The-Cdr-Policy-Scoop

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Mon, 06 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/what-do-we-need-to-get-right-in-the-cdr-integration-into-the TL;DR The European Commission is reportedly leaning toward a public authority as intermediary for CDR procurement into the EU ETS — from public statements, not leaks. Significant if it survives co-decision. Carbon Gap’s position: integrate removals below the cap (“one in, one out”) for the first review period, revisit later. Hedges against mitigation deterrence. The “cap reaching zero” premise is shifting — Commission signaled in May that allowances will be issued well into the 2040s under a -90% by 2040 framing. Numbers to watch on 17 July: the 75 Mt central estimate for 2040 removals, a floated 100 Mt figure, and Carbon Gap’s ~21% of ETS emissions analysis. Only direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) and bio-CCS expected at launch; the mechanism for adding biochar and enhanced weathering matters more than the initial list. Useful framing. Eve Tamme hosts Louis Uzor (Policy Director) and Francesca Battersby (Associate Policy Lead) of Carbon Gap on The CDR Policy Scoop, recorded 6 July — eleven days before the Commission’s expected EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) review proposal. It’s a pre-game analysis of how carbon dioxide removal (CDR) gets wired into the world’s largest compliance carbon market. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 30 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/iso-sbti-and-the-lcaw-verdict-on-corporate-net-zero-with-kay TL;DR ISO Net Zero draft + SBTi v2 launched same day at London Climate Action Week 2026; Axelsson worked on both, argues they’re complementary not competing. Big CDR concern: SBTi doesn’t require removals purchases before 2035 — Axelsson calls this a cost-based decision, not a science-based one. ISO does require 5-year removals milestones, which is stricter on near-term CDR procurement than SBTi. Useful distinction that hasn’t been widely surfaced. Alleged SBTi communication flaw: merged short + long-term standards may let companies claim “net zero aligned” with only a short-term target. Worth watching. Next fight: governance of commodity certificates (green steel, SAF, cement) — mass-balance and additionality risks echoing prior voluntary market failures. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme host Kaya Axelsson of Oxford Net Zero one week after the simultaneous 22 June launch of the ISO Net Zero draft standard and SBTi Corporate Net Zero Standard v2. Axelsson worked inside both processes for three years, and the episode is essentially her post-mortem: what converged, what didn’t, and where the corporate demand signal for durable removals actually lands. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 17 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/with-dr-ruth-dagan TL;DR Climate-washing lawsuits up 70% since 2022; Grantham counts ~160 cases, 54 directly tied to offset-based claims. Useful baseline number. EU Empowering Consumers Directive (in force September) flatly bans product-level carbon-neutral claims; California’s AB 1911 goes opposite direction with a safe harbor for high-integrity credits. Apple Watch carbon-neutral case: lost in Germany (permanence only guaranteed to 2029 vs. an implied 2040 horizon), tentatively won in US, now on appeal. Registries — including Article 6.4’s PACM — explicitly disclaim that account-holders legally own the credits. Dagan calls this an unforced error throttling collateralization. UNIDROIT principles (due early 2027) would classify credits as intangible assets. The fix everyone in finance has been waiting for. Sebastian Manhart hosts Dr. Ruth Dagan (Herzog, formerly UNFCCC legal affairs) for a 30-minute tour of two legal bottlenecks chilling corporate buying: greenwashing litigation exposure, and the bizarre fact that carbon registries refuse to assert that account holders actually own anything. Eve Tamme is out sick. Episode link. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Mon, 08 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/taking-stock-the-state-of-cdr-fireside-chat-with-oliver-gede TL;DR Geden: only 2 countries (Australia, UK) name novel/durable CDR in NDCs through 2035; ~1/3 of long-term strategies for 2050 mention it. Damning baseline. State of CDR report puts CDR at ~16% of global mitigation effort — higher than the 5-10% often cited. Worth understanding why before quoting it. “Hard to abate” is partly politically hard to abate — CDR risks becoming a flexibility valve for politicians dodging transport/buildings decarbonization. Sharp framing. EU’s 5% international credits allowance: officially “no CDM mistakes round two,” but Geden expects criteria to be more lenient than current rhetoric suggests. land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) accounting hides the ball: net targets mask gross emissions (e.g. Germany’s 50 Mt/yr from peatland drainage, stable, now 8% of national total). Sebastian Manhart interviews Oliver Geden (SWP, IPCC WG3 Vice Chair, State of CDR co-author) live at NEP Summit Brussels, recorded the week the third State of CDR report dropped. Thirty minutes covering policy sequencing (foundational → supply → demand), the gap between net zero pledges and actual CDR planning, EU pillar architecture, and how the Iran conflict scrambles climate attention. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 02 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/the-state-of-cdr-2026-the-cdr-policy-scoop-verdict TL;DR Third edition of the State of CDR report drops: 300 pages, 75+ authors, two-year cadence now established as the canonical reference doc. Global novel CDR sits at 2.1 Mt gross — but the report finally shows per-pathway net/gross gaps (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) net is 68–98% of gross, DACCS 23–90%). Material for anyone quoting headline tonnages. 2025 reality check: first edition projected 11 Mt novel by 2025; actual is ~2 Mt. Hosts flag 2030 announcements (42 Mt) vs estimated delivery capacity (8.4 Mt) as the next gap to watch. Across IAM scenarios that actually reach net-zero CO2, CDR averages 16% of mitigation effort — higher than the 10% figure often cited in corporate target-setting. CDR captures 2.6% of climate-tech funding. Low enough to puncture the “CDR is eating climate’s lunch” narrative. