The rules for carbon removal are being rewritten at both ends of the market on the same day. In Brussels, the European Commission is moving to let removals into its Emissions Trading System, the bloc’s compliance carbon market, as part of a reform tied to a 90% emissions cut by 2040. In the voluntary market, Verra has reopened VM0044, the methodology that governs how biochar projects earn credits. Different venues, same underlying story: the credit rules that will decide which removal projects get financed for the next decade are on the drafting table right now, and the fine print will matter more than the headlines.
The EU’s 90% target comes with a removals door
The Commission’s proposal pairs a 90% net emissions reduction by 2040 with reform of the Emissions Trading System, the cap-and-trade scheme that covers power, industry, and aviation across the EU. The significant part for this audience: the reform would open a path for carbon removals to count inside that system.
That is a structural shift. Until now, EU removals policy lived in voluntary certification frameworks and in land-sector accounting. Putting removals inside the ETS means a regulated, compliance-grade demand source, backed by law rather than corporate goodwill. For developers of durable removal, that is the difference between selling into a market of a few hundred willing buyers and selling into one where thousands of covered installations must hold allowances.
The fine print is where the outcome gets decided. Which removal types qualify, permanent storage only or land-based too. How permanence is defined and who carries reversal risk. Whether removals expand the effective cap or substitute within it. A design that lets one tonne of removal offset one tonne of ongoing fossil emissions, without a tightening cap, weakens the system. A design that reserves removals for hard-to-abate residuals, cement process emissions, aviation, some agriculture, strengthens it.
One thing this reform is not: a license to slow fossil-fuel phase-out. Removals inside a compliance market only work if the cap keeps declining and removals cover the residual emissions that remain after deep cuts. The moral-hazard critique of removals is real. The Commission’s own 2040 framing treats removals as a complement to reductions, not a substitute, and any final legislation should be judged on whether it holds that line.
Verra reopens VM0044, and biochar’s economics hang on the revision
Captain Drawdown’s daily CDR Log #201 covered the other rulebook story: Verra has reopened VM0044, its biochar methodology, for revision. VM0044 has been the workhorse standard for biochar crediting, and biochar remains one of the largest delivered removal categories by volume, so changes here ripple through a real, revenue-generating segment rather than a speculative one.
Reopening a methodology cuts both ways. Revisions can tighten permanence assumptions, feedstock accounting, and MRV, that is, measurement, reporting, and verification, the process of proving a tonne was actually removed and stored. Tighter rules raise credit quality and buyer confidence. They can also change project economics mid-stream: developers who built financial models on the current version of VM0044 now face uncertainty about crediting rates for future vintages. The caveat worth stating plainly: until draft text is public, nobody knows whether this revision is a tune-up or a rewrite.
The timing matters. If the EU is going to admit removals into a compliance market, it will need methodologies it trusts. Voluntary-market standards that survive scrutiny now are the ones most likely to inform, or be absorbed into, regulated frameworks later. Verra tightening VM0044 in 2026 is partly about credit quality today and partly about positioning biochar for compliance eligibility tomorrow.
The convergence is the story
Compliance and voluntary markets have run on separate tracks for years. Today’s stories show them converging. The EU is building the demand-side plumbing for regulated removals. Verra is stress-testing the supply-side methodology for one of the highest-volume removal pathways. Projects that can clear both bars, rigorous MRV and compliance-grade permanence, will be the ones standing when the two tracks merge.
What’s next
Watch for the Commission’s detailed legislative text on removals eligibility in the ETS, specifically the permanence definition and whether removals sit inside or alongside the declining cap. That single design choice determines whether the reform strengthens or dilutes the 90% target.
On the voluntary side, watch for Verra’s public consultation draft of the revised VM0044. The treatment of biochar permanence, how long carbon is assumed to stay put, and under what soil and application conditions, will tell you whether biochar is being groomed for compliance markets or held to its current voluntary-market standard.