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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Delia Meth-Cohn, Co-founder of Rethinking Removals, who has been part of the ISO Net Zero Aligned Organization Standard working group from its very first meeting, two years ago.
The conversation opens on why Delia got involved, recruited by the British Standards Institute to make sure removals expertise was in the room from the start. She explains what makes ISO structurally different from SBTi: where SBTi is a voluntary framework for leading, self-selecting companies, ISO is built to be globally applicable, rooted in national standards bodies and the WTO framework, and designed to accommodate countries with different net zero end dates, from Europe’s 2050 to China’s 2060 and Saudi Arabia’s 2070.
The discussion gets to the heart of what the standard actually does on removals: it makes the implicit removals target in net zero frameworks explicit. Companies setting a long-term reduction target must treat whatever remains as their “anticipated residual emissions”, and that figure becomes a removal target they are required to plan toward, with a validated first milestone within five years. Delia is clear that flexibility is intentional: the strategy can involve a portfolio of credits, removals within operations, or value chain approaches, so long as the trajectory is defensible and verified.
Sebastian pushes on the question of ambition and comparability: can two companies with very different removal strategies both receive the same ISO certification? Delia acknowledges the tension and closes on a call to action: the standard is currently in public consultation, comments feed through national standards bodies into the final draft, and this is the CDR community’s real window to push back on anything that falls short. The final standard is expected by mid-2027.
LinksSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteDelia Meth-Cohn: LinkedIn and Rethinking RemovalsISO Net Zero Aligned Organization Standard (public consultation)Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Dr. Ruth Dagan, Senior Partner and Head of Environment & Climate Change at Herzog Law, and Co-Chair of the IETA Legal Working Group, to cover two legal challenges that are quietly suppressing corporate demand for carbon credits.
The first is litigation risk. Since 2022, climate washing claims have increased by seventy percent globally, with around 160 cases on the books and fifty-four relating specifically to carbon credit offsets. Apple's carbon neutral Watch campaign was lost in Germany and only tentatively won in the US. The upshot is that many companies are choosing to say nothing about their climate action at all. Ruth calls this green-hushing, and argues it is actively draining demand from the voluntary carbon market.
The conversation covers the two regulatory responses now taking shape: the EU Empowering Consumers Directive, coming into force in September, which blacklists product-level carbon neutrality claims outright, and California's AB 1911, which proposes the opposite, a safe harbor that would actively protect companies using high-integrity credits. Ruth outlines the work being led by IETA and the Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets, now backed by eleven governments.
The second challenge is more fundamental: most carbon credit registries, including PACM, include explicit disclaimers that they make no legal statement about who actually owns the credits in an account. Ruth explains how this came to be, what it means for institutional investment, and how the Unidroit project, due to conclude in early 2027, offers a route to resolution.
LinksSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteDr. Ruth Dagan: LinkedIn and ProfileEmpowering Consumers DirectiveCalifornia AB 1911Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets / IETA safe harbor reportGrantham Institute Global Trends in Climate Change LitigationHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Guest: Robert Höglund, writer of Marginal Carbon, climate strategist at Milkywire, and co-founder of CDI FYI
The Science Based Targets initiative has released its long-awaited Net Zero Standard, and Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme wasted no time pulling Robert Höglund, climate strategist at Milkywire, and co-founder of CDR.FYI back onto the show to work through what it actually means for CDR.
The three begin with a verdict: mostly neutral. Better than the previous draft, some of the more damaging provisions are gone, but the standard falls short of what the CDR community had hoped for. With the key requirement for carbon removal pegged to 2035, the central question is whether anything meaningful happens in the nine years between now and then.
The conversation works through the specific wins and losses. Corresponding adjustments are no longer a hard requirement, now encouraged and reported, which Robert and Eve both consider a workable compromise. The "like for like" principle survived. Scope 3 was included, which significantly raises the ceiling on potential CDR demand. But the standard leaves key questions unanswered: what emissions are companies actually supposed to counterbalance with CDR, their physical inventory or their residual after market measures? The answer, Robert notes, could be "quite controversial."
The episode closes on what comes next: the call for evidence on short-lived removals, the incoming ISO standard, and a probable 2031 timeline for the next full version of the standard, leaving the industry to watch carefully what happens in the interim guidance documents that can still reshape how the standard is applied in practice.
