Understanding the Carbon Budget: Why Carbon Removals Matter More Than Ever

The term carbon budget might sound technical, but the idea is simple: it tells us how much more carbon dioxide (CO₂) we can emit globally while still having a likely chance of limiting global warming to a specific target.

For years, that target has been 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels—the threshold set in the Paris Agreement and widely recognized as critical to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.

But the reality is we’re close to using it up.

Where We Stand Today

Recent estimates from the Earth System Science Data journal show that we have just 100–150 billion tonnes of CO₂ left in our global carbon budget to stay below 1.5°C with at least a 50% chance.

To put that in perspective, the world emits around 40 billion tonnes of CO₂ every year. At this rate, we could exceed that budget in less than three years.

Overshooting 1.5°C increases the likelihood of:

• Reaching dangerous climate tipping points, such as glacier and permafrost melt, which could unleash methane and disrupt the planet’s ability to reflect solar radiation.

• Communities in the Global South are experiencing disproportionate impacts like extreme heat, drought, and floods.

• Cascading systemic risks to biodiversity, food systems, and infrastructure.
  

Cutting Emissions Isn’t Enough, We Need Removals

Reducing emissions from fossil fuels, industry, and land use is essential. But the science is clear that some emissions are unavoidable, and our historic emissions are already driving climate change.

That’s where carbon dioxide removal (CDR) comes in.

CDR refers to processes that physically remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and store it for the long term. These can be nature-based, like reforestation or soil carbon sequestration, or engineered, such as enhanced weathering or ocean alkalinity enhancement.

Why Carbon Removals Matter

Carbon removals are essential for three key reasons:

1. To offset hard-to-abate emissions

   Some sectors, like aviation or heavy industry, will continue to emit even as we decarbonize, as society demands their products, and low-carbon technologies can be incredibly expensive or not technically feasible to implement. CDR is an option to balance out those emissions where mitigation can't take place.

2. To reverse historical pollution

   Even if we reached net zero today, the CO₂ already in the atmosphere would continue to heat the planet. Removals help bring those levels down.

3. To go beyond net zero

   Long-term climate stability may require us to go net negative, removing more CO₂ than we emit.

   
   

What About Carbon Avoidance?

Whilst removals can directly address the carbon budget, mitigation actions reduce the rate at which we will exceed it.

While carbon removals are essential for long-term climate goals, carbon avoidance still plays a critical role today.

Avoidance refers to actions that prevent emissions from happening, like protecting forests from deforestation (REDD+), deploying renewable energy, or distributing clean cookstoves. These interventions don’t remove existing CO₂, but they stop more from being released.

Avoidance efforts are:

• More readily available and lower-cost than removals

• Crucial for near-term climate finance, especially in developing countries

• Essential for protecting ecosystems that hold vast carbon stores

In a world with a rapidly shrinking carbon budget, avoiding emissions is just as critical as removing them—provided solutions are credible, measurable, and verifiable.

The Role of Carbon Markets

To scale these solutions—both removals and avoidance—we need financing mechanisms that can direct capital to where it’s most impactful. This is where carbon markets come in.

Сarbon markets allow companies and individuals to purchase verified carbon credits that represent either avoided emissions or carbon removals. These markets:

• Give companies a way to address hard-to-abate emissions

• Fund climate projects that might not happen otherwise

• Support global decarbonization and restoration efforts

There’s growing demand for removal-based credits, which are seen as more durable, measurable, and aligned with long-term goals. But to scale responsibly, carbon markets must earn trust.

That means:

• Radical transparency

• Clear provenance and traceability

• Accessibility for buyers and sellers

Integrity initiatives like VCMI (Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative) and ICVCM (Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market) are helping define credible use of credits, while dMRV (digital monitoring, reporting, and verification) is making impact measurement more objective.

Klima Protocol: Trustless Infrastructure for Carbon Markets

Klima Protocol intends to bring trust and transparency to carbon markets by surfacing all available data for carbon credits.

🔍 Radical Transparency

Every credit is transparently tracked and auditable by any third party. No data is hidden. This can allow the market to understand the carbon credits that Klima supports, including where they were issued, where they've been traded, their price, and all of the key metadata a given carbon credit contains.

⚙️ Smart Automation

Programmable features enable things like auto-retirements, emissions-based triggers, and integration with digital MRV systems, bringing greater intelligence and trust to carbon credit usage. Automation also unlocks new demand: Klima's ecosystem can power applications across fintech, logistics, real estate, e-commerce, ERP systems, and beyond.

🧪 Direct Support for Project Developers

Klima Protocol intends to work directly with project developers, providing them with a direct route to market, without hidden fees, and letting them set their own terms.

Looking Ahead

Carbon budgets help us make the invisible visible. They turn atmospheric science into a tangible metric, giving society a way to track climate progress.

But just like CO₂ itself, carbon markets can be abstract and hard to grasp. The credits traded are digital representations of real-world actions, and trust in those representations is everything.

That’s why good data, radical transparency, and accessible infrastructure are essential.

Klima Protocol is building the tools to interpret, verify, and scale climate impact—helping more people participate in carbon markets and support the transition to a net-zero (and ultimately net-negative) world.