volume and mix of removals we need to make as a country. It will look at the role of forestry, alongside a broad range of other nature-based and engineering technologies that can remove carbon from the air. These removals are likely to also contribute to biodiversity, climate change resilience and economic goals.
Counting and rewarding other forms of carbon removals could benefit farmers, Māori, and the conservation estate.
While this work is in its early stages, the strategy will encourage investment to scale up activities such as:
At present, almost all of the carbon removals we count towards our Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), and our international emissions target under the Paris Agreement are from exotic forests. We do not count greenhouse gases emitted from other types of land or carbon captured and stored by other land uses.
This means that emissions and removals from roughly 60 per cent of our land area are not counted in our climate targets.
Aotearoa New Zealand and Japan are the only developed countries that do not yet include emissions and removals on non-forest land in their NDCs.
The strategy will include work to support the expansion of our NDC to include non-forest land use in emissions accounting.
It will also consider the potential of engineering technologies such as bioenergy carbon capture and storage that can permanently remove carbon dioxide from the biosphere and sequester it underground.
To help build a broader portfolio of carbon removal activities, the strategy will include an innovation pathway to support new approaches from the stage of fundamental research through to commercialisation. This includes finding the right ways to reward different types of removals — whether within the New Zealand Emissions Trading scheme or through other mechanisms.
Public consultation on the draft strategy is planned for early 2024 as part of the Government’s second emissions reduction plan.