President Biden campaigned on a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for the United States by 2050. But this goal will only be achievable by deploying technologies and practices that pull greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and securely store it underground.

California can pioneer one type of technology that could make this national goal feasible, as a new Capitol Weekly op-ed I co-authored with Berkeley Law’s climate fellow Katie Segal argues. Specifically, engineered carbon removal can capture carbon emissions from the air or smokestacks of industrial facilities that have few viable alternatives and inject the carbon underground or in long-lived products like concrete.

The op-ed offers key policy needs for decision-makers to consider, based on a UC Berkeley/UCLA Law report we issued on this subject in December. As with so many other climate-fighting technologies, California once again has the chance to lead on this next generation of sequestration tools — if we seize the opportunity to do so.