The CDR Policy Scoop

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

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.)

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?

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 Report

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 Website

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 Website

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 Smith

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 Website

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 change