Upstream decarbonization through a carbon takeback obligation: An affordable backstop climate policy

We introduce the carbon takeback obligation (CTBO), a supply-side mitigation policy requiring extractors and importers of fossil fuels to recapture and store a progressively increasing fraction of the CO₂generated by their activities and products, and use a novel integrated assessment model (IAM) emulator to compare this policy to conventional demand-side mitigation policy. A global CTBO is shown to be comparable in cost to similar ambition scenarios dominated by demand-side measures simulated by a global carbon price.