Stephanie Arcusa: Towards Operationalizing a System for Negative Carbon Emissions

Figure 1, Stephanie Arcusa, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University’s School of Complex Adaptive Systems at the New Carbon Economy Consortium 2025 Annual Meeting hosted by University of Exeter.

Demand generation in carbon capture markets is crucial for the adoption of carbon mitigation strategies. These markets come in the form of both regulatory and voluntary. Both measures require carbon accounting, which must faithfully and accurately measure and track carbon flows. There remains a responsibility on the extractor to ensure that the carbon removed was handled responsibly, ethically, and ensure its successful long-term removal. Furthermore, this process must operate under strict regulatory oversight. Adoption must come now to mitigate the ongoing irreversible damage to the environment. Existing frameworks in similar industries can serve as a blueprint toward this much-needed action as well as systemic policy adoption.

Stephanie Arcusa is a leading researcher and advocate in climate policy, specializing in carbon removal and sequestration strategies. As a key figure at Arizona State University, she has been at the forefront of developing a standardized framework for certifying and verifying carbon sequestration, ensuring long-term accountability in the fight against climate change.

A proponent of the Carbon Take Back Obligation, Arcusa's work is driven by the urgent need to complement demand-side climate policies—such as reducing fossil fuel consumption—with robust supply-side measures, particularly certified carbon removal. She argues that while renewable energy expansion and lifestyle shifts are crucial, they are not enough to prevent catastrophic climate overshoot. Instead, she emphasizes the necessity of large-scale CO₂ sequestration to neutralize unavoidable emissions, particularly from industries like aviation, shipping, and heavy manufacturing. This approach prioritizes long-term permanence, verifiability, and a market-based mechanism that ensures companies responsibly manage their carbon footprint.

The methodology is a Two-Element Policy Framework per:Certified Carbon Removal Critical to an Effective and Resilient Response for Stabilizing the Climate

Liability at Extraction (“Carbon Take Back Obligation”)

• For every ton of carbon that comes out of the fossil pool, carbon producers are “held liable for the responsibility to balance that ton of carbon.”

• By “demanding this responsibility … at the point where carbon comes out of the ground,” the system ensures “a very simple accounting scheme,” avoiding the complexities of scope-based footprinting downstream.

Common Framework for Certification Standards

• A “conceptual framework” unifies diverse reservoirs—geological, biological, chemical—“on an equal playing field to guarantee permanence and to ensure verifiability.”

• Standards are built “from lessons of what not to do as we’ve seen from the existing carbon market practices.”

Certification & Accountability Mechanisms

Certificates of Sequestration

• Must be “developed from standards … that equalize across reservoirs, guarantee permanence, and ensure verifiability.”

• Every certificate carries a “common denominator of responsibility.” When a buyer purchases one, they “transfer their responsibility to a reservoir manager who now holds the carbon.”

Reservoir Manager Duties

• Monitor their reservoir for any carbon loss.

• If monitoring “finds a carbon loss,” they must “remediate for that loss through the purchase of a new certificate of sequestration.”

• This risk-based approach “will set up an insurance industry” that nudges the system toward “safer reservoirs” and overall reliability.

  
  

Standardized Protocol Questions

Each reservoir-specific protocol must answer the same core questions, ensuring “accuracy and simplicity” through direct measurements (not baselines):

• Define the boundary of the reservoir

• Quantify the content currently stored

• Quantify the addition of carbon over time

• Quantify the uncertainty in those measurements

Digital Tracking & Integrity

• A transparent digital infrastructure tracks “uniquely identified certificates all the way to the point of use”—the fossil-carbon producers.

• This eliminates greenwashing and double-counting, ensuring every ton balanced is verifiably sequestered.

By pushing for direct measurement, robust monitoring, and transparent digital tracking of carbon certificates, Arcusa aims to eliminate greenwashing and establish a reliable carbon removal industry. Her research has been influential in shaping policies that move beyond emissions reduction to actively removing historical CO₂ from the atmosphere, a critical step in stabilizing the global climate.

Stephanie Arcusa's work represents a pivotal shift in climate strategy, bridging science, policy, and industry to create scalable, accountable, and lasting solutions for carbon sequestration.