CDR library

📈 Love it or hate it, but humanity is flying more and more. The sector is growing at 3-4% a year and it’s been estimated that 2 billion annual journeys today will become 10 billion by 2050, with emissions more than doubling to over 2Gt.  🎯 Thankfully, aviation has a collective, global net-zero target for 2050. According to IATA, the plan is to achieve this by primarily focusing on sustainable aviation fuel to do around 65% of the job. Technology innovation will reduce a fur

Eve Tamme  and I sat down with the one and only carbon markets MVP  Alexia Kelly , Managing Director of  High Tide Foundation  for a deep, practical conversation about the state of the market If you follow Alexia, you know she doesn’t hold back. So expect honest takes on the mess that SBTi has become, the confusing proliferation of actors in the space, and - crucially - what needs to be done to fix it.  If you care about where this space is heading, this one’s worth your time

💭 When I think about what will generate the biggest demand for CDR in the coming decade, I come back to three things:  1️⃣ EU ETS integration 2️⃣ International credit procurement towards the EU 2040 target 3️⃣ Use for EU CBAM carbon price deduction. 💪 The last one is the big underdog amongst the three. Yet, unbeknownst to many, things are happening!  🇪🇺 The EU Commission is currently working on detailed rules of what the use of international credits - likely under Article

🏭 According to a recent study: BECCS / Bionenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage. All the way. It delivers around double the climate benefit of the next best solution: animal feed substitution. 🧑‍🔬 A bit more context on this fascinating study: the authors looked at a concrete use case, namely two Dutch coal-fired power plants to be converted to 100% BECCS. 📊 The residues in question were pellets from the U.S. and bagasse from Brazil. It then looked at the overall climate

🙅 Stop pitching biochar. Nobody cares. Start understanding and pitching your business fundamentals. 👌 Pure gold here from  Alastair Collier  on the latest  Reversing Climate Change podcast  with  Ross Kenyon . ❗  No matter what type of CDR project you are trying to get funded: listen to this episode. It is just so, so good. 🙏 Alastair, thank you. You did the industry a big service by sharing your experiences. ✅ Ross, as always, great stuff. Regular listener here and encour

✅ The green transition represents a huge opportunity for countries to promote economic growth. Those who succeed will reap the rewards for decades to come. Those who ignore it, are likely to fall behind. 🏛️ Markets alone will not be sufficient: strong, coordinated industrial policy is needed to create and promote these new sectors. 📗  Amir Lebdioui  is the author of this compelling book and also the Director of  TIDE Centre, University of Oxford . He personally advises gove

🧐 However, one could argue that the money is not being allocated efficiently. Here’s why: 🏭 Technological concentration: 61% of all investment to date went to DACCS. While BiCRS follows with just 15% (of which Biochar Carbon Removal accounts for 5%). These numbers stand in stark contrast with deliveries, where BiCRS accounts for >95% while DACCS <0.1%.  🌎 Geographical concentration: the U.S. and Switzerland account for 77% of all investment. The Global South for just 2%. A

✊ Last month, CDR’s very own  Noah McQueen  joined the Founding Advisory Council of  Out in Climate , which is building a climate movement that truly reflects the world we’re all working to protect. ⚠️ This is why representation matters. Climate change hits marginalised communities first and hardest, including LGBTQ+ people, but their voices are still missing from too many decision-making spaces. Better climate solutions start with who’s IN the room. 🤓 Diversity isn’t optio

I expect this year to mark a step-change for CDR in at least three ways: 1️⃣ Formal recognition in compliance markets 2️⃣ Explicit government endorsement (certification + direct procurement) 3️⃣ Entry into the climate mainstream 👀 In case you missed it, make sure to tune into the 2025 review and 2026 forecast  Eve Tamme  and I released over the break (link in comments) where we dive into the above and much more in the usual, punchy format. 😶‍🌫️ Today, I want to share somet

What makes me so confident? Here a few highlights I expect: 🏛️ First-ever government purchase of durable CDR 📈 EU ETS integration 🧾 First EU CRCF-certified credits could be a real milestone 🌍 Rise of international credits Tune into the latest  CDR Policy Scoop  for the deep dive, as well as  Eve Tamme ’s list. 🎧 Listen here:  https://lnkd.in/d4sEDUdb   ▶️ Watch on YouTube:  https://lnkd.in/d9W7sSCW ❓What do you think will move the needle most next year?

