This week: carbon dioxide removal (#CDR) #targets in Europe.

Setting clear CDR targets is critical to driving the scale-up of carbon removal and therefore having a shot at staying below 1.5 or, more likely, 2 degrees of #globalwarming.

Over the last 4 months, we at Carbonfuture (with the help of Alexis Dunand) carried out wide-ranging research on where #climatepolicy in Europe is at. We looked at all 27 EU member states + 4 non-EU states: 🇦🇹 🇧🇪 🇧🇬 🇭🇷 🇨🇾 🇨🇿 🇩🇰 🇪🇪 🇫🇮 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇬🇷 🇭🇺 🇮🇸 🇮🇹 🇱🇻 🇱🇺 🇲🇹 🇳🇱 🇳🇴 🇵🇱 🇵🇹 🇷🇴 🇸🇰 🇸🇮 🇪🇸 🇸🇪 🇨🇭 🇬🇧

#Takeaways:

🤔 11 countries have no CDR targets whatsoever. Another 11 only have targets for land-use, land-use change, and forestry (#LULUCF). This highlights the current lack of awareness of, and knowledge in, novel/high-quality CDR among policy makers in Europe.

🔎 For those that have set goals, we see two very different approaches: setting a % of total emissions vs setting a specific amount in tonnes removed. Both can work, although a % seems to make more sense to me personally.

🎯 When a % amount is set, it seems to fall between 5-15%. Portugal 🇵🇹 - the only country in the 🇪🇺 with a CDR target enshrined into law - goes so far as to cap it at a maximum of 10%, a potential smart move to prevent CDR from being used to avoid #decarbonisation.

🚀 Switzerland🇨🇭has the most advanced CDR legislation in Europe, specifying targets for each decade for domestic CDR & #CCS (2030: 0.5Mt, 2040: 2Mt, 2050: 7Mt). It even goes as far as stating that it will need 5Mt of additional CDR from abroad, a sign that it does not expect to be able to achieve net-zero with purely domestic measures.

💪 In the Nordics, Denmark 🇩🇰 (at least 2Mt/y through biochar in the agriculture sector) and Sweden 🇸🇪 (up to 15% of total emissions, including non-CDR offsets) keep leading the way with very specific targets, but no target for CDR as a whole (likely to change soon).

💡 The European powerhouses Germany 🇩🇪 and France 🇫🇷 look promising: 🇩🇪 has a target in the Coalition Agreement (5%), but not yet enshrined in law. 🇫🇷 forecasts 10Mt/year by 2050 in its long-term strategy (#LTS). More movement can be expected here soon.

↪ This all paints an interesting picture. It highlights that a lot more #advocacy work is needed to get clear CDR targets - alongside dedicated emission reductions targets - enshrined into law across Europe. Time to get to work!

Does this resonate with your experiences? Where do you see the biggest potential?

📣 Watch this space for more maps and analysis 📣

The underlying raw data will also all be open-source shortly.