Managing CO₂ emissions is one of the most urgent challenges for companies that want to limit their environmental impact and align with global targets to contain global warming.
Cutting emissions at the source is always the first step, but it’s often not enough. That’s why, to achieve ambitious goals like reaching net zero, it can be useful to turn to carbon removal solutions.
What are carbon removals?
Carbon removals include activities that take CO₂ out of the atmosphere and store it with varying degrees of durability.
Before resorting to carbon removals, companies should focus on reducing emissions produced by their own activities. The priority is to avoid new CO₂ being released rather than dealing with it once it’s already in the atmosphere.
However, some emissions remain difficult or impossible to eliminate at the source due to economic and technological limits. In such cases, carbon removals play a decisive role in compensating for residual emissions.
To do this, companies can support or develop carbon removal projects, which fall into two broad categories:
- nature-based projects;
- technological projects.
What types of projects exist?
Navigating the different carbon removal projects can be complex, which is why it’s important to know the main options available and identify those best suited to your sustainability goals.
Nature-based projects
These projects leverage natural processes to capture and store carbon.
Key practices include:
- Reforestation and forest management: planting trees or restoring degraded forests increases the land’s capacity to absorb CO₂. Healthy trees and well-managed soils act as natural carbon sinks.
- Sustainable agricultural soil management: techniques such as crop rotation, cover cropping, and reduced tillage increase the capacity of soils to sequester carbon.
- Agroforestry: integrating trees and vegetation into agricultural settings boosts carbon uptake in both soil and biomass.
What are the advantages and limits of these projects? They generate co-benefits beyond climate mitigation, helping improve soil quality and/or foster biodiversity. They can also be less costly than technological projects.
However, carbon storage is not permanent: if a project stops, the accumulated carbon will be released back into the atmosphere.
Technological projects
These projects rely on engineered solutions to capture and store CO₂. Examples include:
- Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS): generates energy while removing CO₂ from the atmosphere. It uses biomass that absorbs CO₂ during growth. When it is burned to produce energy, the CO₂ emissions are captured and stored in deep geological formations.
- Direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS): facilities that extract CO₂ directly from the air. CO₂ is captured from the air using specialized filters or chemical solutions. It is then compressed and permanently stored in underground geological formations
What are the advantages and limits of these projects? Many can store CO₂ for thousands of years, offering an effective long-term climate mitigation solution.
On the other hand, they require substantial investments, significant energy consumption, and complex infrastructure. Moreover, many technologies are still under development and operating at limited scale.
How to integrate carbon removals into your sustainability strategy
Integrating carbon removals into your company’s strategy doesn’t necessarily mean developing a project from scratch.
If your company wants to compensate for its emissions but does not intend to manage a project directly—or lacks the necessary technical and financial resources—purchasing carbon credits is the simplest and most effective solution.
Credits come from external projects and account for the removal of a defined quantity of CO₂ from the atmosphere. By purchasing them, your company balances its emissions with an equivalent amount of CO₂ removed by the chosen projects.
If you want to take a more active role, your company can contribute directly to the development of carbon removal projects by providing capital, technologies, know-how, and/or land. This approach allows greater control over the project and ensures that activities are aligned with your sustainability objectives. It also enables the generation of carbon credits to use or sell to third parties.
Regardless of the approach your company chooses, it is crucial that all actions remain transparent, verifiable, and grounded in science, ensuring a genuine and measurable impact over time.
Where to start to begin compensating emissions?
An effective decarbonization journey starts with accurately measuring your company’s emissions. Only by precisely understanding the amount and type of emissions generated is it possible to assess whether—and to what extent—to use carbon removals to compensate them.
Kyklos Carbon supports you at every stage of this journey, helping you calculate emissions and define actions to reduce the environmental impact of your business.
Contact us to build a tailored decarbonization pathway together.
Carbon removals: how do they help companies tackle their emissions?