In this final instalment of our three-part policy miniseries, Tom and Emily look to the future of carbon removal policy: who’s shaping it, what’s getting in the way, and what else can Emily see in her crystal ball?

In this episode:

🏗️ Building the Future Without a Manual: We meet a company navigating what it means to innovate when the rulebook hasn’t been written yet (and may be printed in two jurisdictions at once).

🎯 How CDR Is Getting Heard: Industry lobbying isn’t just for big corporates - our startup ecosystem can also get involved. But we learn than misperceptions around CDR (it’s not CCS!) are still widespread among policymakers.

💡 Voluntary Policy Is Still Policy: We explore the de facto power of the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which influences climate action across thousands of the world's biggest companies - despite being entirely voluntary. But will its guidance on removals give the sector the boost it needs?

🌍 Watch Out for the Global South: We all know that the future of CDR isn’t just in Europe and North America. But how can policy help build benefit-sharing frameworks, bring legal clarity, and drive investment confidence around the world?

🏙️ Think Global, Act Local: While attention is often on the big-hitters, are local initiatives quietly shaping the next wave of CDR? Bonus: you too can be a policy influencer without wearing a tie.

🧵 Now It’s Your Turn: After 15+ hours of interviews and more acronyms than we can legally fit on this page, we reflect on the biggest takeaways from this miniseries - complexity, possibility, and the role each of us has to play in shaping what comes next.

👥 Featuring:

Guest insights from

• Oliver Grogono (Standard Gas Technologies)
• Nikolaus Wohlgemuth (Carbonfuture)
• Chris Sherwood, Elisabeth Harding and Lambrini Margariti (Negative Emissions Platform)
• Robert Höglund (Milkywire)
• Shilpika Gautam (Opna)
• Omoloro Meshack (CAP-A)
• Christopher Neidl (OpenAir Collective)
• Christoph Beuttler (Carbon Gap)

• Hosts Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte
• Producer Ben Weaver-Hincks

In the second of our three-part deep dive, we plunge into the murky, acronym-rich depths of carbon removal policy across the UN, the EU, the US and beyond - and we promise to come up for air, eventually.

In this episode:

🧠 Acronyms and Initialisms Aplenty: Consider yourselves warned. This episode contains more letters than a game of Scrabble. Don't worry, it'll be quacking... sorry, cracking.

🌐 The UN – Going Global: We finally (finally!) get to grips with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement - the big hope for creating a global, compliance-grade carbon market. So, does it deserve its place as the darling of the CDR community?

🧱 The EU – Slow and Steady Wins The Race: We dissect Europe’s tripartite climate framework, learn what the CRCF stands for, and ponder the possibility of removals entering the ETS by 2031 (yes, we said 2031… pace yourselves.)

💵 The US – Land of the Free… Tax Credits: While the EU leans into regulation, the US has chosen financial incentives to scale engineered CDR… for now. (Content advisory: information likely to be outdated within minutes.)

🌏 Zooming Out: Switzerland is quietly blazing a trail. Japan is scaling up a national carbon market. India is laying the foundations. There’s a lot going on out there, if you’re willing to look.

🧩 Policy vs Reality: We explore how the right policy for the right place might be the secret to scaling CDR globally - and why no single blueprint might work for everyone.

👥 Featuring:

Guest insights from

• Sebastian Manhart (Carbonfuture)
• Eve Tamme (Climate Principles)
• Elisabeth Harding (Negative Emissions Platform)
• Varsha Ramesh Walsh (Offstream)
• Shilpika Gautam (Opna)
• Sylvain Delerce (Carbon Gap)

• Hosts Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte
• Producer Ben Weaver-Hincks

Welcome to the first in a Carbon Removal Show three-part policy miniseries! We’re diving into the bureaucratic spaghetti of CDR policy - what it is, why we need it, and why pretending it doesn’t exist is no longer an option. It’ll be fun – we promise.

In this episode:

📜 Policy 101: What do we mean when we talk about carbon removal policy? Tom, Emily and their guests unpack the layers - from global frameworks to national targets, and the many policies themselves that can (hopefully) keep this show on the road.

🏛️ A Brief History of Climate Governance: We rewind all the way to the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement, to understand the context in which CDR policy is emerging. Turns out, carbon removal has technically been part of the discussion for some time - but it took a while to step out of the LULUCF shadows and into the limelight.

