The Carbon Removal Scoop

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Julia Strong, Founder and Executive Director of the Symbiosis Coalition, the buyers' group whose members, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce, McKinsey, Bain and REI, have committed to purchase more than 20 million tonnes of nature-based carbon removal. Julia's starting point is that today's nature-based projects look very different from the ones that earned the sector its reputation, and that the world cannot afford to count them out.Julia walks through what she calls the next generation of projects, from dynamic baselines and conservative leakage deductions to digital monitoring, and explains why Symbiosis treats local communities as a driver of durability rather than a co-benefit. She draws a direct line to how corporate power purchase agreements de-risked renewables, and points to Living Carbon as evidence the model is starting to work: a Symbiosis offtake followed a few weeks later by $500 million in project finance from Octopus Energy Generation.Eve and Sebastian then press on policy. Should nature-based removals sit in the EU ETS, or does Europe need a different home for them? Julia makes the case for including nature across removal policies, explains why slow-growing European projects need longer offtakes and more demand certainty, and responds to Sebastian's observation that nature-based removals often fall into a gap between national forestry departments and the teams handling engineered removals.They close on innovation, from secondary forests that could store carbon faster and more cheaply than new planting to fungi that speed up tree growth, and on the hardest lesson from the Symbiosis portfolio so far. Tune in to hear why so many promising projects are not yet ready for the offtakes they are chasing, and how much financing alone can add to the price of a tonne.LINKSEve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteJulia Strong: LinkedIn Symbiosis Coalition: WebsiteGoogle, Meta, McKinsey Ink U.S. Reforestation-Based Carbon Removal Deals (ESG Today, Living Carbon offtakes)Octopus Energy: Octopus Energy Generation to invest $500 million to remove polluting CO2 from the atmosphereCarbon Gap: Growing Europe's land carbon sink: Nature-based removals need the right policies to scale [URL needed] (listed on Carbon Gap insights, 28 October 2026)American Forest Foundation: The Permanence Trust feasibility studyContracted Durability: A Framework for Performance Based Carbon Removal (Beyond Alliance, RMI and American Forest Foundation)Sylvera: Open Carbon Data Project in the Brazilian Atlantic ForestPrevious Scoop episode: Buffer Pools Aren't Enough: The Case for Contracted Durability — with Luke Pritchard Previous Scoop episode: From Equity to Debt: How CDR Gets Bankable — with Julia Reichelstein and Tyler Manchester Previous Scoop episode: Frontier: The Private Bet on the Public Good — with Hannah Bebbington Valori

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Marian Krüger, Co-founder and Managing Director of remove, the non-profit accelerator that has backed 209 carbon removal startups since its first cohort in 2021. It is the first episode in the Scoop's new partnership with remove, and Marian brings a rare view of what founders are building across Europe, India, Africa and Latin America, and why remove never went to North America.Application numbers have fallen since the climate tech peak, but Marian argues the founders who remain are stronger for it. He explains why founders today rarely claim a brand new pathway and instead set out to do an existing one better, how the value chain is splitting into specialists, and why so many Global South startups are building biochar. In India and Africa, he says, none of remove's startups lead with climate: farmer prosperity, adaptation and air quality open the doors.Eve and Sebastian then press on money and policy. Marian walks through how remove moved from pure grants to recoverable grants to EUR 15,000 pre-purchases, and what a first listed deal on CDR.fyi does for a startup's next conversation. On Europe, he describes DAC and BECCS startups reorienting deployments towards Europe to qualify under the EU ETS proposal, and warns that rules or methodologies that are too narrow risk closing off the optimisation still possible within today's pathways.They close on the strangest ideas to cross remove's desk, from a military waste technology repurposed for wet biomass to a WhatsApp voice tool for farmers, and on the power imbalance between founders in the Global South and buyers in the North. Tune in to hear Marian's countercyclical case for why right now might be the best time to found a carbon removal company.LINKSEve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteMarian Krueger: LinkedInremove: Website CDR.fyiNiklas Stolz and Benedict Probst: Mapping Global Value Capture in Carbon Crediting Projects (ETH Zurich and Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)EU ETS revision proposal (European Commission, July 2026)The New Frontiers Report for CDR (RMI, October 2026)Previous Scoop episode: The Next Wave of Carbon Removal Innovation — with Rudy Kahsar

