The scientists who popularised carbon capture have a warning about it

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🗞️ Driving the news: The two scientists who helped bring the concept of carbon removal — especially BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) — into global climate strategy, Kenneth Möllersten and Michael Obersteiner, are now warning that the world is over-relying on carbon capture technologies
• They argue that treating future removal as a substitute for deep emissions cuts is a dangerous gamble

🔭 The context: In the early 2000s, Möllersten and Obersteiner helped nearly 200 modelling studies show how BECCS could make global greenhouse-gas levels go negative
• Their ideas became embedded in IPCC mitigation pathways
• But now they caution that many models assume unrealistically high rates of deployment, rely on vast land use, and use carbon removal to “offset everything else” rather than focus on emissions avoidance

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: If policymakers build climate strategies on the notion that large-scale carbon removal will bail them out, there is a risk of delayed action, stranded land, unknown harms from large BECCS deployment and missing the safe carbon budget
• Möllersten and Obersteiner stress that rapid emissions reduction must lead, with removal used as a smaller, supporting lever — not a substitute. This matters for the durability and credibility of the whole net-zero agenda

⏭️ What’s next: The authors urge a “limit the excuse” approach: emissions reductions first; removal second
• They call for firm policies on phasing out fossil fuels, limiting biomass demands, and strict criteria for carbon removal projects
• Their warning is already influencing climate modelers and national strategies revisiting over-optimistic removal assumptions

💬 One quote: “We emphasised that the potential of future negative emissions should never be used as an excuse to delay emission reductions.” — Kenneth Möllersten 

📈 One stat: In many climate-model scenarios, negative-emission technologies like BECCS are assumed to remove up to 20 Gt CO₂/year by 2050 — far beyond today’s <1 Gt capacity and thought by Möllersten/Obersteiner to be wildly optimistic

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