Active CO2 removal within an accompanying Personal Carbon Trading system
The need to actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is becoming increasingly important in the scientific debate. There seems to be a consensus that reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone is no longer enough to achieve the climate target.
In order to limit the negative effects of global warming, it is therefore essential to further develop technologies that have the potential to actively remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere in addition to measures to reduce emissions. Such measures are generally referred to as CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal).
It is important to note that active GHG removal measures are not a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, they should be seen as an accompanying measure to tackle the challenges of climate change. In addition, it is essential to ensure that such technologies are sustainable.
In principle, there are two further challenges
that an effective climate concept should take into account in connection with CDR:
Technologies such as CDR can help to reduce the atmospheric CO2 content and thus reduce the greenhouse effect. They should therefore be economically interesting on a global scale, for large, well-funded companies. Otherwise, this technology scales too small and does not exploit its potential on the required scale.
Our economic system enables the phenomenon of excess wealth. The associated overconsumption (in the sense of consumption outside planetary boundaries) is associated with a significantly disproportionate carbon footprint. A well-functioning GHG quota system must also be able to reflect the reality of these people's lives, otherwise it is hardly feasible.
So we need a system design which ...
→ on the one hand, rewards industry financially if it actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere through CDR and stores it permanently.
→ and on the other hand also offers a climate-neutral solution for fossil based overconsumption (of rich people).
Personal Carbon Trading (PCT) as an accompanying regulatory framework
With the ECO (Earth Carbon Obligation) climate currency, there is now a model that works completely without taxation or certificate trading for industry, as it includes a system for the allocation, pricing and billing of all CO2 equivalents generated along the entire value chain. Cap, Personalize and Trade (CPT) envisages that every citizen receives an equal, personal and tradable emissions budget as an ecological basic income to pay for individual fossil fuel consumption. This concept takes a new approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by enabling seamless recording, transparent mapping and fair billing of our individual CO2 consumption.
How CDR can be meaningfully integrated into a contingent complementary
carbon resource currency (CPT) system
The simplified equation: money = consumption = emissions, describes the inseparable causality between consumption and climate-damaging emissions (as long as our goods and services are not yet generally climate-neutral). If the active removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is remunerated with money, the following problem arises:
The additional capital inevitably causes additional consumption, and this in turn produces additional emissions. It would therefore be a left pocket - right pocket scenario, or a zero-sum game.
If we want to use CDR to sustainably reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is essential to limit our entire fossil fuel consumption through personal CO2 budgets and to combine CDR technology with an accompanying, complementary and GHG-contingent climate currency system.
How CDR can be used in an economically interesting way for well-capitalized companies
CDR remunerated for industry in local currency represents a financial incentive for companies to invest in and operate this technology. In the ECO emissions management system, industry does not have its own CO2 budget. Commercial CDR is therefore remunerated in Euros (not in ECO). However, the additional capital gained cannot be used for additional fossil fuel consumption. This is because the mandatory combination of the economic price of our consumption with the contingent climate currency ECO means that the additional purchasing power is subject to the "corset" of the fixed total ECO spending volume.
Consequently, the "mined" Euros cannot generate any additional GHG emissions.
---> Result: the absolute CO2 concentration drops!
This results in two control options:
- either faster achievement of the emission reduction target
- or a flatter emission reduction curve
How CDR can be used as a climate-neutral option for fossil fuel overconsumption
Private individuals who invest in CDR have the opportunity to "mine" ECO so that they can continue to lead a lifestyle characterized by fossil fuel overconsumption - but in a climate-neutral way.
For (wealthy) private individuals, investments in this technology are therefore interesting in order to continue the established reality of life within the contingent climate currency system through the possibility of additionally created CO2 equivalents in ECO.
CDR remunerated in ECO enables fossil overconsumption without exceeding the absolute total emissions budget. The "mined" ECO correspond to a factor of 0.5 of the CO2 volume withdrawn.
---> Result: the absolute CO2 concentration drops!
This has two advantages:
- climate-neutral fossil overconsumption is made possible
- factorization reduces the absolute CO2 concentration
Carbon Dioxide Removal within an accompanying Personal Carbon Trading System therefore offers a solution that is both economically interesting for large, financially strong companies and enables climate-neutral fossil fuel overconsumption by private individuals. The stringently self-contained control loop ensures an additional reduction in absolute emissions within the economic area.
Influence of CDR measures on the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere
In addition to reducing emissions, actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere gives us an additional opportunity to counteract the further increase in concentration:
TIME OPTIMIZATION
By additionally removing CO2 from the atmosphere, the emissions reduction curve can be adjusted so that climate neutrality can be achieved earlier. The shaded red area corresponds to the volume of CO2 reduction through CDR during a validation period.
GRADIENT OPTIMIZATION
Alternatively, CDR can be used to flatten the emission reduction curve. Instead of achieving climate neutrality earlier than 2045 (time optimization), CDR is used to initially reduce emissions less steeply.
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