Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all.
The critique, plainly stated
“CDR governance gaps in treaty frameworks let credit substitution happen without consent or liability.” That is the spine of a recent legal analysis in CDR Approaches: Friends or Foes? on Völkerrechtsblog. Translated out of treaty language: today’s rules let a buyer in one jurisdiction discharge a climate obligation by paying for a ton stored in another, and the people who host the storage often had no seat at the table.
This month, two governments started writing that loophole shut. Brussels published draft CBAM rules capping international carbon credits at 10% of an importer’s levy. Louisiana legislators are advancing bills to restrict pore-space leasing and pipeline routing despite federal Class VI well permits and 45Q tax credits authorizing the projects, as covered in Carbon Herald’s roundup of the state debate.
What the critics are reading correctly
The legal mechanism matters. CBAM Article-level drafting now sets a hard numerical ceiling: no more than 10% of a CBAM obligation can be met with offshore credits. That is the EU answer to the asymmetry David Ho (@davidho.bsky.social on Bluesky) describes: “climate impacts for the average citizen of a low-income country at 1.5°C of global warming will not be felt by ~40% of people living in high-income countries until global warming exceeds 3°C.” Cheap distant tons let the least-exposed buyer pay the most-exposed seller to absorb the obligation.
In Louisiana, the legal question is different but the structure is the same. Federal Class VI authority preempts state objection on injection well safety, not on surface rights or pipeline siting. Summit Carbon Solutions already redrew its route to drop South Dakota after state-level rules blocked eminent domain. Federal permits did not save the route.
The community’s standard response, and where it cracks
CDR’s usual answer is that durable removals need international demand to scale, and that strict MRV (measurement, reporting, verification) plus benefit-sharing handles the consent problem. That is the framing in our own writing on why carbon removal needs more than trees. It is true as far as it goes. It does not answer the legal question of who is bound, on what timeline, with what enforcement, when a 45Q-credited well leaks in 2055 or a CBAM-counted ton in Brazil turns out to be reversed.
Chris Bataille (@chrisbataille.bsky.social on Bluesky) names the long-tail mechanism precisely: “reasonably well managed wells following regulations become collectively super-emitting relic and than zombie wells through corporate pass off.” That is exactly what Louisiana landowners are reading in their pore-space leases.
What the critique gets right
Three things. One, current frameworks really do permit a rich-country buyer to discharge a hard-to-abate obligation with a distant cheap ton, and Article 6 of the Paris Agreement does not close that gap on its own. Two, federal-level permitting authority is not the same as social license, and projects that ignore that distinction are getting rerouted. Three, the Carbon Business Council’s Latin America roadmap concedes the point by building guardrails in before the demand wave hits. Southern African organizers are making the same argument in different language at an upcoming carbon markets conference.
What it overstates
The critique sometimes slides from “substitution is under-regulated” to “removals are a license to delay.” Those are different claims. CDR is for residual emissions only, and projects like the practitioner-led ERW (enhanced rock weathering) science at Carbon Drawdown Initiative, whose founder Dirk Paessler (@dpaessler.bsky.social on Bluesky) describes being “back in ‘Founder Mode,’” exist precisely to make tons rigorous enough that they cannot be substituted for cheap nature-based offsets. The answer to bad credits is better-governed credits, not no credits.
The synthesis
If your project depends on a foreign buyer counting your ton against a compliance obligation, the legal floor under that business model is moving. Watch two clocks. The CBAM consultation closes in weeks; whether the 10% cap survives lobbying tells you how binding the substitution critique has become in EU law. Louisiana’s session end tells you whether state pore-space statutes can functionally override federal Class VI authority. Build for both ceilings.
Citations
- Voelkerrechtsblog — CDR Approaches: Friends or Foes?
- Unfccc — draft CBAM rules capping international carbon credits at 10% — PDF
- Carbon Herald — Carbon Herald’s roundup of the state debate
- Bluesky — @davidho.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post
- Carbon Herald — redrew its route to drop South Dakota
- Bluesky — @chrisbataille.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post
- Squarespace — Carbon Business Council’s Latin America roadmap — PDF
- Swazi24 — upcoming carbon markets conference
- Bluesky — @dpaessler.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post