The CDR Policy Scoop

Noah Deich is back. When he last joined the show in February 2025, the US DOE had just gutted its CDR programmes. This time, he returns to debrief on a very different project: his attempt to build a government-led advanced market commitment for carbon removal, modelled on the GAVI Vaccine Alliance in global health.

He spoke to around two dozen governments. The outcome wasn't what he hoped for, but his diagnosis of why is sharper than you might expect, and it points to a fundamental gap that no country has yet closed.

Noah draws on the history of renewables to explain what CDR policy is still missing, identifies the two interventions he'd prioritise above everything else, and makes the case for why the current political moment, however bleak it looks, may be exactly the right time to be thinking big.

The AMC concept isn't dead. But the path there looks different than it did two years ago.

Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Noah Deich: LinkedIn and Substack
Report: A Government-Led Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for Carbon Removal
Previous episode: CDR at DoE is dead — or is it?
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, co-hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Dr Andrew Lenton, Director of CSIRO's CarbonLock Future Science Platform, to discuss Australia's newly published CDR roadmap and its first novel CDR workforce report.

Andrew walks through what it took to build a credible national roadmap and why the coalition of partners, including Google as the sole private sector contributor, may matter as much as the findings themselves. He covers the technologies that surprised him most and what Australia's unique geography means for the CDR opportunity.

The conversation turns to early policy signals: a new Australia-Canada CDR agreement, fresh federal and state-level funding, and how Australia's co-presidency of COP31 is shaping the agenda. Andrew reflects on what it has taken to build basic CDR literacy across government as a foundation for any of this to stick.

The episode closes on workforce, Australia's first novel CDR workforce report just landed, and Andrew outlines the four recommendations at its core. Sebastian brings in data from CDRjobs and European parallels to show why getting this right, and soon, matters.

Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Dr Andrew Lentoni: LinkedIn
Australian CDR Roadmap
Australia CDR Workforce Report

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, co-hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme sit down for their unscripted quarterly catch-up to discuss what's top of mind in CDR policy.

They open on the EU CBAM and the question of whether Article 6 credits could satisfy CBAM liabilities. They cut through social media hype to examine what has actually been decided, and whether this logic undermines the mechanism's original purpose of incentivising domestic carbon pricing.

The conversation turns to the EU's broader reliance on international credits, including the 5% allowance under the 2040 target. Eve walks through the layered costs that make this look far less cheap than advertised, and the supply and infrastructure constraints that compound the problem.

Sebastian flags three parallel EU processes: CBAM revision, international credits consultation, and ETS revisions, and the Negative Emissions Platform's new ETS Needs Removals campaign. The price gap for DAC and BECCS, and how to bridge it through ETS revenues, closes out the policy discussion. Sebastian teases an upcoming paper with Rafael Cario on front-loading ETS revenues for carbon removals.

The episode ends with AI as the wildcard: a force driving up CDR demand, and potentially if the energy buildout outlasts the hype, a future catalyst for cheap direct air capture energy.

Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Hannah Bebbington Valori, Head of Deployment at Frontier, the advanced market commitment backed by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, McKinsey, and Meta that has become one of the largest and most experienced buyers of carbon removal in the world.

The conversation opens with Frontier's newly redesigned innovation program, which this year expands beyond pre-purchases to include R&D grants and more flexible check sizes. Hannah explains that roughly 60% of the R&D gaps Frontier identified at launch in 2022 have already been worked on or solved, a sign the field has matured enough to warrant a broader funding approach.

Much of the discussion centres on Frontier's theory of change and the concept of the "baton pass": The idea that voluntary corporate buyers exist to pull technology from lab to field and prepare a portfolio of proven solutions for governments to eventually take over. Hannah is direct that carbon removal is ultimately a public good requiring government-scale support, and that the voluntary market alone cannot get to gigatons. Sebastian and Eve push on how Frontier engages on policy across jurisdictions, how its buying criteria feed into legislative processes, and the tension between being "tech agnostic" in policy design and the practical pressure to fund what already works.

The episode also revisits Frontier's 2024 fellows program, which placed individuals around the world to build demand for carbon removal through policy. Hannah gives an honest assessment: the Nordic Carbon Removal Alliance was a genuine win, but one year is a short runway for systems change, and policy moves slowly by design. The conversation closes on the question the whole sector is watching, what happens to Frontier after 2030, with Hannah confirming the team is actively working on it.

Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Hannah Bebbington Valori: LinkedIn
Frontier: LinkedIn and Website
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Harry Smith, Principal Consultant at Aether and former Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, where he completed his PhD on the policy and governance of carbon dioxide removal.

The conversation explores what national long-term low-emission development strategies actually say about carbon removal, and how much of it should concern us. Harry draws on his doctoral research, which analysed long-term strategies across 71 countries, to explain why these documents are often optional, outdated, and light on detail when it comes to CDR.

The episode digs into the residual emissions data at the heart of his research: only 26 of 71 countries quantified residual emissions at the point of net zero, with an average of 21% of peak emissions, more than double the 10% commonly referenced in IPCC scenarios. Australia and Canada sit at 52% and 44% respectively, leaning heavily on CDR and international credits to close the gap.

Sebastian, Eve and Harry also examine why the land sector carries far more weight in national strategies than engineered CDR, and why Harry considers it the bigger risk. The discussion closes on what long-term strategies have actually contributed, a refinement of end-of-century warming projections, and why near-term policy design, not long-term vision documents, is where the real work on CDR now needs to happen.

Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Harry Smith: LinkedIn
UNFCCC Long Term Strategies Portal
Promising Words, Evaluating Actions: Assessing Carbon Dioxide Removal in National Net Zero Plans, by Harry B Smith
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.