What is high-quality carbon dioxide removal (#CDR) and how do we certify it?

Today marks a big day. The European Commission just released the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (#CRCF) to address exactly these critical questions. It is a major step forward 💪

The two stated objectives 🎯

1️⃣ Ensuring high-quality carbon removals across the EU

2️⃣ Avoiding #greenwashing

Things I like in particular 😍

📣 It is #techagnostic and open to any carbon removal methodology that fits its criteria.

💡 It stresses the need to develop #trust in carbon removal by really pushing transparency, accountability, and third-party audibility.

🌳 It highlights the importance of #cobenefits and #sustainability of whatever methodologies will be used.

My analysis 🤓

📈 #VoluntaryMarket: the most immediate impact will be felt on the voluntary market. Europe (and likely the world) are observing this development closely and providers of high quality CDR will likely adjust their own definition of carbon removals to the developments in the CRCF.

🏛 #ComplianceMarket: once enacted, the CRCF paves the way for the inclusion of carbon removals in compliance markets such as the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). This is still a long way away right now, but it is a key step towards a potentially game changing development to accelerate the implementation of carbon removal.

🌎 #PyCCS: we need a broad portfolio of technologies to remove carbon at scale. While focusing on the medium and long-term, we need to make sure that the most scalable solution of high quality carbon removal available today - biochar from pyrogenic carbon capture and storage (PyCCS) - plays a central role in upcoming discussions (see real-time CDR supply on www.cdr.fyi)

What lies ahead 🖼

✒ The EU COM will now form an Expert Group with around 70 members to work on so-called “Delegated Acts”, which will provide much more technical detail to the proposal.

✒ The EU Parliament and the EU Council will now start work on this draft and provide their input.

✒ Timelines are impossible to predict, but expect a lot of progress in 2023 with enactment between late 2023 and late 2024.

The team at Carbonfuture and I are very excited for the road ahead - keen to get your thoughts: what do you make of these developments?

CRCF: https://lnkd.in/dJP-SVbV