🇬🇧 Is the UK turning into a carbon removal powerhouse?🇬🇧

🤯 Still reeling from my short and intense trip to London, where I attended Carbon Unbound Europe and got to catch up with all my favourite UK CDR policy experts.

💚 The timing couldn’t be better: Dr Alan Whitehead released his long-awaited independent GGR (=CDR) Review today! Almost 200 pages based on hundreds of stakeholder interviews, workshops, and written consultations.

So where is the UK at? Reasons to be bullish:

💪 The government has real muscle: The UK already has the biggest CDR team of any government in the world, and they are good! Many of them have already been working on GGRs for years. Couple that with their openness to interacting with CDR professionals, and you got the perfect foundation for fantastic CDR policy.

💷 There is money on the table: the UK plans to spend almost £21b on CCUS over 25 years, much of which will benefit DACCS/BECCS. We could see billions flow through its carbon contracts for difference. And smaller innovation pots (<£100m) were and will likely continue to be awarded to various GGR projects.

🔗 ETS integration is going to happen: there is clear political mandate for this, and it will likely precede the EU ETS, as soon as 2029. Given it is the 3rd biggest ETS in the world, this is big news.

🇪🇺 Alignment with the EU: initially, the UK went off on their own path, simply because when they started years ago there was nothing else to piggyback on. Now - with the EU CRCF finalising its first three methodologies - there is clear intent to align the UK BSI’s own standards as much as possible with the work in the EU.

What is still missing:

🤔 Operationalising tech neutrality: the UK has done a great job keeping its proposals - e.g. ETS integration - tech neutral. In practice, however, BSI standards only exist for DACCS/BECCS and the CCfDs only apply to a very narrow scope of DACCS/BECCS projects. Hopefully DESNZ will soon commission the BSI to develop the next set of standards, starting with BCR and ERW.

🏛️ Public procurement: the CCfDs and ETS integration will go a long way in helping the UK GGR sector get off the ground. But it leaves out a lot of promising technologies and companies. A small public procurement programme to fill this gap would go a long way and maximise shots on target.

🔮 So what is ahead? The review released today gives a great glimpse at what is coming up: from setting dedicated GGR targets, to amending the UK SAF mandate to include GGRs, to establishing an overarching Office for GGRs.

👉 My overall take: the UK has everything it takes to lead. There is so much momentum right now. In a world where support for CDR - and climate in general - is waning, it will be countries like the UK that will keep this sector moving and growing.

❓ What is your take? Keen in particular to hear from Lukas May, Georgia Berry, James Townsend, Aaron Benjamin, Laura Hurley, and Helen Bray.

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