Inside the Framework for Residual Emissions - with Injy Johnstone

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Dr. Injy Johnstone, Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Net Zero Lab, to unpack her new report, What Are Residual Emissions, which tries to bring clarity to one of climate policy's most used and least defined terms.

Johnstone explains why, more than a decade after the term entered use, there is still no shared definition. The IPCC modeling community that coined it works from different inputs than a corporate net zero team, and the timeline question, today's technology versus a 2050 horizon, changes the answer. She also draws a distinction the sector often blurs: hard to abate describes a technological limit, while residual emissions is a broader, more normative category shaped by choices about demand reduction and regulation.

The conversation turns practical as Johnstone breaks residual emissions into near, medium and long term buckets that corporates and governments can plan against. Sebastian presses on the middle bucket, where overly optimistic assumptions about future technology can quietly reduce carbon removal investment today. Johnstone and Eve also test the new SBTi and ISO standards released since the report's publication.

They close on equity: who decides an industry keeps its social license to keep emitting, and who absorbs the trade offs within a finite carbon budget. Johnstone argues these normative choices are already being made, whether admitted or not, and surfacing them is the first step toward distributing that cost fairly.

Links:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Injy Johnstone: LinkedIn
• "What Are Residual Emissions” Report

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