Geoengineering Monitor newsletter July 2025 This year will see big moves towards rolling out several Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies under the Paris Agreement’s carbon trading mechanism, which is seen as a key pillar in global climate mitigation efforts....
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage
Grassroots victory over California wood pellet export scheme shows folly of burning biomass to capture carbon
Guest article By California resident Gary Hughes, Biofuelwatch Recent developments in California offer another clear indication that Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) cannot be relied upon as a Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) strategy. California...
Stockholm Exergi’s BECCS project under scrutiny: Climate solution or costly gamble?
Guest article by Martin Pigeon, Forest & Climate Campaigner (Bioenergy) with Fern Stockholm Exergi’s ambitious plan to deploy a flagship Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) facility at its Värtaverket biomass plant in Stockholm, Sweden, has stirred...
UN climate talks could undermine precaution on geoengineering called for by the biodiversity convention
Guest article by Linda Schneider, Heinrich Boell Foundation International Climate Policy Director, and Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group Latin American Director. Originally published on boell.de. UNFCCC negotiations on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement risk legitimising...
BECCS carbon credit sales hit record levels despite increasing environmental and economic concerns
This update on Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) summarises the latest developments on the Geoengineering Monitor Map, highlighting new trends to aid civil society and climate justice movements in their efforts to oppose geoengineering globally. This...
UK government rubber stamps Drax’s first-of-a-kind BECCS scheme, then proposes subsidies for business-as-usual biomass burning
Guest article by Katy Brown, bioenergy campaigner with Biofuelwatch Earlier this year the UK Secretary of State Claire Coutinho granted development consent for Drax’s Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage project at its Selby power plant. Almost simultaneously,...
Geoengineering Map Update: Carbon markets are a major driver for geoengineering
The Geoengineering Map Update summarises the latest developments on the Geoengineering Monitor Map highlighting new trends for civil society and climate justice movements to follow in their efforts to oppose geoengineering. By Anja Chalmin Critical Updates There is...
Geoengineering projects in Africa intensify along with oil and gas expansion
Photo Credit: Antoinette PlessisBy Anja Chalmin The African continent - home to about one-fifth of the world's population and a great variety and diversity of other living creatures - has by far the lowest per capita emissions in an intercontinental comparison and is...
Increased funds for Geoengineering – Quarterly Review III (part 1)
Photo Credit: JP Valery By Anja Chalmin Every day people in the United States, Canada and the UK are paying for some big new geoengineering projects in the form of publicly funded geoengineering projects. This, along with other new funding opportunities for...
Geoengineering Updates: Quarterly Review II 2022
By Anja Chalmin The second quarterly review of current developments in geoengineering provides an insight into new geoengineering companies and projects as well as new funding opportunities for geoengineering. The vast majority of new projects and funders are - as...
Immense additional fossil fuel extraction and rising climate-relevant emissions from geoengineering projects in Asia
By Anja Chalmin Introduction In Asia, the number of new and planned carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects has increased rapidly in recent years. The captured CO2 is mostly used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) or enhanced gas recovery (EGR). EOR...
Current political and private sector influences on geoengineering projects in the EU
By Anja Chalmin Introduction In March 2022, the European Commission announced that it is spending € 1.1 billion co-funding seven large-scale climate projects. Among them are five geoengineering projects, which will cost € 880 million,...
QUARTERLY REVIEW #3: Biomass developments in 2021
Photo Credit: Statkraft By Anja Chalmin 3,000 miles of CO2 pipelines to be built and other updates on capturing carbon using plant biomass The second part of the report presents developments, projects and funding programmes aimed at capturing carbon using plant...
QUARTERLY REVIEW #3: DAC & CCUS developments in 2021
By Anja Chalmin This report presents the latest developments in geoengineering technologies, projects and funding programs worldwide in recent months. The report’s findings show an increasing interest in capturing CO2 (carbon dioxide) from ambient air and...
Geoengineering activities in Latin America
Photo 1: A worker lays white paint on the Peruvian Andes in a bid to get water and vegetation to return to the mountain range, © CNNPhoto 2: ‘BioUrban 2.0’ air purification system in Puebla, Mexico on August 7, © AFPPhoto 3: Carbon Capture, Use and Storage Technology...
Updates on Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage and Direct Air Capture (QUARTERLY #4, PART 2)
by Anja Chalmin Burning biomass is a threat to climate (and no silver bullet) – The impact of BECCS using the Drax plant, Great Britain’s biggest power plant, as an example Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is employed at the Drax Power Station in...
Deceptive California Climate Bill Pushes Geoengineering
California state legislators have explicitly promotes a climate policy framework vision that celebrates and advances morally hazardous and environmentally dangerous geoengineering technologies for “carbon dioxide removal” (CDR) and “negative emissions.”
Carbon capture is the fossil fuel giants’ plan to keep extracting
Attempting to remove CO2 from the atmosphere would block a real the climate transition
Policymakers Shouldn’t Trust Drax’s Bizarre Tree-Burning Climate Solution
If there were a prize for the most bizarre climate mitigation idea, power company Drax Plc’s latest “green innovation” project would be a strong candidate.
Fire and Plantations in Portugal
by Oliver Munnion (This article was originally published by Science for the People.) Devastating wildfires are increasingly a feature of summers across the globe, and their intensity and scale have been linked directly to climate change in a number of recent...
Land-based geoengineering: a technofix for the climate? (Video)
Large-scale technological interventions to “fix” the climate crisis are moving up on the political agenda. Some climate scientists are now proposing geoengineering interventions on land to halt global warming - most prominently BECCS (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture...
Negative CO2 emissions cannot replace rapid reductions
Conference report: An international conference on negative emissions highlights extent of trade-offs and reinforces urgency of near-term emission reductions. by Kate Dooley (this article was originally posted by HBF) From May 22nd to 24th, over 200 academics,...
The Big Bad Fix
ETC Group, BiofuelWatch and Heinrich Boell Foundation present a comprehensive argument against geoengineering in this report. Click here to download the full report (pdf) As a rapidly warming world manifests heat waves, floods, droughts and hurricanes, geoengineering...
Failure of Kemper County “clean coal” plant casts more doubts on BECCS
After years of embarrassing delays and $5.3 billion in cost overruns, Southern Company has finally pulled the plug on its pioneering “clean coal” plant in Kemper County, Mississippi. The $7.5 billion Kemper County project would have been the world’s first Integrated...