Why Reduction Alone Is Not Enough
CO₂ is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in our atmosphere. While natural greenhouse gases are essential for a habitable planet, a surplus has developed since the Industrial Revolution, disrupting the balance.
The consequences of this disruption are becoming increasingly clear and serious worldwide. Without intervention, we are heading for biodiversity loss and severe problems for people and nature, such as food and water scarcity and economic disruption.
Rapid and far-reaching reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is essential to prevent the most severe climate change. However, according to science, reduction alone is no longer sufficient.
The necessary second track
The Paris Agreement (2015) set out to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The European Climate Law obliges countries to be climate neutral by 2050 at the latest.
It is assumed that global emissions will not fall quickly enough to achieve the 1.5°C target. Therefore, removing CO₂ from the atmosphere is necessary.
CO₂ removal (Carbon Removal, or more accurately Carbon Dioxide Removal) has a dual role:
- Reducing global warming.
- Offsetting remaining, hard-to-eliminate emissions.
CO₂ removal—human activities that remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and store it for a long time—is therefore a second necessary track within climate policy, alongside emission reduction.
Dutch ambitions
The importance of CO2 removal is also recognized by the government. To provide certainty to the market and investors, the government has officially included an indicative annual contribution to carbon removal in the Climate Plan 2025-2035. This is a crucial step: it confirms that large-scale CO₂ removal is an indispensable and official track within Dutch climate policy to achieve the Paris goals.
greenSand helps by applying the natural solution of olivine in an accelerated and scalable manner, so that together we can rebalance the Earth's CO₂ cycle.
