Cited by 1,440Climate Change Policy and EconomicsClimate Change and GeoengineeringCarbon Dioxide Capture Technologies

Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions

Open access
Smith, Pete, Davis, Steven J., Creutzig, Felix, Fuss, Sabine, Minx, Jan, Gabrielle, Benoit, Kato, Etsushi, Jackson, Robert B. +32 more·2016·Nature Climate Change

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/nclimate2870

Cites

103 of 103 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • A recent review showed that, assuming agricultural practices and yields do not change over the twenty-first century, removing CO2 could require large amounts of land.

    “A recent review 54 showed that, assuming agricultural practices and yields do not change over the twenty-first century, removing CO2 could require large amounts of land.”

    From Paris Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C (2016) · cites this paper as [54]

    The 'Global resource implications of NETs deployment' section (page not supplied) estimates that BECCS and afforestation/reforestation could require hundreds of millions of hectares by 2100, supporting the large-land-demand claim. It does not state that agricultural practices and yields remain unchanged throughout the century; instead, it identifies future food-crop yields as an uncertainty that could free more land. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Deployment of BECCS at scale could be controversial because of public acceptance or because of competition with food production over land and water.

    “could be controversial because of public acceptance 53 or because of their competition with food production over land and water 53,54 .”

    From Paris Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C (2016) · cites this paper as [54]

    The Global resource implications section (page unavailable) says large-scale BECCS could reduce land available for food production, and the Water section describes an opportunity cost of using water for bioenergy rather than food. These passages support the land-and-water competition concern, but the passages found do not address public acceptance as a reason deployment could be controversial. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • If soil carbon uptake could be increased by 0.4% per year, this would contribute to achieving net zero emissions as per the '4 per mille' initiative, but this is challenging.

    “If soil carbon uptake could be increased by 0.4% per year, this would contribute to achieving net zero emissions-as per the '4 per mille' initiative 17 -but this is challenging 18 .”

    From The technological and economic prospects for CO2 utilization and removal (2019) · cites this paper as [18]

    The Discussion (page unavailable) describes biophysical and economic barriers to deploying negative-emissions technologies, supporting the general point that carbon removal is challenging. But the paper says it does not evaluate soil-carbon storage, so it does not establish the specific difficulty of increasing soil carbon uptake by 0.4% per year. The ‘4 per mille’ proposition is attached to citation 17, not this source. (LLM, conf=0.82)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Previous reviews have shown that non-conventional utilization pathways offer substantial CO2 removal potential.

    “Previous reviews 18,28,[52][53][54] have shown that these pathways offer substantial CO 2 removal potential:”

    From The technological and economic prospects for CO2 utilization and removal (2019) · cites this paper as [18]

    The Global resource implications of NETs deployment section estimates gigatonne-scale CO₂ removal for technologies including BECCS, supporting substantial removal potential. But the review assesses negative-emissions technologies, not the cited sentence’s specific category of “non-conventional utilization pathways”; our copy does not establish that those pathways have the stated potential. (LLM, conf=0.82)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Large bioenergy deployments require very large commitments of land and may come with significant social impacts (e.g. food prices) and environmental impacts (e.g. land and water impacts).

    “Such large bioenergy deployments require very large commitments of land and may come with significant social impacts (e.g.food prices) and environmental impacts (e.g., land and water impacts).[22][23][24]”

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. [33]33. Smith, P. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) Ch. 11 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
  2. [44]44. Sims, R. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) Ch. 8 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
  3. [47]47. National Academy of Sciences. Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration (National Academies Press, 2015). An in-depth report on carbon dioxide removal (equivalent to negative emissions) technologies.
  4. [58]58. IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011).
  5. [98]98. Krey, V. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) Annex Ch. 2, 1308-1318 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Smith, P., Davis, S. J., Creutzig, F., Fuss, S., Minx, J., Gabrielle, B., Kato, E., Jackson, R. B., Cowie, A., Kriegler, E., van Vuuren, D. P., Rogelj, J., Ciais, P., Milne, J., Canadell, J. G., McCollum, D., Peters, G., Andrew, R., Krey, V., Shrestha, G., Friedlingstein, P., Gasser, T., Grübler, A., Heidug, W. K., Jonas, M., Jones, C. D., Kraxner, F., Littleton, E., Lowe, J., Moreira, J. R., Nakicenovic, N., Obersteiner, M., Patwardhan, A., Rogner, M., Rubin, E., Sharifi, A., Torvanger, A., Yamagata, Y., Edmonds, J., & Yongsung, C.
Affiliations
  • University of Aberdeen (GB)
  • University of California, Irvine (US)
  • Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (DE)
  • Hertie School (DE)
  • Institute of Applied Energy (JP)
  • Stanford University (US)
  • University of New England (AU)
  • Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (DE)
  • International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (AT)
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
  • CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere (AU)
  • CICERO Center for International Climate Research (NO)
  • United States Global Change Research Program (US)
  • University of Exeter (GB)
  • King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (SA)
  • Met Office (GB)
  • University of East Anglia (GB)
  • Universidade de São Paulo (BR)
  • University of Maryland, College Park (US)
  • Carnegie Mellon University (US)
  • National Institute for Environmental Studies (JP)
  • Joint Global Change Research Institute (US)
Corresponding author
Smith, Pete
Venue
Nature Climate Change
Published
2015-12-07
Volume
6
Issue
1
Pages
42-50
ISSN
  • 1758-678X (ISSN-L)
  • 1758-6798
OpenAlex
W2195453830
Cited by
1,440
References
103
Citations by year
2026: 98 · 2025: 131 · 2024: 152 · 2023: 145 · 2022: 161 · 2021: 159 · 2020: 139 · 2019: 140 · 2018: 152 · 2017: 101 · 2016: 56 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 1
FWCI
252.07
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Climate Change (publishedVersion)
  • Aberdeen University Research Archive (Aberdeen University) (submittedVersion)
  • IIASA PURE (International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) (submittedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • OPUS 4 (Zuse Institute Berlin) (submittedVersion)
  • Publication Database PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)) (submittedVersion)
  • RUNE (Research UNE) (submittedVersion)
  • UEA Digital Repository (University of East Anglia) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK Government (GA01101)
  • Met Office (GA01101)
  • Norges Forskningsråd (236296)
  • Natural Environment Research Council (NE/I03002X/1)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Geoengineering
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Carbon Dioxide Capture Technologies
Keywords
negative emissions technologies, biophysical limits, economic costs, 2 °C warming limit, greenhouse gas removal, land use effects, albedo, water impact, energy impacts, integrated assessment models, climate change mitigation

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review