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Sara Vicca, Associate Professor at the University of Antwerp and a lead author on the IPCC's forthcoming methodology report on carbon dioxide removal technologies, carbon capture, utilisation and storage for national greenhouse gas inventories. For years, stakeholders have argued that governments cannot properly count novel removals without updated rules from the IPCC. Those rules are now being written, and the first draft has just opened for expert review.Sara explains why guidance inn the 2006 IPCC Guidelines needs an update for direct air capture, direct ocean capture and enhanced weathering, and walks through the road from first draft to approval in late 2027. Because the draft itself is confidential, the conversation stays on the principles rather than the text, and Sara is clear about who the authors most want to hear from before the review window closes.Eve and Sebastian then dig into enhanced weathering, Sara's section of the report. What happens when carbon captured on a farm in one country travels down rivers and out to sea through several others? How should governments learn from voluntary market methodologies that do not even agree on how to characterise rock feedstock? Sara draws a sharp line between carbon crediting and national inventories: inventories compare emissions and removals year by year, so there is no counterfactual baseline and no additionality test, and methods are organised into three tiers, from generic emission factors to detailed measurement and modelling.They close on the gap between the EU's Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming certification framework and what countries actually report, and on how a report this large is coordinated across more than a hundred authors. Tune in to hear why Sara thinks a country could count enhanced weathering without a single carbon credit ever being issued, and why that rings alarm bells for Sebastian.LINKSEve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteSara Vicca: LinkedIn, University of Antwerp profile and BlueskyIPCC: Register to review the First Order Draft (review open until 20 December 2026; registration closes 11 December)IPCC: 2027 Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and StorageIPCC: List of Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors and Review EditorsPaul Zakkour: Dispatch from the IPCC lead author meeting in Mexico City: CCUS and carbon removals (LSE Grantham Research Institute)2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines: WetlandsEve Tamme and Paul Zakkour: Will the Carbon Removal Certification Framework count in the race to climate neutrality?Previous Scoop episode: Is Enhanced Rock Weathering Ready for Scale? — with Dirk Paessler and Mel Murphy

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Danny Cullenward, Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, on his second visit to the Scoop. The conversation grew out of a remark Danny made at Carbon Gap's Carbon Removal Policy Summit in Brussels in September, and it lands on an issue the carbon removal community has barely started to absorb: how the Greenhouse Gas Protocol will count the carbon in forests. Danny, who resigned from the Protocol's Independent Standards Board over the dispute, argues the stakes reach far beyond forestry.At the centre are two competing proposals. Scientists on the technical working group backed activity-based accounting, which compares a harvest with what would have happened without it, much as voluntary market forest methodologies do. Industry voices backed the managed land proxy, borrowed from how countries report to the UN climate convention, which Danny says would let companies book removals for almost any wood harvest. He walks through how averaging across a whole sourcing region can turn felling trees in Poland into a carbon removal on paper, and why he thinks the proposal's extra safeguards change very little.Eve and Sebastian also press on the process behind the fight, and on where things stand now. No decision has been made: the Protocol's request for information on forest carbon accounting is open until 1 February 2027, while an ISO standard that Danny says implements the industry approach in all but name has already been approved, and the two bodies are working to harmonise their standards. With mandatory disclosure in California and the EU leaning on the Protocol, whatever gets decided will not stay voluntary for long.They close on what this means for anyone producing durable removals. Tune in to hear why Danny calls this an existential risk for the carbon removal industry, and who he thinks needs to speak up before the comment window closes.LINKSEve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteDanny Cullenward: Bluesky and WebsiteKleinman Center for Energy Policy: WebsiteForest Carbon Accounting in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (Kleinman Center webinar, 22 September 2026)Governing the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (Danny Cullenward, Kleinman Center, April 2026)Danny Cullenward's resignation letter (June 2026)GHG Protocol: Forest carbon accounting proposals and supporting materialsGHG Protocol: Land Sector and Removals Standard and Forest Carbon Accounting Request for Information (open until 1 February 2027)ISO 13391-1:2025 Wood and wood-based products: Greenhouse gas dynamicsSourceMaterial: Lobbyists push for declaration that felling trees helps the climateBloomberg: Dispute Over Counting Forest Carbon Roils Global Standard-SetterHeatmap: Tensions Mount at Greenhouse Gas Protocol as Scientist Resigns in ProtestCarbon Removal Policy SummitPrevious Scoop Episode: CDR and Credibility: Unpacking Reversal Rules Under Article 6.4 — with Danny Cullenward