🛠️ The Goals of CDR Policy: Whether it’s support for scaling the industry or regulation for doing it right, we explore the many roles that policy can play in ensuring CDR does what it’s supposed to. Who should pay for it? How can we avoid unintended consequences? And is it too late to bribe policymakers with Emily’s banana bread?

🌍 It’s All Connected: We learn that CDR doesn’t happen in a vacuum – and that means CDR policy can’t either. It's entangled with everything from energy to land use to ocean governance. And yes, ocean-based CDR is complicated when 40% of the sea has no nation.

🍖 The Bony Meat Pie Metaphor™: How do NDCs, interim targets and policies work together to meet(/meat?) our climate goals? It’s all very clever, but not especially appetising.

🧪 Avoiding Déjà Vu: We ask what we can learn from previous climate and environmental policies – so we don’t spend the next decade reinventing the wheel, crashing it into a forest, and accidentally calling it carbon neutral.

👥 Featuring:

Guest insights from

• Sebastian Manhart (Carbonfuture)
• Eve Tamme (Climate Principles)
• Christoph Beuttler (Carbon Gap)
• Wil Burns (Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal)
• Robert Höglund (Milkywire)
• Bojana Bajzelj (BeZero)
• Christopher Neidl (OpenAir Collective)

• Hosts Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte
• Producer Ben Weaver-Hincks

Welcome back to The Carbon Removal Show! We’re kicking off Season 4 with a view from the top - checking in on the state of the carbon removal industry here in the dizzying heights of 2025.

In this episode:

🌍 Where are we now? Durable CDR purchases hit 8 million tonnes in 2024 (a 78% bump from 2023), but 64% of that was Microsoft flexing. Deliveries? Still catching up – and most of it’s biochar.

📉 Caveats, ahoy: Sales are booming, but actual removals are still lagging. The buyer pool is basically a tech giant party.

🚨 Bubble watch: Are we living in a beautifully optimistic carbon bubble? Is it about to pop? Will Tom’s optimism hat survive the bubble bath? We explore industry hype vs. hard truths, including the risks of undelivered credits and startup casualties.

📊 The vibe check: Emily’s on an emotional rollercoaster. Tom is backing the CDR horse. Ben’s beard is greyer. Collectively, we’re cautiously hopeful.

🛠️ What needs to happen?: Scaling isn’t just tech - it’s finance, policy, public understanding, and clear comms. We need to get the message out of the bubble and into the next layer of the onion. (Just… not into Emily’s bubble bath. Please.)

🚗 A history lesson you didn’t know you needed: Did you know the best-selling car in 1897 was electric? We could’ve been 100 years ahead… but markets are messy.

👥 Featuring:

• Guest insights from Robert Höglund and Sebastian Manhart
• Hosts Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte
• Producer Ben Weaver-Hincks

🔗 Links & Resources:

• CDR.fyi – The go-to source for up-to-date data on carbon removal purchases, deliveries, and market trends.
• CDRjobs – A live job board dedicated to carbon removal opportunities.
• "Public perception of carbon dioxide removal technologies in the United States and the United Kingdom" – Emily Cox, Elspeth Spence and Nick Pidgeon, Nature Climate Change, 2020
• This episode of Freakonomics Radio, all about the history of electric vehicles.

🎧 Featured Podcasts & Voices

• Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey – Hosted by Tom Previte - a climate startup podcast for fans of this show.
• CDR Policy Scoop – Hosted by Sebastian Manhart & Eve Tamme - deep dives into CDR policy.
• Milkywire – Robert Höglund's organization supporting impactful climate and CDR initiatives.

The Carbon Removal Show team are dusting off our mics, and we have some exciting news!

The biggest of welcomes and ‘thank you’s to our coalition partners: BeZero, Carbon Engineering, Carbonfuture, Carbon Gap, CarbonX, Klarna, MASH Makes, Milkywire, the Negative Emissions Platform, Opna, Patch, Pinwheel, Planboo, ReCarber, Standard Gas Technologies and Supercritical; and to our individual supporters: Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including how to support our mission, head to thecarbonremovalshow.com.

While you’re waiting for more episodes of The Carbon Removal Show, we wanted to introduce you to another project that our very own Tom Previte has been busy on…

Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey

This is the story of a startup that wants to remove carbon from the atmosphere and help reshape our relationship with the planet. Ideally without burning to the ground in the process.

