While the US spent 2025 freezing $3.5 billion in DAC hub funding, the Netherlands quietly started building the kind of CDR infrastructure that actually scales.
Platform Zero just organized a CDR strategy session in South Holland with an attendance list that tells you everything about how Europe does industrial policy differently. At the table: Skytree (DAC), SeaO2 (ocean alkalinity enhancement), TNO (the Netherlands’ heavyweight national research organization), Provincie Zuid-Holland, Gemeente Rotterdam, the Port of Rotterdam, InnovationQuarter, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, Paebbl, Carbyon, everox, Zero Emission Fuels, EBN B.V., and Division Q.
Government. Research. Startups. Port infrastructure. In one room. Designing together.
The fieldlab model
They’re not building a single facility — they’re building an ecosystem. Platform Zero calls it a “Fieldlab,” organized around four pillars:
- Defining success for regional CDR (what does “working” look like?)
- Identifying barriers — regulatory, technical, permitting
- Mapping infrastructure — what exists, what’s needed, where it connects
- Building partnerships — who does what, and who pays
A key insight from the session: combining CCU (carbon utilization — making stuff with CO₂) and CCS (carbon storage — putting it underground) isn’t optional. You need both revenue streams to make CDR economics work at the regional level. Utilization creates near-term cash flow; storage creates long-term climate impact.
Why the Netherlands is perfect for this
Rotterdam has the largest port in Europe. TNO is a world-class applied research institution. The country already has a dense pipeline network from decades of natural gas infrastructure. And the startup ecosystem is stacked — Skytree, Carbyon, SeaO2, and Paebbl all operate within driving distance.
South Holland already has the hard infrastructure. The fieldlab is about building the soft infrastructure: regulatory clarity, shared standards, pipeline access agreements, coordinated permitting.
The contrast with the US
The American approach to CDR hubs was: announce a mega-program, pick a few winners, spend years in environmental review, then have the next administration freeze the funding. The Dutch approach: get everyone in a room, design the system together, start testing in an existing industrial cluster, iterate.
It’s less dramatic. It also works.
Europe isn’t going to out-subsidize the US on CDR. But it might out-organize it. The fieldlab model — test, iterate, scale within a functioning ecosystem — is how you build industrial capacity without betting everything on one political cycle.
The CDR sector doesn’t just need money. It needs places where all the pieces connect. South Holland is building one.