The Carbon Removal Scoop

In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Sara Vicca, Associate Professor at the University of Antwerp and a lead author on the IPCC's forthcoming methodology report on carbon dioxide removal technologies, carbon capture, utilisation and storage for national greenhouse gas inventories. For years, stakeholders have argued that governments cannot properly count novel removals without updated rules from the IPCC. Those rules are now being written, and the first draft has just opened for expert review.

Sara explains why guidance inn the 2006 IPCC Guidelines needs an update for direct air capture, direct ocean capture and enhanced weathering, and walks through the road from first draft to approval in late 2027. Because the draft itself is confidential, the conversation stays on the principles rather than the text, and Sara is clear about who the authors most want to hear from before the review window closes.

Eve and Sebastian then dig into enhanced weathering, Sara's section of the report. What happens when carbon captured on a farm in one country travels down rivers and out to sea through several others? How should governments learn from voluntary market methodologies that do not even agree on how to characterise rock feedstock? Sara draws a sharp line between carbon crediting and national inventories: inventories compare emissions and removals year by year, so there is no counterfactual baseline and no additionality test, and methods are organised into three tiers, from generic emission factors to detailed measurement and modelling.

They close on the gap between the EU's Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming certification framework and what countries actually report, and on how a report this large is coordinated across more than a hundred authors. Tune in to hear why Sara thinks a country could count enhanced weathering without a single carbon credit ever being issued, and why that rings alarm bells for Sebastian.

LINKS
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Sara Vicca: LinkedIn, University of Antwerp profile and Bluesky
IPCC: Register to review the First Order Draft (review open until 20 December 2026; registration closes 11 December)
IPCC: 2027 Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage
IPCC: List of Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors and Review Editors
Paul Zakkour: Dispatch from the IPCC lead author meeting in Mexico City: CCUS and carbon removals (LSE Grantham Research Institute)
2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories
2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines
2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines: Wetlands
Eve Tamme and Paul Zakkour: Will the Carbon Removal Certification Framework count in the race to climate neutrality?
Previous Scoop episode: Is Enhanced Rock Weathering Ready for Scale? — with Dirk Paessler and Mel Murphy
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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Danny Cullenward, Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, on his second visit to the Scoop. The conversation grew out of a remark Danny made at Carbon Gap's Carbon Removal Policy Summit in Brussels in September, and it lands on an issue the carbon removal community has barely started to absorb: how the Greenhouse Gas Protocol will count the carbon in forests. Danny, who resigned from the Protocol's Independent Standards Board over the dispute, argues the stakes reach far beyond forestry.

At the centre are two competing proposals. Scientists on the technical working group backed activity-based accounting, which compares a harvest with what would have happened without it, much as voluntary market forest methodologies do. Industry voices backed the managed land proxy, borrowed from how countries report to the UN climate convention, which Danny says would let companies book removals for almost any wood harvest. He walks through how averaging across a whole sourcing region can turn felling trees in Poland into a carbon removal on paper, and why he thinks the proposal's extra safeguards change very little.

Eve and Sebastian also press on the process behind the fight, and on where things stand now. No decision has been made: the Protocol's request for information on forest carbon accounting is open until 1 February 2027, while an ISO standard that Danny says implements the industry approach in all but name has already been approved, and the two bodies are working to harmonise their standards. With mandatory disclosure in California and the EU leaning on the Protocol, whatever gets decided will not stay voluntary for long.

They close on what this means for anyone producing durable removals. Tune in to hear why Danny calls this an existential risk for the carbon removal industry, and who he thinks needs to speak up before the comment window closes.

LINKS
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Danny Cullenward: Bluesky and Website
Kleinman Center for Energy Policy: Website
Forest Carbon Accounting in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (Kleinman Center webinar, 22 September 2026)
Governing the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (Danny Cullenward, Kleinman Center, April 2026)
Danny Cullenward's resignation letter (June 2026)
GHG Protocol: Forest carbon accounting proposals and supporting materials
GHG Protocol: Land Sector and Removals Standard and Forest Carbon Accounting Request for Information (open until 1 February 2027)
ISO 13391-1:2025 Wood and wood-based products: Greenhouse gas dynamics
SourceMaterial: Lobbyists push for declaration that felling trees helps the climate
Bloomberg: Dispute Over Counting Forest Carbon Roils Global Standard-Setter
Heatmap: Tensions Mount at Greenhouse Gas Protocol as Scientist Resigns in Protest
Carbon Removal Policy Summit
Previous Scoop Episode: CDR and Credibility: Unpacking Reversal Rules Under Article 6.4 — with Danny Cullenward
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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Rudy Kahsar, Principal at RMI and a founding member of its carbon removal team, to dig into the New Frontiers Report for CDR. The report traces up to three decades of progress across 14 carbon removal approaches to work out where the next breakthroughs could come from, and Rudy's answer to the question he gets asked most, which pathway to go all in on, is not the one most people expect.

Rudy makes the case that the technologies doing most of the removing in 2050 may not exist yet, and that breakthroughs tend to arrive when experts from one field wander into another. Policy sits outside the report's scope, but his message to policymakers is clear: rather than writing rigid rules around one or two of today's approaches, set aside some funding and regulatory attention for the approaches nobody has invented yet. Sebastian, who has long argued against picking winners this early, needs little convincing.

The conversation then turns to the numbers. RMI built bottom-up cost stacks for every approach across eight shared categories, using generative AI for the first pass before testing it with companies and experts, and Rudy explains why the future cost stacks are aspirational scenarios rather than predictions. Sebastian contrasts that transparency with the black-box cost estimates that have made their way into the EU ETS proposal.

They close on some of the report's boldest bets, from engineered crops that lock carbon away more durably to the convergence of AI, drones and sensors, and on direct air capture, where Rudy is blunt about cost. Tune in to hear why he thinks an outdoor clothing brand could be an unlikely ally for carbon removal.

LINKS
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Rudy Kahsar: LinkedIn and RMI profile
RMI: Website
The New Frontiers Report for CDR (RMI, October 2026)
RMI: Beyond the First Frontier: What Comes Next for Carbon Removal
Mining's Untapped Removals Opportunity — with Cara Maesano
What Does CDR Actually Cost in Europe? — with Hansjörg Lerchenmüller and Eadbhard Pernot
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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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