🔥 Hot off press: Key takeaways from the CRCF Purchasing Programme Workshop 🔥

👇 Another step closer to scaling CDR in Europe. So what did we learn and where are we heading?

🇪🇺 First, let’s contextualise this workshop: as Christian Holzleitner from the European Commission stressed, this workshop was meant to kickstart a conversation about how demand for CRCF credits could be created in the short-term (before 2030).

✅ The options on the table (policy tools, purchase methods, timing) were exhaustive. The consultants recommendation for an EU Removals Fund, combined with an EU Coordinated Buyers Club and Centralised Procurement Agency with competitive tendering was widely accepted as the best compromise.

💡 The stated objective is to foster tech development before 2030, to then move to market development in the 2030. This does mean we should not necessarily optimise for cost/t efficiency right now (very relevant in the current debate), and instead focus on maximising our shots on target.

🐘 Now the huge elephant in the room: where will the roughly €6b needed for this come from? Organisers diligently tip-toed around this whenever it came up. It’s all well and good to know what would be ideal, but it will remain a shell until there is money on the table.

👏 What I really loved was the quality of the discussion. Participants - a great balance between private sector, public sector, and civil society - raised some excellent challenges that will need to be addressed.

Top on the agenda for me:

1️⃣ Balancing short vs medium term focus. Yes, we need funding to bridge the valley of death right now. But CDR companies also need reliable, 10-15 year offtakes to secure project financing for their projects.

2️⃣ Double counting and double stacking. Who will get to count this removal towards their NDC, especially when purchases might be spread across countries? And will companies be able to stack revenues from this programme with VCM sales?

3️⃣ What is the actual use case? Buyers were pretty clear: they need to know what these tons will be used for to commit to an EU buyers’ club. Compensation, contribution, something else?

📜 For those who didn’t attend, I highly recommend the preliminary report presented by Ecologic Institute - if you haven’t seen it, drop me a comment and I will send it to you. Very excited to see the next version of it.

🎙️ I just scratched the surface here. Make sure to tune in to our upcoming CDR Policy Scoop with Eve Tamme on Tuesday 27th of May at 9am PT / noon EST / 6pm CEST where we will go much deeper on all of this: https://lnkd.in/epAKPqvc

🙏 Finally, a huge shout out to the organisers. May I say: this was the best organised Commission workshop I have attended to date, both in terms of structure, tech, and execution. Well done Christian Holzleitner, Andrea Klaric, Hugh McDonald, Jonathan Gardiner, John Tarpey, and Benjamin Görlach.

❓What are your takeaways? Does the above resonate? What did I miss?

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