Going into 2022, we decided to plant a tree for every day of the coming year. You can visit our forest at Tree-Nation and you can actually help us grow it: for every tree you plant in the Im3pact forest before the end of 2022 we will plant another one, up to 2022 trees!
We know that the net greenhouse gas removal required beyond individual countries’ emission reductions under the IPCC’s 1.5°C scenario cannot be achieved by increased forestation alone. But it can be one building block while technology-based solutions emerge, mature, and reach a scale at which they become viable.
Climeworks’ Orca carbon-capture plant has received quite a bit of press when it went live in September in Iceland. The “direct air capture” industry is still in its infancy, but we will need these and other technologies to progress and become additional building blocks in that global quest.
In our industry, Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) have seen a big uptake in interest during 2021. These still need to scale to reach fully competitive unit cost under current market conditions. But the technology is largely mature and can use existing distribution infrastructure, providing a pathway to carbon-neutrality even in a hard-to-abate industry.
So, we remain confident that human ingenuity can do its part in providing a vital complement to regulatory and other measures to keep this planet habitable for our (yet-to-be-born) grandchildren. In the meantime: help us grow that forest!