CO2-removal News

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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Peer-reviewed Publications

du Toit et al. (2026): Deciduous afforestation as a natural climate solution: impacts on biomass and carbon sequestration in boreal forests of Canada

Francois du Toit, Nicholas C. Coops, Christopher Mulverhill and Aoife Toomey, IN: Carbon Balance and Management, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-025-00385-2

Rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns are expected to have profound impacts on the composition and condition of boreal forests. As a result there are growing needs for climate adaptation strategies in boreal forest management; one potential solution to achieve these goals is the utilization of nature-based climate-informed adaption solutions including afforestation using deciduous species which can help offset carbon emissions and sequester carbon at an increased rate. Deciduous afforestation has the potential to allow mangers to adapt fire-risk, while increasing carbon storage. Here, the authors investigated the impact of deciduous compared to coniferous afforestation on biomass accumulation in the Canadian boreal using a process-based model (3-PG). 3-PG utilises physiological principals to predict the growth of individual species across a variety of climate scenarios. This approach is valuable for projecting forest growth under changing climate, as it can account for plant responses to environmental factors which may not be captured by empirical models based on historical data. The authors simulated forest growth under three future climate scenarios to 2080, and compared the aboveground biomass (AGB, tons of Dry Matter per hectare; tDM ha−1) accumulated to baseline estimates using locally adapted coniferous species. In addition, the authors investigated the modelled effects of converting from conifer to deciduous species on stand level soil water and vapor pressure deficit responses to climate.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Li et al. (2026): Life cycle carbon emissions of buildings considering wood biological carbon sequestration with a piecewise linear decoration model

Zheng Li, Chunyang Zuo, Duhang Yi, Minjuan He and Zhan Shu, IN: Building Research & Information, https://doi.org/10.1080/17480272.2025.2608898

This study focused on three building types (steel, reinforced concrete, and timber), trying to evaluate their life cycle carbon emissions while quantifying building decoration stage carbon emissions. Besides, the three structures’ emissions at key life cycle stages were compared, revealing the potentials of timber buildings in terms of carbon reduction. The study’s contributions lie in three aspects: Firstly, a piece-wise linear model was developed for accurate decoration stage emission quantification. Secondly, a formula for building production and construction stage carbon emissions accounting for materials, height, decoration grade and area was proposed. Thirdly, a new solution was proposed to demonstrate that the carbon-negative materials exhibited positive carbon emissions after recycling. Methodologically, the study applied LCA for life cycle carbon accounting, used the developed piece-wise linear model to quantify decoration-stage emissions.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Zhou et al. (2026): Fast and selective CO₂ capture from outdoor air by covalent organic frameworks

Zihui Zhou, Tianqiong Ma, Heyang Zhang, Neda S. Sabeva and Omar M. Yaghi, IN: Nature Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01735-1

Capturing CO₂ directly from ambient air is necessary for managing carbon levels and supporting long-term climate sustainability. However, the slow adsorption and desorption kinetics of current direct air capture sorbents remain a major limitation, whereas faster kinetics allow for quicker CO₂ uptake and greater air throughput—both are essential for enhancing system efficiency. In this work, the authors present a covalent organic framework (COF) with both fast kinetics and high CO₂ uptake.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Chen et al. (2026): Integrating transformer-based learning and Sentinel-2 bare soil composites for soil organic carbon mapping in the black soil region of Northeast China

Na Chen, Zhikang Wei, Xuancheng Jin, Nan Lin, Fan Yang, Ling Zhao and Song Wu, IN: Scientific Reports, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-33682-4

Accurate assessment of soil organic carbon (SOC) is essential for sustainable cropland management and carbon sequestration monitoring. However, high-resolution SOC mapping remains challenging due to two persistent limitations: (1) the difficulty of extracting true bare-soil reflectance—especially when single-date imagery is used and spectral signals remain influenced by vegetation, residue, and soil moisture; and (2) reliance on models that require large training datasets and may underperform in typical small-sample soil survey settings. To address these challenges, the authors developed an approach that integrates multi-temporal Sentinel-2 bare-soil composites with a transformer-based foundation model—Tabular Prior-data Fitted Network (TabPFN)—for SOC prediction in the black soil region of Northeast China. Bare soil pixels were extracted using a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index threshold (0.1–0.4), and two compositing strategies—the 50th percentile (P50) and 90th percentile (P90)—were compared. The authors systematically evaluated three advanced algorithms: TabPFN, convolutional neural network (CNN), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost).

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Tiwary et al. (2026): Simulated Earth system response to acid downwelling as a form of ocean alkalinity enhancement

E Tiwary, M Jürchott and A Oschlies, IN: Environmental Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae2105

‘Acid downwelling’ (AD) is a proposed marine carbon dioxide removal (CDR) method, which describes the idea of electrochemically splitting open ocean surface water into an alkaline solution to remain at the surface ocean and cause additional ocean CO₂ uptake, and into an acidic solution that is pumped down into the deep ocean for disposal via vertical pipes. In this study, the authors simulate idealized large-scale AD in an Earth system model of intermediate complexity with different acid injection depths and downwelling intensities.

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Nawab et al. (2025): From pollution to ocean warming: The climate impacts of marine microplastics

Asim Nawab, Muhammad Tariq Khan, I. Ihsanullah, Mohammad Nafees and Aamir Mehmood Shah, IN: Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hazmp.2025.100032

Despite being a critical global issue, the role of microplastics (MPs) in climate change has received limited attention. Climate disruption and plastic pollution are two major environmental challenges that intersect in complex ways. MPs influence biogeochemical processes, disrupt oceanic carbon pumps, and contribute directly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In marine ecosystems, MPs alter the natural carbon sequestration by affecting phytoplankton and zooplankton, which are key agents of carbon cycling. Additionally, the plastisphere, a microbial community colonizing MPs, plays a significant role in GHG production due to its diverse microbial networks.

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