The Cabinet wants to remove carbon dioxide from the air through our waste, but there are hurdles climate

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Licensing takes years

AVR already has plans to capture 450,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year at its incinerator in the Port of Rotterdam. However, this company also finds an ambitious “company” for Jetten, says Michel Timmerije, energy director at AVR. “There should also be an infrastructure to do that.”

For its CO2 storage project, AVR wants to use pipelines laid from the port of Rotterdam to offload the gas fields. But it is not yet clear how long construction can continue. The State Council has yet to rule on a lawsuit over nitrogen emissions during the construction of the so-called Porthos Project.

The year 2030 is just around the corner. “Before you had an installation, before you got permits, you had been in business for at least three or four years,” Timmerije says.

Nor are our laws yet ready to remove carbon dioxide. No system has yet been created to reward companies for their negative emissions. In Brussels, there is still extensive discussion about how this works and how to verify that carbon dioxide has actually been removed from the air. And that it will also be stored for a long time.

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“Truly upgrading technology”

According to scientists, we will have to remove more carbon dioxide from the air in the future to reduce global warming. We must not only be climate neutral by 2050, but also have net negative emissions after that in order to limit warming as much as possible.

So it’s a good idea to start now with negative emissions, says Kian de Klein. She is conducting research at Radboud University on ways to reuse or remove carbon dioxide from the air. “You have to start working on that now, to develop and scale it up.”

She stressed that removing carbon dioxide is not an alternative to reducing emissions. It is usually more difficult to remove carbon dioxide from the air than to prevent greenhouse gases from escaping from our chimneys and exhaust. “Reducing emissions must remain the core of climate policy. Carbon dioxide removal cannot replace it.”