Climate Advocate | Policy @ Carbonfuture | Founder @ CDRjobs | Chair @ DVNE | Ex-Merkel, World Bank, Tech Entrepreneur | UCL-Cambridge-Harvard 🇩🇪🇪🇺🇮🇹
👇🇪🇺 Takeaways from the Carbon Dioxide Removal (#CDR) Summit in #Brussels 👇🇪🇺 Keen for the latest trends in CDR policy in Europe? Hosted by Negative Emissions Platform and Breakthrough Energy , the Summit brought together leaders from the private sector, civil society, and European institutions for an intimate discussion on CDR policy. Highlights: 🏒 US & EU - two shots on goal? Approaches across the Atlantic couldn't differ more. In the US, the focus is not on drafting perfect regulation, but on deploying capital to drive incremental innovation now. In the EU, focus is on long-term targets and getting certification right. My take: we will need both! 🤔 Portfolio approach, but really? Everyone talks about the need for tech diversity. We are far off that. In the US, it's DAC DAC DAC. In Europe, we are clearly picking winners: #DAC, #BECCS, and increasingly biochar carbon removal (#BCR). Both leading EU Parliament Committees (#ENVI, #AGRI) recommended BCR as the third permanent removal method in the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (#CRCF). ❗Keeping reductions and removals separate? One of the biggest risks we face in EU CDR policy is conflating the two. To everyone's shock, the CRCF already includes reductions. Now #AGRI is planning to put reductions all over the CRCF. We cannot allow that! 💶 We need funding, but from where? Early stage funding abounds, but for Series A and beyond, VC money dries up. Even more so in Europe, leading to an exodus towards the US/Bay Area. The EU #InnovationFund might help: out of €3b deployed so far, €1.8b went to projects with carbon management. We might see more and more for CDR growth companies. 🔥 Women only panels rock! A unanimous takeaway from this conference. Five rockstar women leading global CDR companies and sharing their boundless experience in such a refreshing and energetic way. Clearly the highlight of the conference. Event organisers: more of this, please! So what's lined up in the EU? I'll be following two things closely: 1. 2040 target setting, which will hopefully recommend ambitious #twintargets (reductions & removals). 2. CRCF negotiations, with both ENVI and AGRI having submitted their amendments. Summer break is around the corner, time to get some work done before! A huge thank you to the organisers, particularly Maria and Breakthrough Energy , as well as Chris, Christoph, and especially Alina from the Negative Emissions Platform. Also really appreciated the insights from all the conversations I had at the Summit with - among many others - Eli, Fabien, Matteo, Alexis, Leila, Pia Henrietta, Hanna, Marta, Mark, Wijnand, Amy, Nora, Paolo, Adina, Codie, Anna, Isabella, Aaron, Jason, Glenn, Venna, Elodie, Louis, Hansjörg. Whether you attended or not: do these takeaways resonate with you? What are your priorities in EU CDR policy? #carbonremoval #cdrsummit
thanks, Sebastian. Really interesting for those of us who couldn't make it! :) Agree, we need to keep pushing + articulating the all-important distinctions and roles between reductions and removals!
Thank you for sharing Sebastian! Would you like to add a shoutout of these five rockstar panelists here?
Thank you for the summary!
thanks for the round up!
On a mission to remove CO2 from the atmosphere I Biochar Carbon Removal Expert I Board Member of Negative Emissions Platform I Illuminem Thought Leader
1yThanks for sharing your insights that very much resonate with me. Agree on your focus on 2040 targets and CRCF. Wonderful to have you watch out. 🧐 Talking about funding, I believe we are still thinking way too much StartUp on the supply side, while we are more comparable to massive energy infrastructure projects.