I've written a lot about challenges in valuing temporary removals of CO2, but there is an interesting flip-side: valuing delayed permanent removals. Many approaches – enhanced weathering, BiCRS, ocean CDR – have some degree of lag between deployment and removal. 1/4
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Here is a quick look (using my climate model emulator SimMod: github.com/hausfath/SimMod) at the climate effect of removing 1 GtC (3.67 GtCO2) all at once, over four years (at a declining rate), or over a decade (at a constant rate): 2/4
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So whats the takeaway here? There is (obviously) a climate benefit to more immediate removal, but how to value it ends up being fairly subjective (it depends on the timeframe, damage function, discount rate, etc.). 3/4
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Alternatively, the time delay of emissions and removals is symmetric. So if we count removals against emissions in the year that the atmospheric drawdown actually occurs (vs ex ante when the activity occurs) we don't need to worry about temporal lags per se. 4/4
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