The Carbon Removal Scoop

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Cara Maesano, lead author of RMI's new report Mining and Carbon Dioxide Removal: A Responsible Path Forward, to dig into an industry the carbon removal world has barely talked about. Cara's starting point is striking: with the land, materials and engineering know-how that mines already have, almost every form of carbon removal could run on a mine site. But only one approach, she argues, really has to.

Much of the conversation centres on surficial mineralisation, where reactive mine waste absorbs CO2 from the air and locks it away as stable minerals. Cara walks through the new research hub at Thetford Mines in Quebec, set up by Frontier and Carbon Removal Canada on a legacy of asbestos waste the local community wants gone, and explains how churning and activating tailings could push carbonation far deeper than the surface layer. She is clear that these are not cookie-cutter projects, and why.

The hosts also press on the numbers. Cara is candid that the report's headline potential and $80 to $300 price range rest on theoretical and price-based estimates rather than hard cost data. On policy, she explains why permitting is a bigger hurdle than mining's vast footprint suggests: mines are permitted to do specific things with their waste and rarely deviate, which is why building carbon removal in from the very start of a mine's life may be easier than adding it later.

They close on the business case. Thin profit margins per ton of CO2 mean miners are unlikely to buy durable removals, but they may have strong reasons to deliver them on site, from green premiums to tax credits to the environmental liabilities sitting in their tailings piles. Tune in to hear the one thing Cara says is holding the industry back.

LINKS:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Cara Maesano: LinkedIn
• RMI: Website
• Mining and Carbon Dioxide Removal: A Responsible Path Forward (RMI, August 2026):
• Frontier: Launching the Quebec Surficial Mineralization Hub
• Arca announces agreement with Microsoft for nearly 300,000 tonnes of durable carbon removal
• Isometric partners with Anglo American and ZeroEx on Project Earthstone
• The Carbon Curve: Canada's Next Industrial Play: The Mine That Stores Carbon

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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme moderates our fifth SHOWDOWN debate, live on stage at Carbon Unbound Europe in London. The motion takes on one of the hottest fault lines in European carbon removal policy: should Europe’s CDR strategy put BioCCS (biogenic carbon capture and storage) first?

In the BioCCS corner, Kaja Voss, CEO and Founder of Inherit: an economist and believer in markets. Three-quarters of durable offtakes to date are already BioCCS, it sits lowest on the cost curve among high-durability solutions, and the pipelines and terminals it builds will serve other pathways later. Europe should pick that winner “on purpose rather than by accident.”

In the tech neutrality corner, Alastair Collier, Chief R&D Officer at A Healthier Earth: “When you concentrate the technology, you concentrate the politics.” Pointing to Australia’s repeal of its carbon price, he warns that concentrating storage in a handful of member states and paying oil and gas companies to run it creates an easy target for climate sceptics.

From Northern Lights and storage as a public utility to the CRCF (the EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming certification framework) and a closing call to look to China, the room had plenty to weigh before casting its vote. Listen to the end to find out who won.

LINKS:

• Eve Tamme: Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Kaja Voss: LinkedIn
• Inherit: Website
• Alastair Collier: LinkedIn
• A Healthier Earth: Website
• Carbon Unbound Europe

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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme sits down with Delia Meth-Cohn, Co-founder of Rethinking Removals, to make sense of what happened to ISO 14060, the draft net zero standard for organisations. When Delia joined Sebastian in June, the draft had just opened for consultation. Since then it has drawn around 5,000 comments and failed its first ballot, a rare result at this stage of an ISO process.

Delia explains why this vote was different. Participation was capped at four experts per country because of the level of interest, few national standards bodies abstained, and the draft fell well short of ISO's thresholds of two-thirds approval with no more than a quarter of votes against. She walks through what comes next, a second draft and two more votes, and why publication now looks closer to 2028 than mid-2027.

Eve and Delia dig into why the draft felt rushed, why an ISO standard carries quasi-regulatory weight that SBTi does not, and how the ground is shifting underneath it, with ISO and the GHG Protocol rewriting the foundations of carbon accounting. Delia's challenge for the next round is to treat the comments as themes rather than wording, and to find the balance between flexibility and credibility without watering the standard down.

The conversation closes on removals. Speaking personally, Delia sets out how the next draft might handle anticipated residual emissions and the gap between cheap credits and expensive removals, and has a pointed message for a removals community she suggests needs to rethink its approach.

LINKS:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Delia Meth-Cohn: LinkedIn
• Rethinking Removal
• Our previous episode, Inside the ISO Net Zero Standard with Delia Meth-Cohn:
• ISO/DIS 14060 Net Zero Aligned Organizations
• Trellis, ISO members send net-zero draft back for revisions
• SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0
• ISO and GHG Protocol partnership on unified carbon accounting standards

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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Julia Reichelstein, co-founder and CEO of Vaulted Deep, and Tyler Manchester, Head of Voluntary Carbon at CFP Energy, to get the inside story of Vaulted's $35 million debt facility from Mediobanca. Julia explains why Vaulted grew on equity for its first two sites and why, with a delivery track record and a pipeline of new sites, it has now reached what she calls the "just add water" stage where debt is the right capital.

