What Are Net-Negative Emissions?

Over the past decade, there has been a collective rally around the world to reach net-zero emissions by midcentury. But growing evidence suggests that reaching net zero within this timeframe is no longer enough to ensure delivery of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) goal to prevent the ever-worsening consequences of climate change. Rather, it is now clear that the world needs to go farther.

Last month, the UN Environment Programme issued a stark warning that the world will exceed 1.5 degrees C of warming, at least temporarily. This means more intense weather extremes, glacier melt, fires and sea-level rise, translating to higher costs and risks to people’s homes, health and livelihoods.

To bring temperature back down to safer levels this century, the world will need to go “net negative,” by making deep emissions cuts and removing more carbon dioxide (CO2) than is being emitted into the atmosphere.

While net zero has been in global discourse for years, the concept of reaching and sustaining net-negative emissions to draw down stores of CO2 concentrated in the atmosphere is less well known. 

Here, we explain what net negative is, why it is needed and what it will take to achieve it.