A new report from the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal 2026 warns that current climate pledges will only deliver 3.6 billion tonnes of CO2 removal annually by 2050, far short of the 8.75 billion tonnes needed to meet Paris Agreement goals. The gap of 5.2 billion tonnes per year has widened since the last assessment as global emissions continue to rise. Almost all current removal comes from conventional methods like forest restoration, which accounts for roughly 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 per year or about 5% of total emissions. The report emphasizes that carbon removal efforts must expand rapidly over the next two decades, with the gap growing quickly after 2030.
