Human and Planetary Health Implications of Negative Emissions Technologies

Are the risks and costs associated with the large-scale deployment of NETPs worth their potential benefits?

📄This article co-authored by NEGEM partners Selene Cobo and Gonzalo Guillén-Gosálbez and published in Nature Communication, assesses the impacts on human health of deploying negative emissions technologies such as DACCS and BECCS at scale. 

Highlights
🔵 DACCS and BECCS could preserve a substantial number of years of healthy life that would otherwise be lost due to climate change.
Removing 5.9 Gtonne/year of CO2 can prevent up to 900 disability-adjusted life years per million people annually (DALY), a time-based measure that represents the loss of the equivalent of one year of full health according to WHO.

🔵 This is a health burden similar to Parkinson, so avoiding it could generate savings in externalities up to 148 US$/tonne CO2, an amount comparable to the levelized costs of NETS. Quantifying the NETs payback in terms of health externalities could incentivize their deployment.

🌎 DACCS can avert damage to the biosphere without challenging other biophysical limits (impacts ≤2% of the safe operating space), while BECCS would exert substantial pressure on the planetary boundaries.

🌐 However the performance of NETs will ultimately depend on their location; thus, a portfolio of negative emissions technologies and practices will probably be needed.

Find the article here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30136-7
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