Carbon-Negative
Carbon-negative is a process to reduce an entity’s carbon footprint to below neutral. Companies adopt it to ensure that they have a net effect of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere rather than adding up. The term carbon-negative takes the notion of carbon-neutrality a step ahead by saving more greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions than generating them. It can be achievable in two ways:
- By offsetting more than the carbon footprint.
It has the benefit of being swift and easy to practice, and it is an excellent short-term, carbon-negative approach. Despite this, the amount of outcomes achieved with this approach is limited. The main aim is to be able to reduce carbon emissions to net zero.
- To help other companies and individuals to reduce their footprint with the help of following best practices:
- The creation and supply of low-carbon products can help every one of the company’s customers to lower their carbon footprint
- Ensure that the produced products, as well as the waste, follow 2Rs – Reuse and Recycle. It reduces the enormous emissions associated with landfills.
- Operating directly with your suppliers to reduce their emissions will help lower their carbon footprint as well.
The second approach is preferable as it massively multiplies the efforts to reduce the carbon footprint. It will also help to drive the overall reductions needed to achieve net-zero by 2050. These outcomes are commonly called avoided emissions, and going carbon-negative means avoiding more emissions than the production.
The climate-positive term is often used interchangeably with carbon-negative. Climate-positive is when an activity goes beyond achieving net-zero carbon emissions to promote and initiate an environmental benefit by removing the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Climate-positive proposals are beneficial for the other people, companies, or localities who lack the means or initiative to drive down their carbon footprints. Soon, carbon-neutrality will become the standard across the board; climate-positive schemes will, in the time being, help to pick up some of the slowdowns.
Climate Positive Development Program
This program is an integral part of the C40’s or Carbon 40’s Urban Planning and Development Initiative. It is an initiative that consists of the globally most determined low-carbon projects. This program promotes creating and implementing large-scale city-based communities that lower GHGs and serve as standards for urban areas to develop environmentally sustainable and economically feasible ways.
The program assists in developing projects focused on achieving It is related to energy, waste, and transportation. The climate-positive result is attained by lowering on-site and off-set emissions by decreasing carbon and associated traces in the connected neighbourhoods.
Currently, the Climate Positive Development Program is working with 18 projects across the six continents. Once accomplished, it will affect approximately a million individuals who stay and work in climate-positive societies. The program aims to create replicable models for large-scale urban communities through real-life projects as city-based laboratories. It reduces greenhouse gases to the maximum possible value, demonstrates the highest sustainability standards, and evolve highly effective climate-resilient resolutions. In both sectors (public and private), these projects help bring about significant alliances between them. So, it can create a case for all-inclusive provision and development that build up the local environment, gives rise to job opportunities, and enhances the regional characteristic of life.
Climate Positive Projects
Every climate-positive project has a distinctive profile, given its discrete economic, political, and climatic challenges. Still, each project strives for the determined goal of reducing their operations’ GHG emissions below zero. The Climate Positive Program expedites knowledge-sharing across the cities and projects to acknowledge successful strategies to imitate and avoid drawbacks.
It takes significant time to develop projects for this site as it is a long process. The Climate Positive Framework lays out reporting requirements and phases to surge opportunities for the best practice in sharing and recognising accomplishments. It begins with planning and capping with the project being finished and verified that they are now net-carbon negative.
Traditional fossil fuel-based energy technologies can achieve efficiency in energy conversion. Still, they are usually entirely inefficient in carbon conversion because they produce significant CO2 emissions per unit of energy converted. In contrast, some renewable energy technologies are characterized by a carbon-negative intensity, which will simultaneously accomplish efficiency in energy conversion and, therefore, the conversion of carbon.
These carbon-negative renewable energy technologies can generate helpful energy and remove CO2 from the atmosphere in two ways. These two ways are: directly capturing and recycling atmospheric CO2 and indirectly involving biofuels. Intriguingly, the deployment of carbon-negative renewable energy technologies can offset carbon emissions from traditional fossil fuel-based energy technologies. This eventually will lead to a reduction in the overall carbon intensity of energy systems.
Carbon-neutral vs Carbon-negative
Carbon-neutral refers to the best practices in which the CO2 is released into the atmosphere from a company’s or industrial plant’s activities. It is balanced by the equivalent amount of CO2 being removed from the atmosphere. On the contrary, carbon-negative refers to those best practices that acquire net-zero carbon and related trace emissions. It is practised to create an environmental benefit via eliminating the excessive and unnecessary carbon and corresponding traces from the atmosphere.
Wrapping Things Up
Indeed the carbon jargon such as carbon-neutral and carbon-negative can be confusing at times. As the number of companies augments, governments and other associated authoritative entities and governing bodies launch plans to decrease their carbon footprints. So, you might expect to come across even more carbon jargon in the news and other sources.
After going through the detailed article, you might have got insights into the meaning and differences of the two carbon jargons – carbon-neutral and carbon-negative. Carbon-neutral maintains the equilibrium between the carbon dioxide emitted by the various sources such as industries, vehicles, and coal-operated plants into the atmosphere along with the carbon dioxide removal rate of the environment. Carbon-negative intends to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than emitted into the atmosphere.
