CO2-removal News

Peer-reviewed Publications

Dong et al. (2026): Enhancing carbon sinks in China using a spatially-optimized forestation strategy

Yanli Dong, Zhen Yu, Thomas Pugh, Evgenios Agathokleous, Fangmin Zhang, Stephen Sitch, Weibin You, Wangya Han, Stefan Olin, Shirong Liu, Guoyi Zhou, Pedro Cabral and Pengsen Sun, IN: Nature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68288-5

China plans expanding 49.5 million hectares of new forests by 2050 to strengthen carbon sequestration. However, estimates of the carbon benefits from this expansion rarely consider the effect of ‘forest edge’, where tree mortality increases under intensified stress from wind, drought, pests, and fire. Here the authors show that proximity to forest edges substantially reduces biomass carbon storage, and develop a spatial optimization strategy that prioritizes planting in areas that minimize edge effects.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Fakhraee & Planavsky (2026): Seaweed farms enhance alkalinity production and carbon capture

Mojtaba Fakhraee and Noah J. Planavsky, IN: Communications Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1038/s44458-025-00004-8

Seaweed aquaculture is increasingly being explored as a sustainable source of food and industrial processing feedstock, as well as a potential climate solution through carbon dioxide removal. In this study, the authors use a sediment diagenetic model to quantify how elevated organic carbon fluxes beneath seaweed farms enhance sedimentary alkalinity fluxes, contributing to long-term carbon dioxide sequestration.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Li et al. (2026): Accelerating widespread adoption of direct air capture based on system perspective: Thermodynamic limits, geographical deployment, and clean energy integration

Chunfeng Li, Shuai Deng, Xiangkun Elvis Cao and Shuangjun Li, IN: Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2026.116702

Direct Air Capture (DAC) is a critical negative emission technology essential to achieve the global climate targets. However, its widespread adoption is hindered by a multitude of technical, economic, deployment, and sustainability challenges. The purpose of this review is to bridge this critical gap by deconstructing the challenges and opportunities for DAC through a novel, three-tiered analytical framework. Basically, the fundamental challenge of DAC lies in the high energy consumption and low exergy efficiency associated with CO₂ enrichment from its low atmospheric concentration.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Zhu et al. (2026): Light-Carbon Double Transfer Membrane for Carbon Fixation in Microalgae

Ying Zhu, Hui Jia, Jibao Liu, Fei Gao, Yue Wang, Xu Zhu, Jiangfang Yu and Jie Wang, IN: Advanced Functional Materials, https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202527802

The carbon fixation technology based on microalgae has garnered significant attention due to its efficient photosynthesis and resource utilization. However, as algal density increases, light attenuation and insufficient CO₂ supply become major bottlenecks. This study proposes a light-carbon double transfer membrane (LCTM) that simultaneously facilitates light and CO₂ transmission.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Dong et al. (2026): Canadian net forest CO₂ uptake enhanced by heat drought via reduced respiration

Guanyu Dong, Fei Jiang, Yongguang Zhang, Weimin Ju, Shilong Piao, Philippe Ciais, Wouter Peters, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Junjie Liu, Frédéric Chevallier, Ning Zeng, et al., IN: Nature Geoscience, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01875-1

The response of net forest carbon uptake to warm extremes remains elusive. The year 2023 was at the time ‘the hottest year on record’ globally, with Canada’s forests experiencing warm anomalies of above 2 °C and unprecedented drought and wildfires, providing a unique case to examine the response of boreal forest net carbon uptake to climate extremes. Here the authors combine satellite-based atmospheric CO₂ flux inversions with ground-based in situ observations of CO₂ fluxes and concentrations to investigate Canada’s forest net carbon uptake and its underlying mechanisms in 2023.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Zhang et al. (2026): Enhanced forest management rather than afforestation has dominated China’s carbon sink over recent decades

Mengyu Zhang, Honglin He, Martin Brandt, Li Zhang, Xiaoli Ren, Xiaowei Tong, Shiyong Yu, Yan Lv, Kailiang Yu, Yuanyuan Huang, Yuchuan Fan, Zhong’en Niu, Liang Shi, Keyu Qin, Tong Zhao and Guirui Yu, IN: Communications Earth & Environment, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03176-2

