India, Aug. 17 -- An analysis of 103 European cities' 2030 climate neutrality plans, including 22 capital cities, shows that municipalities plan to rely on carbon removal to compensate for about a fifth of their emissions. This will require removing roughly 61 million tonnes of emissions from the atmosphere, close to Austria's annual emissions.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change and led by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, with contributions from scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), found that most residual emissions identified by cities come from the energy and transport sectors, with median shares of 50 per cent and 31 per cent respectively.

The report said this raises c...