The CDR Policy Scoop

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme welcome back Asger Strange Olesen, Global Head of Climate and Biodiversity at the International Woodland Company and Independent Member of the EU Carbon Removal Expert Group.

The conversation opens on where the carbon farming side of the CRCF stands relative to the momentum building around permanent removals. Asger explains why carbon credits are the wrong tool for the majority of European farmland that stays in production, and why the CRCF review's emerging concept of performance certificates may finally offer a workable alternative. One that links supply chain companies' Scope 3 reporting to what actually happens on the land.

The episode digs into how performance certificates would work in practice: who issues them, who needs them, and how attribution across multiple buyers in the same supply chain gets resolved. Asger is direct about which concepts from the carbon credit world have no place here, and why insisting on them would kill the instrument before it starts.

The discussion also covers the tension between the EU's bottom-up inventory approach and SBTi's top-down FLAG methodology, what the Q4 Commission proposal on national targets and flexibilities needs to get right, and why moving the obligation to pay from member states to sectors and companies is the single most important precondition for any of this to work.

Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Asger Strange Olesen: LinkedIn and Medium
CRCF Days — European Commission event page
Supercharging Carbon Removal from the EU’s Land Sector

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Recorded on the ground at the first annual CRCF Days in Brussels, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart spent the day inside Day One on permanent carbon removals and caught up throughout the day to give you a front-row view of how it unfolded.

The episode follows the arc of the day to tackle the central question: does the EU Buyers' Club have the momentum, the money, and the buyers to actually deliver? Eve and Sebastian arrive with different expectations and leave with a revealing disagreement. Surprisingly, Eve is more bullish than usual and Sebastian is more measured. However both agree the room had real energy with over 200 in person and 300 online, and that the process of getting buyers together under Commission convening is worth something in itself.

The momentum in the room was real but whether it translates into offtake agreements, new buyers, and genuine scale is a different question. Eve and Sebastian get into what was actually announced, which technologies are in or out of scope, and why use cases for permanent removals keep coming up and keep going unanswered.

Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
CRCF Days — European Commission event page
CDR Policy Scoop — The Uncertain Future of the EU's CDR Buyers' Club (with Robert Höglund)
CDR Policy Scoop — How Far Can the EU's Market-Shaping Purchasing Programme Go? (with Hugh McDonald)

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The European Commission just published a draft implementing act on CBAM and it quietly opens the door to international carbon credits counting toward carbon border liabilities. The rules are still being written, but the direction of travel is clear.

Co-hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme pulled our favourite CBAM expert, Dan Maleski back in for a rapid-fire debrief the day after publication. They wanted to get the Scoop on what's actually in the act, what's still missing, and what does it mean in practice for companies, governments, and CDR?

The conversation unpacks the 10% cap on Article 6 credits, why domestic credits face no equivalent limit, and why that asymmetry should raise eyebrows. Dan also flags a real risk: with prices in voluntary carbon markets anything but standardised, the room for manipulation is not hypothetical. And with "independent persons" as the main safeguard, the jury is still out on how watertight this will be.

One thread runs through it all: CBAM is pushing trading partners toward compliance regimes that look more like the EU ETS and for CDR project developers who can align with that compliance demand, the long-term signal is significant.
The consultation closes in early June. While still unresolved, this one is worth watching closely.

Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Dan Maleski: LinkedIn
European Commission implementing act on using carbon credits for CBAM liability

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Recorded on May 6th at Zurich's first-ever Climate Week, this is a different kind of episode. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme spent the day inside a series of Swiss government-hosted events on international CDR pilot transfers and brought the microphones with them.

The Switzerland-Norway and Switzerland-Sweden pilots are quietly doing something that almost no one else is: actually testing the full Article 6 machinery for durable CDR transfers, end to end, with real private sector partners at the table. The question is what that process is revealing: about what works, what doesn't, and how far the rest of the world is from being able to follow.

Eve and Sebastian got to sit down with two people instrumental in making these pilots happen: Veronika Elgart, Deputy Head of International Climate Policy at Switzerland's Federal Office for the Environment, and Ane Gjengedal, Senior Adviser at the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment. The surprises are real and so are the unresolved tensions around: use cases, corresponding adjustments, and the gap between having regulation on paper and having markets that function.

The honest answer from everyone in the room: this is harder than it looks, it's taking longer than expected, and starting sooner is the only advice that holds across every jurisdiction.

Show notes:

Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Ane Gjengedal, Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment: LinkedIn
Veronika Elgart, Federal Office for the Environment, Switzerland: LinkedIn
Agreement between Norway and Switzerland on International CCS and NET
CDR Policy Scoop — The world's first durable CDR transaction under the Paris Agreement
Swiss legal framework for CCS/CDR

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Who should hold permanence liability, for how long, and how?

In this episode of the CDR Policy Scoop, Eve and Sebastian speak with Natalia Dorfman has spent the last four years building Kita into the carbon market's leading insurance specialist. She make the case that the market is finally ready to move beyond buffer pools, and that the tools to do it already exist.

Natalia draws a sharp distinction between short and long-term liability windows, explains why buffers were a necessary starting point but were never designed for perpetuity, and lays out why standards don't actually want to be holding that risk.

That sets up the main event: the Permanence Trust, a feasibility study led by the American Forest Foundation with Kita as a supporting partner. The idea is straightforward in principle, an endowment-style fund that grows to cover reversals over time. But the questions around standards buy-in, cost structure, and what "replacement" actually means for capital markets are anything but. Natalia takes them head on.

A report is due around June and a pilot to follow. This one is worth watching.

Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Natalia Dorfman: LinkedIn
Kita: Website
American Forest Foundation: Website
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