Tyler explains why this is CFP Energy's first debt transaction in carbon removal after two decades in carbon markets, and what it took to get comfortable: a developer with a proven record, high-credit offtakers removing market risk, and an insurer covering the residual project risk that institutional lenders expect. He is open about who else can get through the door, including the rough minimum loan size CFP will consider, and why he thinks the market's chicken-and-egg problem is finally starting to crack.

Julia makes the case that bankability starts long before anyone talks to a bank. She describes how the fine print of an offtake contract, the page she once skipped past, became the page lenders scrutinised most, and recounts the working capital fight that pushed registries and buyers towards monthly crediting. Both credit Frontier for brokering the introduction and publishing offtake templates others can reuse.

They close on policy. Every debt deal discussed in the episode closed outside Europe, and Tyler sets out what would change that: projectable revenue, ideally fixed forward prices or a liquid forward market. Sebastian lays down a challenge for the first European deal, and Tyler accepts it.

LINKS:

• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Julia Reichelstein: LinkedIn
• Tyler Manchester: LinkedIn
• Vaulted Deep: Website
• CFP Energy: Website (https://www.cfp.energy/)
• Vaulted Deep secures $35 million in debt financing
• Frontier offtake agreement template

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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Alexander Mäkelä, Chief Policy Officer at Carbon Gap, to dig into the Policy Levers Library: a new living database of 165 policy levers across six policy families, unveiled at Carbon Gap's Carbon Removal Policy Summit in Brussels. Alex's starting point is blunt. The sector keeps reaching for the same few tools, contracts for difference, direct procurement, the EU ETS, and that may be a failure of imagination.

Asked which lever Europe is leaving untouched, Alex lands on finance. Demand certainty dominates the conversation, but without bankability and capital ready to deploy, he argues, projects simply won't materialise. He makes the case for CDR debt that is as boring as renewables debt, and points to Stockholm Exergi's crowded capital stack as a sign of just how much it currently takes to get a BECCS project over the line.

Eve and Sebastian also put the library itself under the microscope: why there is no impact score among its eleven criteria, how the team scored every lever using case studies from Europe, North America and the Global South, and where a policymaker handed the link should actually start. The hosts push for something the tool doesn't do yet, connecting policymakers with those who have already solved the same problem somewhere else.

The conversation closes on advocacy, and why Alex thinks the sector is too reactive and too focused on Brussels when thousands of German municipalities alone have no plan for removals. Tune in to hear why Carbon Gap actively wants people to steal its work.

LINKS:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Alexander Mäkelä: LinkedIn
• Carbon Gap: Website
• Policy Levers Library
• Carbon Removal Policy Summit
• Our episode recorded at the Carbon Removal Policy Summit

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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with James Screen, who until recently led the team designing carbon removal policy at the UK's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. A year after the Scoop covered Alan Whitehead's independent review of greenhouse gas removals, James explains what the government's response actually is: not a grand strategy, but a staging post that sets out the UK's direction of travel and leaves the hardest questions for the Carbon Budget 7 delivery plan.

James is candid in sharing his personal views about where the response parts ways with the review. He explains why there is little political appetite to reopen what net zero means by adopting geological net zero, the outlook on woodland in the UK ETS, and reads the new "as soon as practicable" timeline for removals in the UK ETS against the backdrop of possible UK and EU ETS linking.

The conversation then turns to the GGR business models. James walks through how carbon contracts for difference sit on top of the network support model in clusters like Liverpool Bay, why he thinks the model can work for both voluntary and ETS sales, and why taxpayer subsidy cannot be the enduring answer. Sebastian and Eve also find themselves on opposite sides of whether the UK and Europe are making too narrow a bet on BioCCS and DAC.

They close on the reshuffle that followed the response, with James explaining why he sees continuity rather than radical change, and why the story of solar and offshore wind gives him real cause for optimism.

LINKS:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• James Screen: LinkedIn
• Independent review on greenhouse gas removals: government response
• Independent Review of Greenhouse Gas Removals by Alan Whitehead

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In this quarterly catch up, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart swap the guest chair for each other and look back at three busy months in carbon removal policy, with a few disagreements along the way.

They start with the EU ETS review and the joint statement from Europe's five CDR associations, which Sebastian helped coordinate. He shares some of the background scoop on where the associations lined up and where they didn't, from biochar and the link to the Carbon Removal Certification Framework to whether international credits belong in the ETS at all. Eve draws on her experience of the last time international credits entered the system, and Sebastian previews his first academic paper on what a credible international credit portfolio might actually cost.

Then comes the bigger question: is Europe putting all its eggs in the BioCCS basket, or is it six baskets? Sebastian worries that newer and potentially cheaper approaches are being left behind, while Eve makes the case for backing the projects that can deliver at scale now, and pushes back on the idea that all of Europe's CO2 is heading to the North Sea.

