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• Restoring atmospheric concentrations to preindustrial levels could prove possible at acceptable cost in two scenarios: (1) a best-case carbon capture scenario in which direct air capture technology achieves its most optimistic cost and performance assumptions and (2) a low-cost capture and abatement scenario in which reducing greenhouse gas emissions also proves relatively inexpensive.
• Setting a climate restoration goal could catalyze the deployment of negative emissions technologies that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. But such a goal could also reduce the likelihood of successfully decarbonizing the global economy. Pursuing a climate restoration goal would avoid such a moral hazard under conditions in which successful negative emissions technology is at least half as likely as successful decarbonization.
• If climate restoration proves possible and catalytic, it would reduce the risks of extreme climate change and make meeting other climate goals more likely.
• In the longer term, the pursuit of climate restoration has some favorable policy persistence characteristics. If the technology proves viable, a growing climate restoration industry might promote policies favorable to its continuation and growth.

Since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, society has organized efforts to limit the magnitude of climate change around the concept of stabilization — that is, accepting some climate change but holding it within acceptable bounds. This report offers an initial exploration of the concept of climate restoration — that is, approaches that seek to return atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to preindustrial levels within one to two generations. Using a simple integrated assessment model, the analysis examines climate restoration through the lens of risk management under conditions of deep uncertainty, exploring the technology, economic, and policy conditions under which it might be possible to achieve various climate restoration goals and the conditions under which society might be better off with (rather than without) a climate restoration goal. This report also explores near-term actions that might help manage the risks of climate restoration.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Climate Restoration and Risk

• Chapter Three

  Computational Experiments

• Chapter Four

  Simulation Results

• Chapter Five

  Conclusions and Recommendations

• Appendix

  Modifications to the DICE Model