Human activities substantially reduce net ecosystem productivity (NEP) globally, yet debates remain over the contributions of land-use and land-cover change (LUCC), such as afforestation (afforestation and reforestation), versus non-LUCC ecosystem management (EM; e.g., forest tending, mountain forest restoration, and fire control). Here, the authors developed an analytical framework by harmonizing structurally consistent remote sensing-driven and climate-driven ecological process models to quantify the dynamic effects of LUCC and eight EM types on NEP from 2001 to 2021 in China by isolating anthropogenic effects from global change factors.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Liaqat & Yu (2026): Enzyme assisted carbon dioxide capture and mineralization in construction relevant alkaline materials

Nabeel Liaqat and Xiong Bill Yu, IN: Scientific Reports, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-33712-1

Mineralizing CO₂ in alkaline construction materials can reduce process emissions. This study measures the effect of carbonic anhydrase on CO₂ uptake and retention in hydrated lime, Portland cement, fly ash, and slag under ambient conditions using a mass-flow-controlled CO₂ supply and gravimetric tracking. CO₂ was supplied for 1440 min for hydrated lime and cement and for 360 min for fly ash and slag, then stopped to quantify permanently retained mass.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Carrejo et al. (2026): Quantifying atmospheric carbon removal at pulp and paper mills: a life cycle assessment across system boundaries

Edgar Carrejo, Rhonald Ortega, Kai Lan, Daniel L. Sanchez, Sunkyu Park and William Joe Sagues, IN: Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/s43979-025-00156-5

The pulp and paper industry is a promising yet underexplored platform for large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) due to its use of biogenic feedstocks and production of concentrated CO₂ emissions from point sources. This study presents the first comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of retrofitting an amine-based carbon capture and storage (CCS) system into a representative virgin kraft pulp and paper mill in the Southeastern U.S. The authors evaluate carbon removal across five system configurations, applying both static and dynamic LCA methods under multiple functional units: CO₂ captured, biomass input, and paper output.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Abubakari & Abubakari (2025): Carbon Sequestration in Ghana: Challenges, Opportunities and Policy Implications

Fariya Abubakari and Farida Abubakari, IN: International Journal of Environment and Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.9734/ijecc/2025/v15i125202

Ghana is increasingly affected by deforestation, land degradation, agricultural expansion, mining, and urbanisation, leading to significant carbon losses and growing vulnerability to climate change. Carbon sequestration has emerged as an important nature-based solution for climate change mitigation while supporting sustainable land management and livelihoods. Although Ghana hosts diverse ecosystems—including forests, savannahs, wetlands, agroforestry systems, and agricultural soils—evidence on their carbon sequestration potential and the effectiveness of related policy interventions remains fragmented. This review provides a timely synthesis to support informed decision-making and national climate commitments.
Objectives of the Study: The objectives are to evaluate the carbon sequestration potential of Ghana’s major ecosystems, identify key drivers of carbon loss, assess existing policies and institutional frameworks supporting carbon sequestration, and synthesise challenges, opportunities, and policy-relevant recommendations.
Methodology: A systematic review of peer-reviewed literature, national policy documents, and international reports was conducted. The analysis integrates biophysical evidence on ecosystem carbon storage with socio-economic drivers and governance mechanisms, including REDD+, agroforestry, conservation agriculture, and wetland restoration.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Lamarque et al. (2026): Improved Comparability and System-Wide Verification to Support a Scalable Carbon Credit Market

Jean-Francois Lamarque, Pierre Friedlingstein, Brian Osias, Steve Strongin, Venkatramani Balaji, Kevin W. Bowman, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Heidi Cullen, Kenneth J. Davis, Scott C. Doney, Kevin R. Gurney, Alicia R. Karspeck, Charles D. Koven, Galen McKinley, Glen P. Peters, Julia Pongratz, Britt Stephens and Colm Sweeney, IN: EGUSphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-6457

Achieving net-zero emissions over the coming decades requires unprecedented reductions in anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) complemented by a rapid ramp-up in the magnitude of global carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The carbon credit market (CCM) is emerging as a means to finance both emissions reductions and carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. To achieve necessary growth on these fronts, the total scope and diversity of projects that are candidates for inclusion in the CCM must expand, necessitating a means of comprehensively assessing the quality of carbon credit projects (CCPs) based on their ability to make quantifiable reductions to GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. Toward a comprehensive quality assessment, the authors propose a framework to assess and differentiate CCPs based on their estimated impact on atmospheric GHG composition. In parallel, the authors propose a path towards verification of the aggregated atmospheric impact of CCM actions, since a detectable and attributable signal in atmospheric GHG composition can be viewed as the clearest measure of their climate forcing and, therefore, effectiveness.

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