It was a good few years back when Tom stumbled across biochar. That was during the first season of The Carbon Removal Show. And it turns out that this biochar stuff… it's not just an ancient technology but also a cutting-edge solution for today’s climate problems. 

Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey captures the highs and lows of a green startup - from sharp learning curves to unlikely breakthroughs. Listen in as Tom digs deep into the realities and complexities of setting up a carbon removal project, and gets to grips with the science, the money, and everything it takes to build an environmentally (and financially) sustainable business.

Because if we’re going to save the planet, we’re going to need a lot more businesses like this one.

Search for ‘Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey’ in your favourite podcast player, or click here for all the links.

What happens when an individual company bakes industry scale up into their business philosophy? In this episode, Jakob Andersen shares the “gigaton thinking” mindset that drives his company, MASH Makes, in their approach to business and biochar.

MASH Makes started as a project at the Technological University of Denmark focusing on technology that could convert various waste streams (mainly residue biomass) into different energy products. In short, MASH Makes use automated machines that are able to produce bio oil, hydrogen and electricity from agricultural waste, with the main byproduct of this process being biochar – a soil amendment that actively absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere.

Big thanks to MASH Makes for supporting this episode.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to thecarbonremovalshow.com.

And thanks to Cofruition for consulting on and producing the show.

With scaling up in mind, this episode dives into an innovative concept that could help the industry take big steps forward. Tom and Emily are joined by Jonny Gilson from Carbonaires and Professor Niall Mac Dowell from Imperial College London to discuss Carbonaires’ ideas for the future of the voluntary carbon market. 

Big thanks to Carbonaires for supporting this episode.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to thecarbonremovalshow.com.

And thanks to Cofruition for consulting on and producing the show.

2023 was a big year for carbon removal! With only 27 years until 2050, Tom and Emily look back on the last 12 months to reflect on the current stage of the industry’s growth commercially, socially and politically. With big thanks to the organisers, speakers and participants of Carbon Unbound Europe 2023 for welcoming us to the event and for all the inspiration.

Huge thanks to all our guests in this episode:

Sebastian Manhart, Senior Policy Advisor at Carbonfuture

Oliver Katz, Founder and CEO of Unbound Summits

Michelle Li, Founder and Executive Director of Women and Climate

Gabrielle Walker, Co-Founder of CUR8 and Founder of Rethinking Removals

Bilha Ndirangu, CEO at Great Carbon Valley

Ted Christie-Miller, Director of Carbon Removal at BeZero Carbon

And our very own Producer Ben, making his on-mic debut for The Carbon Removal Show!

We also shout out a lot of other hard working CDR companies and organisations in this episode:

• CDR.fyi
• Carbon Removals at COP
• Mission Zero
• Heirloom
• Climeworks
• Rewind: biomass sinking
• Brilliant Planet: macroalgae
• Equatic: ocean direct carbon removal
• Deutscher Verband für negative Emissionen
• CO2RE Future Leaders Network: join the Slack
• Women and Climate: join the Slack

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to thecarbonremovalshow.com.

And thanks to Cofruition for consulting on and producing the show.

Resources and further reading

Climeworks and Great Carbon Valley chart path to large-scale direct air capture and storage deployment in Kenya: https://climeworks.com/news/climeworks-and-great-carbon-valley-chart-path-to-large-scale-dac 

Mission Zero turns on UK’s first direct air capture plant to enable jet fuel made from air: https://www.missionzero.tech/news/uk-first-direct-air-capture-plant 

Suck carbon from the air? US facility launches novel climate solution: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/19/carbon-dioxide-direct-air-capture 

On the durability of biochar carbon storage: https://biochar.systems/durability-statement/

Assessing biochar's permanence: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166516223002276?via%3Dihub 

Frontier Makes Largest Carbon Removal Purchase From Lithos Carbon: https://carbonherald.com/frontier-makes-largest-carbon-removal-purchase-from-lithos-carbon/

Carbonfuture, Exomad Green, and Microsoft Sign One of the Largest Biochar Carbon Removal Deals To-Date: https://www.carbonfuture.com/project-showcase/carbonfuture-announces-innovative-offtake-collaboration-with-exomad-green-and-microsoft-for-large-scale-biochar-carbon-removal 

COP28 — Mixed Results on Removals, Markets and Carbon Capture: https://evetamme.com/2023/12/14/cop28-on-carbon-removal-ccs-and-markets/ 

