Oxford Sustainable Finance Group’s Post

New research from the University of Oxford makes the case for a novel ‘Carbon Removal Budget’ to help tackle #climate change. It would sit alongside the Carbon Budget that governs how much CO2 can safely be emitted globally. Dr Ben Caldecott, the Lombard Odier Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment - University of Oxford and lead author said, “Carbon removal is the ‘net’ in ‘net zero’ and it is mission critical for tackling climate change. However, carbon removal is not in infinite supply and is certainly not free to produce.” “The Carbon Removal Budget is the cumulative amount of carbon removal available to realise global temperature goals. We need a way to value this finite removal capacity and allocate it in a fair and effective way. The Carbon Removal Budget allows us to do this, in the same way that the Carbon Budget allows us to value remaining carbon emissions and figure out how we distribute that globally between different countries, sectors, and companies.” Dr Injy Johnstone, Research Fellow at Oxford Sustainable Finance Group and co-author said, “We have seen growing interest by private and public actors alike in how we can scale carbon removal. However, carbon removal is a scarce resource, one which not all countries or companies have the same capacity to develop and deploy, meaning we need a Carbon Removal Budget to help equitably manage both supply and demand.” The authors argue that carbon removal budgets can help to answer several urgent questions: How much carbon removal is needed and when? What methods for carbon removal should be prioritised? What impediments exist to the different types of removal supply and how can we overcome them? Critically, how should we allocate the finite, even if growing, carbon removal supply between different countries, companies, and financial institutions? Dr Caldecott said, “For example, it is not clear why a fossil fuel company should be using carbon removal today when there are ways to reduce its emissions today, especially when we need to preserve removals for future emissions that are extremely hard or impossible to eliminate.” “Embedding carbon removal budgets into decision-making is necessary for an effective response to climate change. It will become an essential part of net zero transition plans, whether for countries, companies, or financial institutions.” Read the paper in the journal Carbon Management: https://lnkd.in/eaPANdge

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Discover the latest research at the intersection of #naturallanguageprocessing and #climatescience, from the #ClimateNLP workshop at ACL2024 coorganised by our #NLP4SF team ⬇️

Huge congratulations to Mary Schapiro, who won the inaugural Insight Investment – University of Oxford Prize for Greening Finance in the Outstanding Service category.   As part of the Prize, Schapiro gave a lecture titled ‘Looking back and moving on: reflections on forty years of changing climate, law and finance’ in Oxford on 12th June. Watch the lecture again here: https://lnkd.in/enbUgHqt.   Schapiro is Vice Chair for Global Public Policy of Bloomberg L.P., Vice Chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and Chair of the Climate Data Steering Committee (CDSC). She is also former Chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).   In her 2023 Prize citation the judging panel highlighted Schapiro’s instrumental leadership in establishing the new global architecture for #sustainability #reporting. She led the development of the FSB Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB Standards), the two fundamental pillars of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).   Learn more about the Insight Investment – University of Oxford Prize for Greening Finance: https://lnkd.in/dE53kBcp   #greenfinance #GFP2023 #GreeningFinancePrize Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment - University of Oxford