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Valuing temporary carbon storage

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 6–8 (2012)Cite this article

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Temporary carbon-sequestration and carbon-storage projects help offset fossil-fuel carbon emissions, but how effective are they?

Carbon-footprint calculation standards and methods provide guidance on how to assess temporary carbon storage in long-lived products. However, regardless of the approach adopted, the calculated benefits depend on the accounting time horizon — a time beyond which further impacts are not considered — which is an intrinsically subjective choice. As the accounting method for the benefits of temporary carbon storage will affect policies, consumer choices and corporate decisions, the choice of which time horizon to use for calculating the value of such offsets should be based on explicit and justified values, ensuring that temporary mitigation activities are not unduly favoured over permanent actions. Here we analyse an illustrative example to show just how sensitive the results are to the chosen time horizon.

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Figure 1: Temporary carbon storage assessed with the Lashof method12.

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Acknowledgements

A.L., P.L., M.M. and R.S. acknowledge the financial support of the International Chair in Life Cycle Assessment partners. M.B. acknowledges the financial support of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, CIRAIG, École Polytechnique de Montréal, P.O. Box 6079, stn. Centre-ville, Montréal, H3C 3A7, Québec, Canada

    Annie Levasseur, Pascal Lesage & Réjean Samson

  2. Sustainability Assessment Unit, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Ispra (VA), Italy

    Miguel Brandão & David Pennington

  3. Centre for Environmental Strategy, School of Engineering, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, Surrey, UK

    Miguel Brandão & Roland Clift

  4. Department of Mathematical and Industrial Engineering, CIRAIG, École Polytechnique de Montréal, P.O. Box 6079, stn. Centre-ville, Montréal, H3C 3A7, Québec, Canada

    Manuele Margni

Authors
  1. Annie Levasseur
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  2. Miguel Brandão
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  3. Pascal Lesage
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  4. Manuele Margni
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  6. Roland Clift
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  7. Réjean Samson
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Correspondence to Annie Levasseur.

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Levasseur, A., Brandão, M., Lesage, P. et al. Valuing temporary carbon storage. Nature Clim Change 2, 6–8 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1335

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