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Rudy Kahsar, Principal at RMI and a founding member of its carbon removal team, to dig into the New Frontiers Report for CDR. The report traces up to three decades of progress across 14 carbon removal approaches to work out where the next breakthroughs could come from, and Rudy's answer to the question he gets asked most, which pathway to go all in on, is not the one most people expect.Rudy makes the case that the technologies doing most of the removing in 2050 may not exist yet, and that breakthroughs tend to arrive when experts from one field wander into another. Policy sits outside the report's scope, but his message to policymakers is clear: rather than writing rigid rules around one or two of today's approaches, set aside some funding and regulatory attention for the approaches nobody has invented yet. Sebastian, who has long argued against picking winners this early, needs little convincing.The conversation then turns to the numbers. RMI built bottom-up cost stacks for every approach across eight shared categories, using generative AI for the first pass before testing it with companies and experts, and Rudy explains why the future cost stacks are aspirational scenarios rather than predictions. Sebastian contrasts that transparency with the black-box cost estimates that have made their way into the EU ETS proposal.They close on some of the report's boldest bets, from engineered crops that lock carbon away more durably to the convergence of AI, drones and sensors, and on direct air capture, where Rudy is blunt about cost. Tune in to hear why he thinks an outdoor clothing brand could be an unlikely ally for carbon removal.LINKSSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteRudy Kahsar: LinkedIn and RMI profileRMI: WebsiteThe New Frontiers Report for CDR (RMI, October 2026)RMI: Beyond the First Frontier: What Comes Next for Carbon RemovalMining's Untapped Removals Opportunity — with Cara MaesanoWhat Does CDR Actually Cost in Europe? — with Hansjörg Lerchenmüller and Eadbhard Pernot

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Cara Maesano, lead author of RMI's new report Mining and Carbon Dioxide Removal: A Responsible Path Forward, to dig into an industry the carbon removal world has barely talked about. Cara's starting point is striking: with the land, materials and engineering know-how that mines already have, almost every form of carbon removal could run on a mine site. But only one approach, she argues, really has to.Much of the conversation centres on surficial mineralisation, where reactive mine waste absorbs CO2 from the air and locks it away as stable minerals. Cara walks through the new research hub at Thetford Mines in Quebec, set up by Frontier and Carbon Removal Canada on a legacy of asbestos waste the local community wants gone, and explains how churning and activating tailings could push carbonation far deeper than the surface layer. She is clear that these are not cookie-cutter projects, and why.The hosts also press on the numbers. Cara is candid that the report's headline potential and $80 to $300 price range rest on theoretical and price-based estimates rather than hard cost data. On policy, she explains why permitting is a bigger hurdle than mining's vast footprint suggests: mines are permitted to do specific things with their waste and rarely deviate, which is why building carbon removal in from the very start of a mine's life may be easier than adding it later.They close on the business case. Thin profit margins per ton of CO2 mean miners are unlikely to buy durable removals, but they may have strong reasons to deliver them on site, from green premiums to tax credits to the environmental liabilities sitting in their tailings piles. Tune in to hear the one thing Cara says is holding the industry back.LINKS:Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteSebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteCara Maesano: LinkedInRMI: WebsiteMining and Carbon Dioxide Removal: A Responsible Path Forward (RMI, August 2026): Frontier: Launching the Quebec Surficial Mineralization Hub Arca announces agreement with Microsoft for nearly 300,000 tonnes of durable carbon removalIsometric partners with Anglo American and ZeroEx on Project Earthstone The Carbon Curve: Canada's Next Industrial Play: The Mine That Stores Carbon

