Potentials, consequences and trade-offs of terrestrial carbon dioxide removal. Strategies for climate engineering and their limitations

For hundreds of years, humans have engineered the planet to fulfil their need for increasing energy consumption and production. Since the industrial revolution, one consequence are rising global mean temperatures which could change by 2 C to 4.5 C until 2100 if mitigation enforcement of CO₂ emissions fails.To counteract this projected global warming, climate engineering techniques aim at intendedly cooling Earth's climate for example through terrestrial carbon dioxide removal (tCDR) which is commonly perceived as environmentally friendly. Here, tCDR refers to the establishment of large-scale biomass plantations (BPs) in combination with the production of long-lasting carbon products such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage or biochar. This thesis examines the potentials and possible consequences of tCDR by analysing land-use scenarios with different spatial and temporal scales of BPs using an advanced biosphere model forced by varying climate projections. These scenario simulations were evaluated with focus on their carbon sequestration potentials, trade-offs with food production and impacts on natural ecosystems and climate itself. Synthesised, the potential of tCDR to permanently extract CO₂ out of the atmosphere is found to be small, regardless of the emission scenario, the point of onset or the spatial extent. On the contrary, the aforementioned trade-offs and impacts are shown to be unfavourable in most cases. In a high emission scenario with a late onset of BPs (i.e. around 2050), even unlimited area availability for tCDR could not reverse past emissions sufficiently, e.g. BPs covering 25% of all agricultural or natural land could delay 2100's carbon budget by no more than two or three decades (equivalent to ∼550 or 800 GtC tCDR), respectively. However, simultaneous emission reductions and an earlier establishment of BPs (i.e. around 2035) could result in strong carbon extractions reversing past emissions (e.g. six or eight decades or ∼500 or 800 GtC, respectively). In both cases, land transformation for tCDR leads to high ''cost'' for ecosystems (e.g. biodiversity loss) and food production (e.g. reduction of almost 75%). Restricting the available land for BPs by these trade-off constraints leaves very small tCDR potentials (well below 100 GtC) despite a near-future onset (in 2020). Similarly, simulated tCDR potentials on dedicated BP areas defined in a commonly used and published low emissions scenario stay below the aimed values using current management practices. Some potential may lie the reduction of carbon losses from field to end-products, new management options and the restoration of degraded soils with BPs. This thesis contradicts the assumption that tCDR could be an effective and environmentally friendly way of complementing or substituting strong and rapid mitigation efforts.