🗓️ To wrap up the year, Eve Tamme and I recorded a CDR Policy Scoop episode reflecting on the biggest CDR policy developments of 2025 - from very different angles. 📉 From my side, the biggest low point was the US retreat from climate leadership: withdrawal from Paris, attacks on climate science, and frozen DAC funding all had real impacts on carbon removal. 🇪🇺 At the same time, leadership didn’t disappear, it just shifted. Europe stepped into the spotlight with: 1️⃣ Carb

💭 Like most people, I prefer to imagine a future without fossil fuels. Yet the reality is sobering: oil & gas (O&G) is set to remain a part of the global energy system for years to come, likely even decades. ⛽ That raises an uncomfortable but unavoidable question: if we can’t get rid of O&G fast enough, should we at least decarbonise it as aggressively as possible? Or does that risk locking it in forever? 🔥 That’s exactly the conversation I’ll be having -live here on Linked

🎯 A final agreement has been reached: 5% international credits (1990 levels) plus a potential additional 5% (2005 levels) at member state level. 📈 Starting as early as 2031, we are talking 100s of megatons, potentially more than a gigaton worth of credits (we are still thin on details). 📋 But what credits exactly? So far, all we have is reference to “high-quality” and a reference to the Paris Agreement. It will be up to the EU Commission to prepare an impact assessment and

🤔 Are you paying or being paid fairly? What jobs are particularly in demand? How big are regional differences? 📄 At CDRjobs, we just published the second edition of our annual compensation report and it is packed with insights! 📊 For 2025, we almost tripled the amount of job data we analysed to over 4,000 jobs in carbon removal! Some highlights: 🌍 The global median annual salary dropped 12% to $100k 💶 Without the U.S., the median is $70 (also 12% below 2024) 📍 The U.S.

🔥 The topic that keeps giving… how permanent is biochar? 📄 A paper recently appeared challenging that soil-applied biochar can be permanent for 1,000s of years. It generated lively discussions and several folks asked me for my take. 🧪 First things first: I am not a scientist, and this is a matter that needs to be settled 100% by science. However, the latest paper is explicitly a policy commentary. So allow me to weigh in. My main observations: ⚖️ The debate is not on wheth

🏛️ This is my core takeaway from Harry Smith PhD’s (University of East Anglia) excellent doctoral thesis analysing 41 government Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategies (LT-LEDS) submitted to the UNFCCC. 🌍 As a reminder: LT-LEDS represent countries’ highest-level long-term climate strategies and therefore provide a clear window into current and future national climate policy. 📄 So what did the thesis find? First, a huge over-reliance on nature based removals vis-a-v

😎 The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies today published a paper I co-authored with Raphaël Cario. (And yes: this is different from last week’s Oxford University paper on Global South CDR industrialisation - I know, we are on a roll!). The core message? 📣 Biochar carbon removal (BCR) is the most deployment-ready, lowest-risk durable CDR option available today and should be among the first options integrated into the EU and UK ETS. 🇪🇺 As a reminder: the European Commissi

👎 Let’s start with the bad news: Multilateral climate policy is failing us. 🪵 Yet again, a COP has been unable to deliver what we need most: a clear commitment to phase out of fossil fuels. To add insult to injury, a COP hosted in the Amazon also failed to propose a deforestation roadmap. ⚠️ This is inexcusable. It’s not aligned with science. And the world deserves better. 🏃 Yesterday, as I went on my angry post-COP run, I listened to (the very appropriately titled) Outrag

🤷 Yesterday, I asked you whether we should have a COP at all. Is all this massive effort - and the associated emissions - even worth it? The community seems split, which isn’t surprising. 🎯 I personally believe that COPs have an important role to play, and that it will take years of hard work to position CDR where it needs to be: as a horizontal, essential building block across climate targets and initiatives at large. 🤩 So did we make any progress on this front during COP

📈 Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen job seeker traffic across all the CDRjobs channels more than double: from 300-400 individuals to almost 800 per week, hitting an all time high since we started tracking. So why are we seeing this trend and why now? Couple of hypothesis: ✅ Carbon removal is becoming better known - see some of my recent posts for proof ✅ People are increasingly looking to switch careers into more meaningful, climate work ✅ The CDR job market stays strong a