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme sits down with Delia Meth-Cohn, Co-founder of Rethinking Removals, to make sense of what happened to ISO 14060, the draft net zero standard for organisations. When Delia joined Sebastian in June, the draft had just opened for consultation. Since then it has drawn around 5,000 comments and failed its first ballot, a rare result at this stage of an ISO process.Delia explains why this vote was different. Participation was capped at four experts per country because of the level of interest, few national standards bodies abstained, and the draft fell well short of ISO's thresholds of two-thirds approval with no more than a quarter of votes against. She walks through what comes next, a second draft and two more votes, and why publication now looks closer to 2028 than mid-2027.Eve and Delia dig into why the draft felt rushed, why an ISO standard carries quasi-regulatory weight that SBTi does not, and how the ground is shifting underneath it, with ISO and the GHG Protocol rewriting the foundations of carbon accounting. Delia's challenge for the next round is to treat the comments as themes rather than wording, and to find the balance between flexibility and credibility without watering the standard down.The conversation closes on removals. Speaking personally, Delia sets out how the next draft might handle anticipated residual emissions and the gap between cheap credits and expensive removals, and has a pointed message for a removals community she suggests needs to rethink its approach.LINKS:Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and WebsiteDelia Meth-Cohn: LinkedInRethinking RemovalOur previous episode, Inside the ISO Net Zero Standard with Delia Meth-Cohn:ISO/DIS 14060 Net Zero Aligned OrganizationsTrellis, ISO members send net-zero draft back for revisionsSBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 ISO and GHG Protocol partnership on unified carbon accounting standards

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Julia Reichelstein, co-founder and CEO of Vaulted Deep, and Tyler Manchester, Head of Voluntary Carbon at CFP Energy, to get the inside story of Vaulted's $35 million debt facility from Mediobanca. Julia explains why Vaulted grew on equity for its first two sites and why, with a delivery track record and a pipeline of new sites, it has now reached what she calls the "just add water" stage where debt is the right capital.Tyler explains why this is CFP Energy's first debt transaction in carbon removal after two decades in carbon markets, and what it took to get comfortable: a developer with a proven record, high-credit offtakers removing market risk, and an insurer covering the residual project risk that institutional lenders expect. He is open about who else can get through the door, including the rough minimum loan size CFP will consider, and why he thinks the market's chicken-and-egg problem is finally starting to crack.Julia makes the case that bankability starts long before anyone talks to a bank. She describes how the fine print of an offtake contract, the page she once skipped past, became the page lenders scrutinised most, and recounts the working capital fight that pushed registries and buyers towards monthly crediting. Both credit Frontier for brokering the introduction and publishing offtake templates others can reuse.They close on policy. Every debt deal discussed in the episode closed outside Europe, and Tyler sets out what would change that: projectable revenue, ideally fixed forward prices or a liquid forward market. Sebastian lays down a challenge for the first European deal, and Tyler accepts it.LINKS:Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and WebsiteJulia Reichelstein: LinkedIn Tyler Manchester: LinkedIn Vaulted Deep: Website CFP Energy: Website (https://www.cfp.energy/)Vaulted Deep secures $35 million in debt financing Frontier offtake agreement template