These technologies and approaches also come at a time when the environment increasingly influences the social and governance dimensions of sustainability. The Lancet’s latest Countdown report details the significant global health impact of climate change, such as heat-related mortality, undernutrition, lost productivity, and infectious disease. Companies feel growing pressure from external and internal stakeholders for climate action. As detailed in our 2019 CEO Imperative Study, the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest companies believe that large corporations should take the lead in addressing global challenges like climate change, and that there is more business opportunity than risk in taking action.
Carbon removal can contribute to value-led sustainability responses, which can create new revenue and growth opportunities by tapping into trillion-dollar markets for products using carbon as an input. It can also accelerate the achievement of net-zero objectives or facilitate going carbon negative. Support of carbon removal projects can help both the planet and local communities.
As CEOs reframe their organization’s sustainability strategy toward a more value-led approach, they should explore:
- The innovation, supply chain and customer opportunities presented by carbon removal technologies and approaches.
- How competitive advantage could be enhanced by engaging with carbon removal innovators to help them scale-up.
- What carbon removal approaches could be adopted to not only accelerate achievement of their corporate climate commitments but expand them.
- How carbon removal investments could align with and augment their community sustainability objectives.
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Summary
A growing group of carbon removal innovators aim to address the global emissions gap with technologies and approaches that flip the script on carbon, by capturing it and turning it into a source of commercial and long-term value. For CEOs who want to shift sustainability in their organizations from a reporting-led function to a more value-led focus, yielding new business opportunities, carbon removal could be an important new lever.