🇪🇸 Spain: Europe’s sleeping CDR giant?

📑 Today, Carbon Gap is releasing yet another gem: its Spain CDR Readiness Report. 

💪 The one line takeaway: no other country in Europe can match the sheer potential of Spain when it comes to CDR, yet the country is far from realising this potential.

First, let’s look at why Spain is so well placed:

⚡As fossil fuel prices soar, Spain’s bet is paying off: 55.5% of electricity renewables, with a target of 81% by 2030 building an industry expected to be worth €308b and 560,000 jobs by 2030

🎯 Spain is expected to over-archieve domestic 2030 target by 7%, expected to earn it around €10b/year as a result.

🪵 Spain produces 174Mt biomass residues / year, of which it uses only 16Mt for energy today.

📊 The estimated geological storage in Spain is 11Gt, some say even up to 44Gt. In fact, it already hosts the only active on-shore well in Europe, albeit for research only.

🏢 Companies in Spain with more than 250 employees have to report Scope 1+2 in 2026 and Scope 3 in 2028, going way beyond the EU’s requirement ( >1,000 employees)

👏 Clearly, Spain is both leading on climate already today AND has everything it takes to develop a fully-fledged, world-class CDR industry.

😱 Carbon Gap estimated the theoretical maximum of CDR to be 196Mt/year by 2050. When we look only at human made CDR, we are looking at 17Mt-69Mt per year, or 26Mt-101Mt including LULUCF, clearly above Spain’s stated need of 29Mt/year of residual emissions by 2050. 

So what is the catch? 

🏛️ Spain currently has almost no policy for CDR and no targets for non-LULUCF removals. It is also lagging behind when it comes to the development of CO2 transport and storage infrastructure, which the report identifies as the biggest bottleneck.

🇪🇺 Were Spain to act fast, it could become a powerhouse, creating a huge industry for CDR that could build on and replicate its successes in renewables. If it waits, however, it could lose out and become dependent on other EU countries.

👀 So what does Spain need to do? Check out the actual report for a full list of specific policies - need to leave a bit of a teaser after all ;-) https://lnkd.in/e39DNDrQ

Follow the conversation