LinksEve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteRobert Höglund: LinkedIn, Website and SubstackSBTi Net Zero StandardHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Recorded live at the Negative Emissions Platform (NEP) event in June 2026, this fireside chat brings Sebastian Manhart together with Oliver Geden for a rapid-fire sweep through the state of CDR policy.
Oliver Geden is Head of the Research Cluster on Climate and Energy Policy at SWP (the German Institute for International and Security Affairs), Vice Chair of IPCC Working Group Three, and a member of the executive team of the State of CDR Report. He co-authored Chapter Five on policy in the report's third edition, published the week this conversation was recorded.
Together they dig into the questions that matter, the numbers that mislead, and the politics underneath both. In 30 minutes they cover a lot of ground: the policy sequencing debate, what the 16% CDR share of global mitigation effort actually means, and which countries are pulling ahead.
Oliver walks through why over 100 countries now have net zero targets, yet novel CDR features in only two NDCs through to 2035, Australia and the UK, and in around one-third of long-term strategies for 2050. He draws on his IPCC experience to explain the shift in how CDR has been framed in intergovernmental negotiations: from "scenarios suggest you'll need it" to "you cannot reach net zero without it." That shift forecloses the option of treating CDR as an optional add-on, but it hasn't yet translated into concrete national planning at scale.
The conversation gets into the weeds on EU policy design: the complexity of introducing national durable removal targets within the pillar system, the tension in the international credits debate between what the text says and what policymakers are actually trying to achieve, and a concept Oliver introduces that is worth holding onto: "politically hard to abate." The episode closes on a question that would have felt out of place a year ago: what the war in Iran does to climate and CDR policy ambition, and Oliver's answer is, characteristically, clear-eyed.
Show notes:
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteOliver Geden: LinkedInState of CDR Report, 3rd Edition:Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme dig into the highly anticipated third edition of the State of CDR Report.
At 300 pages and 75-plus authors, this edition is the most comprehensive mapping of the CDR landscape to date. Sebastian and Eve don't attempt to walk through the headlines they go deeper, pulling out the findings that stood out, challenged assumptions, or raised new questions.
The conversation opens on vocabulary: the report's case for retiring "natural versus technological" in favour of "conventional versus novel", and why that framing matters for how CDR is perceived by the public. It then turns to one of the report's most important, and most easily misread, numbers: the 2.2 gigatons of global CDR, of which 99.9% is conventional and 2.1 megatons is novel. Sebastian unpacks why gross versus net removals is not a semantic debate, and why the two figures are measuring fundamentally different things.
From there, they cover the gap: what NDCs and long-term strategies actually say (and don't say) about CDR, why a new wave of national climate plans arrived with almost no additional detail on removals, and what the report's modelling implies about how much CDR net zero will actually require, with the average across scenarios now sitting at 16% of mitigation effort, not the 10% commonly cited. They also take a hard look at the 2030 outlook: the report's layered approach to projections, why the 2020 prediction of 11 megatons by 2025 became 2, and what company announcements of 42 megatons actually mean in practice.
The episode closes on what the next decade of CDR delivery really looks like: biomass-based methods dominating through 2030, a CDR funding share of just 2.6% of all climate tech, and a shout-out to CDRjobs, which gets its first dedicated section in the report, for contributing workforce data to the ecosystem.
Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteState of CDR Report 2026CDRjobsHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme welcome back Asger Strange Olesen, Global Head of Climate and Biodiversity at the International Woodland Company and Independent Member of the EU Carbon Removal Expert Group.
The conversation opens on where the carbon farming side of the CRCF stands relative to the momentum building around permanent removals. Asger explains why carbon credits are the wrong tool for the majority of European farmland that stays in production, and why the CRCF review's emerging concept of performance certificates may finally offer a workable alternative. One that links supply chain companies' Scope 3 reporting to what actually happens on the land.
The episode digs into how performance certificates would work in practice: who issues them, who needs them, and how attribution across multiple buyers in the same supply chain gets resolved. Asger is direct about which concepts from the carbon credit world have no place here, and why insisting on them would kill the instrument before it starts.
The discussion also covers the tension between the EU's bottom-up inventory approach and SBTi's top-down FLAG methodology, what the Q4 Commission proposal on national targets and flexibilities needs to get right, and why moving the obligation to pay from member states to sectors and companies is the single most important precondition for any of this to work.
Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteAsger Strange Olesen: LinkedIn and MediumCRCF Days — European Commission event pageSupercharging Carbon Removal from the EU’s Land SectorHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Recorded on the ground at the first annual CRCF Days in Brussels, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart spent the day inside Day One on permanent carbon removals and caught up throughout the day to give you a front-row view of how it unfolded.
The episode follows the arc of the day to tackle the central question: does the EU Buyers' Club have the momentum, the money, and the buyers to actually deliver? Eve and Sebastian arrive with different expectations and leave with a revealing disagreement. Surprisingly, Eve is more bullish than usual and Sebastian is more measured. However both agree the room had real energy with over 200 in person and 300 online, and that the process of getting buyers together under Commission convening is worth something in itself.
The momentum in the room was real but whether it translates into offtake agreements, new buyers, and genuine scale is a different question. Eve and Sebastian get into what was actually announced, which technologies are in or out of scope, and why use cases for permanent removals keep coming up and keep going unanswered.
Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteCRCF Days — European Commission event pageCDR Policy Scoop — The Uncertain Future of the EU's CDR Buyers' Club (with Robert Höglund)CDR Policy Scoop — How Far Can the EU's Market-Shaping Purchasing Programme Go? (with Hugh McDonald)Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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The European Commission just published a draft implementing act on CBAM and it quietly opens the door to international carbon credits counting toward carbon border liabilities. The rules are still being written, but the direction of travel is clear.
Co-hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme pulled our favourite CBAM expert, Dan Maleski back in for a rapid-fire debrief the day after publication. They wanted to get the Scoop on what's actually in the act, what's still missing, and what does it mean in practice for companies, governments, and CDR?
The conversation unpacks the 10% cap on Article 6 credits, why domestic credits face no equivalent limit, and why that asymmetry should raise eyebrows. Dan also flags a real risk: with prices in voluntary carbon markets anything but standardised, the room for manipulation is not hypothetical. And with "independent persons" as the main safeguard, the jury is still out on how watertight this will be.
One thread runs through it all: CBAM is pushing trading partners toward compliance regimes that look more like the EU ETS and for CDR project developers who can align with that compliance demand, the long-term signal is significant.
The consultation closes in early June. While still unresolved, this one is worth watching closely.
Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteDan Maleski: LinkedIn European Commission implementing act on using carbon credits for CBAM liabilityHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Recorded on May 6th at Zurich's first-ever Climate Week, this is a different kind of episode. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme spent the day inside a series of Swiss government-hosted events on international CDR pilot transfers and brought the microphones with them.
The Switzerland-Norway and Switzerland-Sweden pilots are quietly doing something that almost no one else is: actually testing the full Article 6 machinery for durable CDR transfers, end to end, with real private sector partners at the table. The question is what that process is revealing: about what works, what doesn't, and how far the rest of the world is from being able to follow.
Eve and Sebastian got to sit down with two people instrumental in making these pilots happen: Veronika Elgart, Deputy Head of International Climate Policy at Switzerland's Federal Office for the Environment, and Ane Gjengedal, Senior Adviser at the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment. The surprises are real and so are the unresolved tensions around: use cases, corresponding adjustments, and the gap between having regulation on paper and having markets that function.
The honest answer from everyone in the room: this is harder than it looks, it's taking longer than expected, and starting sooner is the only advice that holds across every jurisdiction.
Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteAne Gjengedal, Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment: LinkedInVeronika Elgart, Federal Office for the Environment, Switzerland: LinkedInAgreement between Norway and Switzerland on International CCS and NETCDR Policy Scoop — The world's first durable CDR transaction under the Paris Agreement Swiss legal framework for CCS/CDRHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Who should hold permanence liability, for how long, and how?
In this episode of the CDR Policy Scoop, Eve and Sebastian speak with Natalia Dorfman has spent the last four years building Kita into the carbon market's leading insurance specialist. She make the case that the market is finally ready to move beyond buffer pools, and that the tools to do it already exist.
Natalia draws a sharp distinction between short and long-term liability windows, explains why buffers were a necessary starting point but were never designed for perpetuity, and lays out why standards don't actually want to be holding that risk.
That sets up the main event: the Permanence Trust, a feasibility study led by the American Forest Foundation with Kita as a supporting partner. The idea is straightforward in principle, an endowment-style fund that grows to cover reversals over time. But the questions around standards buy-in, cost structure, and what "replacement" actually means for capital markets are anything but. Natalia takes them head on.
A report is due around June and a pilot to follow. This one is worth watching.
Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteNatalia Dorfman: LinkedInKita: WebsiteAmerican Forest Foundation: WebsiteHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This is a different kind of episode.
Gabrielle Walker. You probably know her as a scientist, author, science communicator, co-founder of CUR8 and Rethinking Removals. She has spent three decades at the intersection of climate science and storytelling. Too much to confine to a 30 minute episode.
Introducing our new series, Digging Deep, we kick off our special long-form conversation where Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme have the privilege to go beyond the usual format to go deeper into the person. How Gabrielle thinks, her lived experiences, and how it has shaped her work in carbon removal and beyond.
The conversation moves from her earliest encounters with nature, through years as a science journalist at Nature and the BBC, multiple expeditions to Antarctica, and a career pivot from covering climate change to trying to solve it. Gabrielle reflects on what it means to hold doubt as a strength, how she has changed her mind on some of the biggest questions in CDR, and why she believes curiosity may be the most underrated skill in the field.
The discussion also gets practical: what it actually takes to move corporate buyers toward carbon removal, why the narrative needs to shift, and how Gabrielle thinks about building markets that can unlock real capital for the people building solutions.
Honest, wide-ranging, and at times surprising. This one is worth the extra time.
Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteGabrielle Walker: LinkedIn, CUR8, Rethinking RemovalsHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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CDR Policy Scoop is back with our next SHOWDOWN, this time on one of the hottest fault lines in carbon markets: should voluntary offsetting require corresponding adjustments?
As Article 6 implementation moves forward, the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) faces a pivotal question: are corresponding adjustments NECESSARY for integrity, or OVERKILL, creating a constraint that could choke much‑needed finance for mitigation and removals?
There's a clear rule that corresponding adjustments are required for CORSIA compliance and when credits count toward another country’s NDC, but should that same bar apply when companies use credits for offsetting and net-zero claims?
In the “Necessary” Corner: Olga Gassan‑zade, former chair of the Paris Agreement’s Article 6.4 Supervisory Body and leading expert on carbon markets and international climate policy, arguing that corresponding adjustments are needed to avoid double counting and align the VCM with the Paris Agreement.
In the “Overkill” Corner: Johan Börje from Stockholm Exergi, who very successfully convinced buyers that finance stacking without corresponding adjustments is essential right now. He brings the perspective of a pioneering CDR project developer focused on scaling real‑world removals within evolving policy and market frameworks.
Our co-hosts turned moderators, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart, will keep the conversation sharp, grounded, and accessible: cutting through the jargon and focusing on what this really means for buyers, projects, and host countries.
(Disclaimer: Both guests and moderators are speaking in a personal capacity and their views do not represent those of their respective organisations.)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Noah Deich is back. When he last joined the show in February 2025, the US DOE had just gutted its CDR programmes. This time, he returns to debrief on a very different project: his attempt to build a government-led advanced market commitment for carbon removal, modelled on the GAVI Vaccine Alliance in global health.
He spoke to around two dozen governments. The outcome wasn't what he hoped for, but his diagnosis of why is sharper than you might expect, and it points to a fundamental gap that no country has yet closed.
Noah draws on the history of renewables to explain what CDR policy is still missing, identifies the two interventions he'd prioritise above everything else, and makes the case for why the current political moment, however bleak it looks, may be exactly the right time to be thinking big.
The AMC concept isn't dead. But the path there looks different than it did two years ago.
Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteNoah Deich: LinkedIn and SubstackReport: A Government-Led Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for Carbon RemovalPrevious episode: CDR at DoE is dead — or is it?Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode, co-hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Dr Andrew Lenton, Director of CSIRO's CarbonLock Future Science Platform, to discuss Australia's newly published CDR roadmap and its first novel CDR workforce report.
Andrew walks through what it took to build a credible national roadmap and why the coalition of partners, including Google as the sole private sector contributor, may matter as much as the findings themselves. He covers the technologies that surprised him most and what Australia's unique geography means for the CDR opportunity.
The conversation turns to early policy signals: a new Australia-Canada CDR agreement, fresh federal and state-level funding, and how Australia's co-presidency of COP31 is shaping the agenda. Andrew reflects on what it has taken to build basic CDR literacy across government as a foundation for any of this to stick.
The episode closes on workforce, Australia's first novel CDR workforce report just landed, and Andrew outlines the four recommendations at its core. Sebastian brings in data from CDRjobs and European parallels to show why getting this right, and soon, matters.
Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteDr Andrew Lentoni: LinkedInAustralian CDR RoadmapAustralia CDR Workforce ReportHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, co-hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme sit down for their unscripted quarterly catch-up to discuss what's top of mind in CDR policy.
They open on the EU CBAM and the question of whether Article 6 credits could satisfy CBAM liabilities. They cut through social media hype to examine what has actually been decided, and whether this logic undermines the mechanism's original purpose of incentivising domestic carbon pricing.
The conversation turns to the EU's broader reliance on international credits, including the 5% allowance under the 2040 target. Eve walks through the layered costs that make this look far less cheap than advertised, and the supply and infrastructure constraints that compound the problem.
Sebastian flags three parallel EU processes: CBAM revision, international credits consultation, and ETS revisions, and the Negative Emissions Platform's new ETS Needs Removals campaign. The price gap for DAC and BECCS, and how to bridge it through ETS revenues, closes out the policy discussion. Sebastian teases an upcoming paper with Rafael Cario on front-loading ETS revenues for carbon removals.
The episode ends with AI as the wildcard: a force driving up CDR demand, and potentially if the energy buildout outlasts the hype, a future catalyst for cheap direct air capture energy.
Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Hannah Bebbington Valori, Head of Deployment at Frontier, the advanced market commitment backed by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, McKinsey, and Meta that has become one of the largest and most experienced buyers of carbon removal in the world.
The conversation opens with Frontier's newly redesigned innovation program, which this year expands beyond pre-purchases to include R&D grants and more flexible check sizes. Hannah explains that roughly 60% of the R&D gaps Frontier identified at launch in 2022 have already been worked on or solved, a sign the field has matured enough to warrant a broader funding approach.
Much of the discussion centres on Frontier's theory of change and the concept of the "baton pass": The idea that voluntary corporate buyers exist to pull technology from lab to field and prepare a portfolio of proven solutions for governments to eventually take over. Hannah is direct that carbon removal is ultimately a public good requiring government-scale support, and that the voluntary market alone cannot get to gigatons. Sebastian and Eve push on how Frontier engages on policy across jurisdictions, how its buying criteria feed into legislative processes, and the tension between being "tech agnostic" in policy design and the practical pressure to fund what already works.
The episode also revisits Frontier's 2024 fellows program, which placed individuals around the world to build demand for carbon removal through policy. Hannah gives an honest assessment: the Nordic Carbon Removal Alliance was a genuine win, but one year is a short runway for systems change, and policy moves slowly by design. The conversation closes on the question the whole sector is watching, what happens to Frontier after 2030, with Hannah confirming the team is actively working on it.
Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteHannah Bebbington Valori: LinkedInFrontier: LinkedIn and WebsiteHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Harry Smith, Principal Consultant at Aether and former Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, where he completed his PhD on the policy and governance of carbon dioxide removal.
The conversation explores what national long-term low-emission development strategies actually say about carbon removal, and how much of it should concern us. Harry draws on his doctoral research, which analysed long-term strategies across 71 countries, to explain why these documents are often optional, outdated, and light on detail when it comes to CDR.
The episode digs into the residual emissions data at the heart of his research: only 26 of 71 countries quantified residual emissions at the point of net zero, with an average of 21% of peak emissions, more than double the 10% commonly referenced in IPCC scenarios. Australia and Canada sit at 52% and 44% respectively, leaning heavily on CDR and international credits to close the gap.
Sebastian, Eve and Harry also examine why the land sector carries far more weight in national strategies than engineered CDR, and why Harry considers it the bigger risk. The discussion closes on what long-term strategies have actually contributed, a refinement of end-of-century warming projections, and why near-term policy design, not long-term vision documents, is where the real work on CDR now needs to happen.
Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteHarry Smith: LinkedInUNFCCC Long Term Strategies PortalPromising Words, Evaluating Actions: Assessing Carbon Dioxide Removal in National Net Zero Plans, by Harry B SmithHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Maureen Walsh, Executive Director of the US Biochar Coalition (USBC), to discuss how biochar has quietly built one of the most resilient policy positions of any CDR technology in the United States.
Recorded amid tariff pressures, farm bill limbo, and a Washington reshaped by the second Trump administration, the conversation gets straight to the question: is this political moment different? Maureen's answer is yes, but biochar is finding opportunities others aren't, by refusing to be defined as a climate technology.
