Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 85% certainty 3/5 debate potential 1/5

Brose: UN science requires 10 to 15 gigatons of carbon removal annually

Raphael Brose · A breakout year for carbon removal? · Dec 6, 2022 · at 12:13

Raphael Brose, Manager of Microsoft's Carbon Removal Program, cites UN climate science targets for annual global carbon removal required by 2050.

0:00 / 0:19exact quote · 19.0s

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“So, if I recall my UN science appropriately, we need probably 10 gigatons, that's ten billion tons per year of carbon removal in, say, twenty-fifty. And then, You know, you add or subtract that depending on how, how you think we're doing with decarbonization overall. So probably call it 10 to 15 gigatons a year.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

UN climate science estimates that 10 to 15 gigatons (billion metric tons) per year of carbon removal will be needed globally by 2050.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Raphael Brose's claim is partially true. In published UN climate science (IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C and AR6 WGIII), the required annual carbon dioxide removal (CDR) by 2050 spans a wide range depending on emissions reduction rates: central/low-overshoot pathways project roughly 0 to 5–10 GtCO2/year of removals by mid-century, while high-overshoot and delayed-mitigation pathways reach 10 to 16 GtCO2/year. While 10 GtCO2/year by 2050 is widely cited in CDR policy literature (such as the 2019 NASEM report and high-overshoot IPCC archetypes like P4), presenting 10 to 15 GtCO2/year as the definitive UN estimate captures only the upper-bound/high-overshoot end of UN modeling rather than the full or median range of 1.5°C pathways.

IPCC SR15 (2018) illustrative pathways project 2050 CDR ranging from 0–1 GtCO2/year (P1) and 3–5 GtCO2/year (P2/P3) to 12–16 GtCO2/year (P4, high overshoot).
IPCC AR6 WGIII (2022) indicates residual emissions to be counterbalanced by CDR in central 1.5°C pathways (C1/C2) typically range from 5 to 10 GtCO2-eq/year around 2050.
Prominent benchmarks like NASEM (2019) specifically estimated a need of roughly 10 GtCO2/year globally by 2050, aligning with the upper-tier IPCC pathways.

Checked against

[1] cdrxiv.org [2] ctvc.co [3] c2es.org [4] essopenarchive.org [5] legal-planet.org [6] shell.com [7] betterenergy.org [8] carbonbrief.org

IPCC AR6 WGIII "carbon dioxide removal" "2050" "GtCO2" "IPCC" "10 to 15 gigatons" carbon removal OR CDR 2050 "IPCC" CDR "10 Gt" OR "10 gigatons" OR "10 to 15" 2050 "10 to 15" "gigatons" "carbon removal" 2050 "IPCC" carbon dioxide removal "10" "gigatons" OR "GtCO2" 2050 "10 to 15" "GtCO2" "carbon dioxide removal" 2050 IPCC SR15 CDR gigatons 2050 "10"

assessed as of 2026-09-02

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

carbon removal United Nations

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