Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 16 Se. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/live-from-brussels-the-carbon-removal-policy-summit-with-rod

TL;DR

  • Live from Carbon Gap’s first Carbon Removal Policy Summit in Brussels — four governance levels (international, EU, national, local) as the frame.
  • EU “Buyers Club” is now the “Buyers Coalition” — open, not membership-based — and being positioned as a test ground for a future Emissions Trading System purchasing facility, possibly by 2029.
  • Carbon Gap dropped a Policy Levers Library (~165 levers) plus a forthcoming Foundations of Carbon Removal book. Genuinely useful reference infrastructure if it lands as demoed.
  • Real unresolved problem surfaced: Carbon Removal Certification Framework credits don’t yet map to national greenhouse gas inventories under IPCC methods. Without that link, Member State targets can’t pull on CRCF supply.
  • Achim Steiner’s line — removals concentrated in few buyers, few countries, few technologies — is the honest diagnostic of where European durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) actually sits.

Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme record live from Brussels across two days of Carbon Gap’s inaugural Carbon Removal Policy Summit, with a mid-day sit-down with Carbon Gap policy director Rodica Avornic. The episode is a running commentary on what got said on stage — Buyers Coalition futures, ETS integration guardrails, post-2030 Member State targets, and the awkward plumbing between CRCF credits and national inventories.

The most substantive thread is the inventory-accounting gap. Eve lays it out plainly: today, an activity that generates a CRCF unit in, say, Germany cannot be directly counted in Germany’s national greenhouse gas inventory, because inventories are compiled using IPCC methodologies that don’t yet cover most durable CDR pathways. IPCC is working on new CDR guidance, but until it lands, Member States have no clean way to translate CRCF issuance into progress against a national target. If the Commission wants Member States to take on removal targets (expected in the end-of-year package alongside the international credits proposal and CRCF review), it will have to propose a bridge. Without one, target-setting is theatre.

The second thread worth your time is Rodica’s ETS caution. She’s supportive of the integration but flags that the CRCF was designed for the voluntary market, not a compliance scheme, and the proposal currently lacks a mechanism for what happens if the 250 Mt target underdelivers. Related: Sebastian and Eve push on revenue stacking — the Commission apparently assumes a future purchasing facility would be the sole funder, but Stockholm Exergi’s numbers say otherwise. If stacking is the reality, only countries with domestic subsidy stacks will host projects, which compounds Steiner’s concentration warning: mostly Nordic bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BioCCS), a centralised buyer, and a narrow methodology set.

For adjacent context: the Buyers Coalition rebrand and its link to a future ETS purchasing facility echoes the Frontier model at policy scale, and the revenue-stacking discussion pairs well with the show’s earlier Stockholm Exergi episode. The Carbon Gap Policy Levers Library and Foundations of Carbon Removal book will be worth revisiting once public — the hosts promise a dedicated episode. On inventory-versus-crediting reconciliation, Eve references her prior writing with Paul Zakkour, which is the deeper read if this thread matters to you.

Worth an hour if you work on EU CDR policy, are structuring offtakes into European buyers, or need to understand why “Member State targets for removals” is harder than it sounds. Skippable if you’re purely on the project-development or measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) side.