The CDR Policy Scoop

Guest: Robert Höglund, writer of Marginal Carbon, climate strategist at Milkywire, and co-founder of CDI FYIThe 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 Standard

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:

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 2026CDRjobs

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 Sector

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)

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 liability

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/CDR

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: Website

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 Removals