As Europe accelerates its transition to clean energy, a critical piece of the puzzle is scaling up carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies to achieve net-zero and even net-negative emissions. Policymakers across the continent are grappling with how to design effective regulatory frameworks that can incentivize the rapid deployment of CDR solutions, from direct air capture (DAC) plants and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) facilities to nature-based approaches like afforestation and soil carbon sequestration.
The urgency of this challenge cannot be overstated. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that 10 gigatons of CDR will be needed annually by 2050 and 20 gigatons by 2100 to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. This represents a monumental scale-up from the roughly 2 gigatons of CDR being achieved today, the vast majority of which comes from land-based solutions like reforestation.
Overcoming the technological, economic, and social barriers to deploying CDR at this unprecedented scale will require a comprehensive policy approach. Crucially, these policies must be designed to drive down the costs of emerging CDR solutions, ensure their environmental and social sustainability, and seamlessly integrate them with broader climate change mitigation strategies.
Regulatory Considerations for CDR
Policymakers grappling with CDR governance face a complex web of technical, economic, and social factors. At the most fundamental level, they must confront the challenge of how to incentivize the massive investments required to scale up CDR while also ensuring that these technologies deliver verifiable, durable, and equitable climate benefits.
Policy Frameworks
One of the core policy questions is whether to pursue technology-specific mandates or economy-wide, incentive-based approaches. Technology mandates, such as requirements for electrical utilities to deploy a certain amount of BECCS, offer the advantage of providing clear market signals. However, they risk locking in specific solutions and dampening innovation.
In contrast, incentive-based policies like carbon pricing or cap-and-trade systems allow the market to determine the most cost-effective CDR pathways. These approaches create a financial value for each ton of CO2 permanently removed from the atmosphere, spurring investment in the most viable CDR technologies.
Integrating CDR into broader climate policy frameworks, such as the European Union’s Emissions Trading System, could be a powerful way to harness market forces. However, policymakers must grapple with how to account for the unique characteristics of different CDR solutions, such as their varying degrees of permanence and risk of reversal.
Financial Incentives
Catalyzing the massive investment needed to scale up CDR will also require a suite of financial incentives. Direct government funding for research, development, and demonstration of emerging CDR technologies can help overcome the “valley of death” that often plagues early-stage innovations.
Demand-pull policies, such as feed-in tariffs or carbon removal procurement programs, can create a stable market for CDR services, providing the revenue certainty needed to unlock private investment. Tax credits, like the US 45Q credit for carbon capture and storage, can also play a key role.
Crucially, these financial incentives must be designed to evolve over time, transitioning from public support for R&D towards market-based mechanisms as CDR solutions mature. Policymakers must also grapple with how to equitably distribute the costs of CDR, whether through consumer energy prices, general taxation, or other means.
Monitoring and Verification
A robust system for monitoring, reporting, and verifying the performance of CDR projects is essential to ensure their integrity and climate impact. This is a significant challenge, as CDR encompasses a diverse array of technologies with varying degrees of permanence, leakage risks, and life-cycle emissions.
Policymakers must develop standardized protocols and third-party certification schemes to quantify the net CO2 removal achieved by different CDR approaches. They must also address complex issues of additionality, permanence, and potential displacement (or “leakage”) of emissions.
Overcoming these monitoring and verification hurdles will be crucial not only for harnessing CDR within compliance-based climate policies, but also for building trust in emerging voluntary carbon markets. Collaborative efforts between policymakers, technical experts, and industry stakeholders will be key to crafting effective solutions.
Technological Approaches to CDR
The CDR landscape encompasses a diverse array of technological approaches, each with its own unique attributes, challenges, and potential for scalability.
Direct Air Capture
Direct air capture (DAC) uses chemical processes to extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere, making it a promising solution for addressing hard-to-abate emissions. However, the energy-intensive nature of current DAC technologies and their relatively high costs ($90-$600 per ton of CO2) pose significant barriers to widespread deployment.
Policies that support continued RD&D to drive down DAC costs, as well as incentives to procure DAC services, will be crucial. Regulations governing the transportation and permanent storage of captured CO2 will also be key enablers.