The episode unpacks the strategic reframe at the heart of USBC's approach: positioning biochar as a solution to waste, wildfires, PFAS contamination, and farmer resilience rather than leading with carbon removal. Maureen explains how this opens doors across the aisle, from senators focused on carbon sequestration to those who just need to deal with mountains of woody biomass before fire season.
The discussion dives into the legislative machinery: the Carbon Resources Innovation Act (Senate Bill 3778), a technology-neutral update to 45Q that would make biochar and other CDR methods eligible for the tax credit without naming them explicitly. Maureen breaks down why 45Q doesn't currently cover biochar, how BBBA reshaped the tax credit landscape, and why biochar survived the cut when other technologies didn't. Sebastian and Maureen also explore the art of Hill advocacy, the 20-minute meeting, the constituency-first argument, and why cultivating champions now is the only way to be ready when the next big tax vehicle arrives.
Maureen walks through USBC's concrete wins: the EPA's landmark 2024 ruling that pyrolysis of clean cellulosic biomass is no longer classified as waste incineration, and biochar's dedicated section in Fix Our Forests, which has passed the House with bipartisan support. She also details the USDA conservation practice codes already paying farmers and producers to use biochar, and the patchwork of regional implementation that USBC is steadily working to fix.
The episode closes with two lessons every CDR sector should hear: drop the word sustainability and start talking about resilience, and if you're still going to Washington alone, you're already behind.
Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteMaureen Walsh: LinkedInUS Biochar Coalition: LinkedIn and WebsiteHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Eve Tamme is joined by Canadian Senator Colin Deacon from Nova Scotia. Senator Deacon is a former entrepreneur, who has been a driving force behind what may be the most comprehensive government study on marine carbon dioxide removal undertaken by any national legislature to date.
The conversation centres on the landmark report published by Canada's Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans in February 2026, which examined marine CDR - particularly ocean alkalinity enhancement - and put forward nine clear, actionable recommendations. Senator Deacon explains what drew the committee to the topic, the unexpected complexity of navigating four overlapping federal regulators, and why agile regulation, not the science, emerged as the single biggest barrier to scaling the sector.
Eve and Senator Deacon explore the significance of Canada asserting sovereign jurisdiction over land-based ocean alkalinity enhancement projects, the case for creating a regulatory sandbox that brings innovators and regulators together, and the importance of access to compliance carbon markets for removal credits. Senator Deacon reflects on Canada's strong foundation in this space, from two X Prize winners and the Ocean Frontier Institute at Dalhousie University, to a Prime Minister in Mark Carney with deep personal understanding of carbon markets and end-to-end credit integrity.
The episode also touches on the role of social license, why site visits proved the most powerful tool for building political buy-in among new committee members, and why Senator Deacon insists that scaling and studying marine CDR must happen in parallel, not sequentially. The discussion closes with a forward-looking call: the world will not reach net zero without carbon removal, and the time to build the markets, the regulation, and the trust to support it is now.
Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSenator Colin Deacon and WebsiteCarbon removal, from air to sea: Canada, a leader in restoring oceans ecosystems and fighting climate changeHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Jennifer Wilcox, Presidential Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the U.S. Department of Energy.
Recorded amid major policy shifts in Washington, the conversation explores what has changed - and what has not - for carbon management and carbon removal in the United States. Jennifer reflects on her time at the DOE during the Biden administration, including the reorientation of federal funding toward climate mitigation, the launch of large-scale demonstration programs, and the Carbon Negative Earthshot.
The episode dives into the current landscape: paused or uncertain funding for DAC hubs and purchase programs, the ongoing role of tax credits such as 45Q, and how Congressional appropriations interact with administrative reorganizations. Jennifer explains why some federal incentives remain intact, how unobligated funds could still shape the future, and why tax policy continues to provide a foundation for investment even amid political turbulence.
Sebastian and Eve also explore the intersection of AI-driven data center growth, energy infrastructure, and carbon removal - including emerging models where direct air capture integrates with geothermal energy or supports data center cooling. The discussion highlights the importance of aligning CDR with broader industrial priorities such as nuclear, critical minerals, and domestic energy production.
The episode concludes with a forward-looking message: safeguard progress by embedding carbon removal in communities, regional strengths, and bipartisan economic value. Policies may shift, but learning, infrastructure, and local ownership create momentum that is difficult to reverse.
Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteProfessor Jennifer Wilcox: LinkedInHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Visa fler