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme got an embargoed copy of the third State of CDR report and spent 30 minutes pulling out what surprised them rather than re-reading the executive summary. It’s a useful filter episode if you don’t have time for 300 pages this week. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 24 Ma. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/lulucf-carbon-farming-and-the-crcf-review-with-asger-strange TL;DR Carbon farming side of the CRCF (Carbon Removal Certification Framework) lacks the buyer momentum permanent removals have — no offtake equivalent of the Buyers Club in sight. Olesen pushes “performance certificates” as the right instrument for land that stays in production: an inventory-aligned reporting unit, not a credit. Useful framing. Strong claim: leakage and permanence have no role in this tool, and only simple stock-change additionality applies. Will be controversial but internally consistent. EU bottom-up inventory logic vs SBTi FLAG’s top-down benchmark is a real collision course — first time I’ve seen it spelled out this cleanly. Wishlist for Q4 national targets & flexibilities proposal: shift the buy-side obligation from member states to sectors/companies, keep Article 6 out, give CSRD↔CRCF a legal hook. The CDR Policy Scoop, hosted by Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme, brings back Asger Strange Olesen (International Woodland Company, EU Carbon Removal Expert Group) to walk through where the carbon-farming half of the CRCF actually sits after the recent CRCF Days. It’s a policy-mechanics conversation: methodologies adopted (soil, peatlands, afforestation), why credits are the wrong tool for most European farmland, and what the upcoming CRCF review and Q4 flexibilities proposal need to deliver. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Fri, 15 Ma. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/cbam-and-international-credits-whats-just-changed-with-dan-m TL;DR Draft Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism implementing act (published 13 May 2026) lets importers deduct carbon costs paid abroad — including, controversially, international credits. First-time clarity worth knowing. Hard cap: international Article 6 credits can offset at most 10% of a CBAM liability. But most third-country ETSs already cap offset use at 5-10%, so binding impact is modest. No quantitative cap on domestic credits used inside a third-country mandatory regime. Maleski can’t justify the asymmetry; nor can the hosts. Genuinely odd policy choice. “Effective” carbon cost is net of free allocation — so Brazil, Turkey, Korea ETSs in ramp-up phase deliver near-zero deduction regardless of headline carbon price. Important reality check. Anti-gaming safeguard is “independent persons” verifying paid prices. Maleski openly notes clients ask how to inflate intra-group credit prices. Thin guardrail. The CDR Policy Scoop (episode link) reconvened Dan Maleski of Ruby Advisors one day after the Commission dropped its draft implementing act on Article 9 of CBAM — the provision letting importers deduct carbon costs already paid in the country of origin. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme spend 30 minutes parsing what the act actually says about international credits, the 10% cap, and why the consultation (closing early June) still leaves big pieces missing. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 03 Ma. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/fixing-permanence-insurance-and-the-permanence-trust-with-na TL;DR Natalia Dorfman (Kita CEO) argues buffer pools were a useful bootstrap but not built for perpetual liability — a defensible position, gaining traction with standards themselves. Frames permanence as two distinct problems: short-term liability (handle via insurance on the developer) vs long-term/perpetual (needs a fund mechanism). Useful clean split. The Permanence Trust: an endowment-style, fully capitalized fund where per-credit fees are invested so the corpus always exceeds expected reversal costs. AFF-led feasibility study, report due ~June 2026, pilot to follow. Expects multiple Permanence Trusts (per-jurisdiction, per-standard), not one global fund. Realistic, though fragmentation risk goes unaddressed. Interim move: insurance-wrapped buffers so standards stop “holding the bag.” Practical bridge, but no costs disclosed on-air. Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart host Natalia Dorfman of Kita for a 30-minute walk through where carbon insurance has landed in 2026 and, more substantively, the Permanence Trust concept being developed by the American Forest Foundation with Kita as modeling partner. If you’ve been hearing “permanence trust” in conference hallways and wondering what’s actually under the hood, this is the cleanest public explanation so far. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 29 Ap. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/digging-deep-with-gabrielle-walker-a-life-in-climate TL;DR Long-form interview with Gabrielle Walker (CUR8, Rethinking Removals) — part biography, part state-of-the-CDR-market read. Worth it for the second half. Walker’s “pre-compliance” framing for 2026-2035: SBTi draft reportedly requires removals by 2035, ISO net-zero standard (due later this year) will mandate interim removal targets. Useful if accurate. British Airways portfolio anecdote: Sean Doyle reportedly sees CDR as ~30% of BA’s decarbonization solution. First time I’ve seen that number cited publicly. CUR8’s 5-pillar diligence framework (climate integrity, team, future potential, delivery risk, “core benefits” not co-benefits) — practical, steal-able. Honest moment: Walker admits she initially dismissed Global South CDR as virtue-signaling before James Wanjigi (Kenya) changed her mind. Worth hearing. Episode link. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme launch a long-form spinoff of the CDR Policy Scoop with Gabrielle Walker — co-founder of CUR8 and Rethinking Removals, and one of the people who has actually been in rooms with FTSE-100 CSOs trying to convert intent into off-takes. The first 60% is biography (Antarctica, ice cores, science journalism); the back half is the part practitioners want. ...