They close with a reality check on the EU buyers coalition, where the usual optimist and sceptic swap roles, slow progress on durable removals under Article 6.4, and why the headlines out of New York Climate Week may not tell the whole story for carbon removal finance.

LINKS:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Joint statement from five CDR associations on the EU ETS review
• Mapping conflicts in carbon removal narratives (Prütz et al., Nature portfolio)
• MEP Emma Wiesner: Let EU ETS Operators buy CDR Directly
• Sebastian's preprint on international credit portfolios

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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Chi-ming Peng, Taiwan's Minister of Environment, shortly after he set a target that put Taiwan on the carbon removal map: one million tons of biochar carbon removal by 2030. A meteorologist and entrepreneur before he entered government, Minister Peng explains where the target came from, starting with a simple question to his team about who was responsible for biochar, and the discovery that nobody had yet submitted a carbon credit methodology for it.

The pressure behind the target is hard to miss. Taiwan sits at the centre of the global AI supply chain, and its semiconductor giants will need carbon credits at a scale that expensive engineered removals cannot yet supply. With a carbon fee already in place and an emissions trading system on the way, Minister Peng makes the case that biochar is the pathway Taiwan can move on now, and explains why he is looking so closely at Europe's CRCF, the Buyers' Club and the EU ETS.

Eve and Sebastian press him on the hard parts. Where will the feedstock come from, given five million tons of agricultural waste a year that mostly heads to incinerators? Why is importing more such a tough sell, with public resistance and the Basel Convention in the way? And how does a country that cannot attend COP as a party still plan to trade carbon credits under Article 6.2, with Paraguay first in line?

They close on the next six to twelve months: the machines, the money, and the methodology still to be locked down before Taiwan's number can move from ambition to actual credits. Whether biochar becomes part of Taiwan's answer to a semiconductor industry's carbon problem, or another target that outruns the paperwork, is the question worth watching from here.

LINKS

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Minister Chi-ming Peng: LinkedIn and Facebook
• Ministry of Environment, Taiwan
• Taiwan and Paraguay sign MOU on carbon credit cooperation under the Paris Agreement

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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Emma Wiesner, Renew Europe's shadow rapporteur on the EU ETS review, as she finalises her amendments to the Commission's proposal to bring carbon removals into the EU Emissions Trading System. Emma is an energy systems engineer who sits on the European Parliament's ENVI and ITRE committees and substitutes in AGRI committee. She pushed for a market for negative emissions in the last ETS revision, and says seeing it finally proposed gave her goosebumps.

Her biggest ask is that the Commission should not be the only buyer. Emma wants ETS installations to be able to buy removals directly instead of allowances, with those purchases counted within the overall 250 megaton cap, creating a business to business market she argues would be far more dynamic than waiting on a central purchasing facility. Eve and Sebastian test the idea against Peter Liese's scepticism, the cost gap between removals and EU allowances, and whether every installation should get the same access.

On quality, Emma is firm: the CRCF separated permanent from temporary removals for a reason, and the ETS should build on it. Biochar is not ready today, she says, though the door should stay open. On international credits she is openly reluctant, pointing to Sweden's e-scooters in Ghana as a cautionary tale and making a moral case for Europe doing its homework at home.

The conversation closes on what should happen to unused CDR allowances, when purchasing should start, and the childhood landfill visit that sparked Emma's passion for combined heat and power and BECCS.

LINKS

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Emma Wiesner: LinkedIn and European Parliament profile
• EU ETS revision proposal
• MEP Peter Liese: the Rapporteur's take on removals in the EU ETS

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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart record live from Brussels across two days at Carbon Gap's first Carbon Removal Policy Summit, sitting down partway through with Rodica Avornic, Policy Director at Carbon Gap and one of the summit's organisers.

Eve and Sebastian open by previewing a programme built around four levels of governance: international, EU, national, and local. They come away most struck by Carbon Gap's own contributions, a policy levers library cataloguing more than 165 tools and a forthcoming book, The Foundations of Carbon Removal. They also dig into the EU Buyers Club's rebrand as the EU Buyers Coalition and the ambition to use it as a test ground for a future ETS purchasing facility.

Rodica joins to reflect on the summit's turnout before turning to what worries her about the post-2030 landscape. She notes that the ETS covers only 40 percent of EU emissions, leaving the other 60 percent an open question, and argues that the EU's ten year policy cycles push carbon removal thinking toward short term wins. She also calls for stronger guardrails, given that the CRCF was designed for the voluntary market rather than a compliance scheme.

The episode closes with Eve and Sebastian's own summary of the day: a recurring tension over whether standards should match across governance levels, the unresolved gap between national inventories and CRCF issued credits, and Achim Steiner's warning that carbon removal remains concentrated in too few countries, buyers, and technologies.

LINKS

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Rodica Avornic: LinkedIn 
• Carbon Gap: Policy Levers Library 
• Carbon Gap: Foundations of Carbon Removal. A practical reference for policy, markets and implementation
• Eve Tamme and Paul Zakkour: Will the Carbon Removal Certification Framework count in the race to climate neutrality?

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