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) combines the use of biofuels or biomass for energy production with the capture and storage of the resulting CO2 emissions. BECCS offers the potential for negative emissions, as the CO2 absorbed by the biomass during growth is effectively sequestered underground.
However, BECCS faces challenges around the sustainability of biomass sourcing, the energy and water demands of the CCS process, and the potential for indirect land-use change. Policies must address these issues to ensure BECCS delivers verifiable climate benefits.
Natural Climate Solutions
Natural climate solutions, such as afforestation, reforestation, and improved forest management, have the advantage of being relatively well-understood and deployable at scale today. However, they also face challenges around measurement, permanence, and competing land-use demands.
Policymakers must develop robust frameworks for quantifying the carbon sequestration potential of natural climate solutions, provide financial incentives for landowners to adopt these practices, and address potential trade-offs with other ecosystem services.
Environmental and Social Implications
The scale-up of CDR technologies also has the potential to create significant environmental and social impacts that must be carefully navigated.
Ecosystem Implications
Large-scale deployment of certain CDR approaches, such as BECCS or afforestation, could have far-reaching effects on land use, water resources, biodiversity, and food production. Policymakers must ensure that CDR projects are designed and sited in a way that minimizes these ecosystem impacts.
Life Cycle Assessment
A comprehensive life cycle assessment of CDR technologies is crucial to understanding their true climate impact. Factors such as the energy required to power DAC plants or the upstream emissions associated with biomass cultivation for BECCS must be carefully accounted for.
Policymakers can incentivize the use of low-carbon energy sources for CDR operations, as well as promote the development of sustainable biomass supply chains. Robust monitoring and verification protocols will be essential for quantifying these life cycle emissions.
Scaling Up CDR: Economic and Societal Challenges
The economic and social challenges of scaling up CDR cannot be overlooked. Achieving the necessary gigaton-scale deployment will require massive investment, technological breakthroughs, and widespread societal acceptance.
Cost Structures and Scalability
Current CDR costs vary widely, from $10-$100 per ton of CO2 for nature-based solutions to $90-$600 per ton for DAC. As deployment scales up, technological learning and economies of scale are expected to drive down these costs. But the pace and extent of these cost reductions remain highly uncertain.
Policymakers must design incentives that can effectively catalyze private investment in CDR, while also considering the equitable distribution of the resulting costs. Measures like carbon pricing, procurement programs, and targeted R&D funding will all have a role to play.
Public Perception and Ethical Concerns
The societal acceptance of CDR will also be a critical factor in its successful scale-up. Concerns around the environmental justice implications, potential risks, and ethical considerations of large-scale CDR deployment must be addressed.
Robust public engagement, transparent monitoring and reporting, and a focus on equitable benefit-sharing will be essential for building trust and buy-in. Policymakers must also grapple with thorny questions around responsibility for addressing legacy emissions and the moral implications of “engineering” the climate.
The Path Forward: Policy Pathways and International Coordination
Crafting effective regulatory frameworks for CDR will require a multifaceted approach that spans technological innovation, economic incentives, and societal acceptance. Policymakers must also navigate the challenges of harmonizing these efforts across national and regional boundaries.
Research and Development
Continued public investment in R&D for emerging CDR technologies, coupled with demand-pull policies to stimulate commercial deployment, will be crucial. Collaborative initiatives like the European Union’s Horizon Europe program can help drive innovation and cost reductions.
Policy Pathways
Integrating CDR into broader climate policy frameworks, such as carbon pricing or emissions trading systems, can create powerful market-based incentives. But policymakers must also consider technology-specific mandates, financial incentives, and robust monitoring and verification protocols.
The sequencing and coordination of these various policy levers will be critical, as the transition to a CDR-enabled net-zero economy will require carefully balancing emissions reduction and carbon removal strategies.
International Coordination
Finally, the global nature of the climate challenge means that international cooperation and policy harmonization will be essential. Initiatives like the UN Climate Change Conference (COP) provide a platform for countries to align their CDR strategies and share best practices.
By working together, European nations can capitalize on their collective technological and financial resources to accelerate the deployment of CDR solutions at the scale required to address the climate crisis. The future of our planet may well depend on it.