Why Carbon Removals Are Center Stage At COP28: https://www.forbes.com/sites/phildeluna/2023/12/07/why-carbon-removals-are-center-stage-at-cop28/?sh=26a7e1e82c68 

Climeworks Direct Air Capture Summit 2023 Highlights: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://climeworkscom.cdn.prismic.io/climeworkscom/9493f4d4-676f-47cc-a1f8-8959bc84abee_DAC%2BSummit%2Bhighlights%2B2023%2B%25282%2529.pdf&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1704643167135658&usg=AOvVaw1O0rP7eNt04mSMiYQB3UKo

Paying for Quality: State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2023: https://3298623.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/3298623/SOVCM%202023/2023-EcoMarketplace_SOVCM-Nov28_FINALrev-1.pdf

The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal Report: https://www.stateofcdr.org/

Fossil-fuel industry embrace raises alarm bells over direct air capture: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/fossil-fuel-industry-embrace-raises-alarm-bells-over-direct-air-capture-2023-10-10/

Biden picks two DAC hubs for federal funding: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/cen-10127-buscon1

Season 3 continues and the team remains focused on scaling up. The question today: has it been done before? The task ahead is huge and can sometimes feel insurmountable. In order to deliver what scientists say is needed, the carbon removal industry must go from the young seedling emerging market we know today to a great complex ecosystem - and time is against us. Has this level of growth ever been seen before?

In today’s episode, Tom and Emily go hunting for reassuring precedents and inspirational analogies. Every global industry that we now take for granted was once a young seedling too. How do those industries compare to CDR? What can we learn from their development? And will looking at their histories help us feel more prepared for the future?

In this episode, we listen back to brief clips from Sophie Purdom, co-founder of CTVC, and Dr Steve Smith, executive director of CO2RE. We first heard from them in season 1 episode 1 and season 2 episode 2 respectively.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to thecarbonremovalshow.com.

And thanks to Cofruition for consulting on and producing the show.

Resources and further reading

Analogies and ecoraps for more carbon removal - https://medium.com/nori-carbon-removal/analogies-and-ecoraps-for-more-carbon-removal-3f4e8d92d1b4

Explaining the Exponential Growth of Renewable Energy - https://www.wri.org/insights/growth-renewable-energy-sector-explained 

Developments in wind power - https://post.parliament.uk/research-briefings/post-pn-0602/ 

The Hole: How Ronnie and Maggie Saved the World - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2JzOlRff08&t=1s

Back from the brink: how the world rapidly sealed a deal to save the ozone layer - https://rapidtransition.org/stories/back-from-the-brink-how-the-world-rapidly-sealed-a-deal-to-save-the-ozone-layer/ 

Learning from Success: Lessons in Science and Diplomacy from the Montreal Protocol - https://www.sciencediplomacy.org/article/2020/learning-success-lessons-in-science-and-diplomacy-montreal-protocol 

Should carbon removal be treated as waste management? Lessons from the cultural history of waste - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2020.0010#d1e755 

Is the UK’s waste infrastructure ready for a circular economy - https://rrfw.org.uk/2018/01/08/is-the-uks-waste-infrastructure-ready-for-a-circular-economy/ 

Shifting the Direct Air Capture Paradigm - https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/solving-direct-air-carbon-capture-challenge

How have COVID-19 vaccines been developed so fast - https://www.immunology.org/public-information/vaccine-resources/covid-19/covid-19-vaccine-infographics/speed-of-development 

A Guide to Global COVID-19 Vaccine Efforts - https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/guide-global-covid-19-vaccine-efforts

How COVID‐19 vaccine supply chains emerged in the midst of a pandemic - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8447169/

How did we develop a COVID-19 vaccine so quickly? - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-did-we-develop-a-covid-19-vaccine-so-quickly 

Smart phones:

https://blog.textedly.com/smartphone-history-when-were-smartphones-invented

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2011/07/11/overview-of-smartphone-adoption/

https://www.pcmag.com/archive/smartphone-adoption-rate-fastest-in-tech-history-301990

https://www.govtech.com/products/how-smartphones-revolutionized-society-in-less-than-a-decade.html

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-many-people-have-smartphones

https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world

Streaming continues to overtake TV - https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2023/05/16/streaming-continues-to-overtake-tv/

The rise of social media - https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media