In a new comment in Communications Earth and Environment led by Mathias Fridahl, we develop ideas on how novel carbon removal (i.e. BECCS, DACCS, …) could be integrated into the EU’s climate policy architecture. Here are our main arguments

• Compared to its emission reduction policy, the EU’s carbon dioxide removal (CDR) policy is underdeveloped. Only in the area of forestry and land use does current EU legislation allow Member States to use removals to meet their climate change commitments. 

• The 2050 net zero target requires the development of innovative policy packages to stimulate the deployment of novel CO2 removals, an urgency that is further underlined by the long lead times for many novel removal methods.

• Fortunately, a new chapter in the development of EU climate policy is fast approaching. The negotiations on the 2040 target offer a new window of opportunity to integrate novel removals. The role for CDR in future climate policy should be at the heart of the negotiations on the 2040 target.

• The current policy framework (see figure below for an overview of the Fit-for-55 results) does not provide EU-wide economic incentives for novel CO removals, nor does it encourage EU Member States to develop national policy incentives. We propose to incentivise removals through

• Conditional inclusion in the EU ETS: BECCS and DACCS only – through a European Carbon Central Bank that allows credits to be banked and delivered to the allowance market on a delayed basis.
  
• Expand the portfolio of removal methods in the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation; additional removal methods such as enhanced weathering, biochar and coastal biomass expansion should be considered for inclusion in the portfolio. The lack of accepted standards for measuring and monitoring such removals is a key challenge for their inclusion in the LULUCF Regulation – the Certification scheme currently negotiated is an important tool here.
  
• Reserve removals to counterbalance hard-to-abate emissions in the Effort Sharing Regulation. A proportion of European GHG emissions would be very costly to mitigate in the foreseeable future. There needs to be a discussion within the EU on the specification of the residual level, and removals need to be scaled up and reserved to counterbalance this residual.

• We are convinced that action on these three points would amount to a radical breakthrough in EU carbon removal policy. It would stimulate a suite of removal methods and position the Union as a global model for CO removal action, pointing the way to a future where CO removals have a chance to correspond to envisioned global net-zero emissions targets.

• Fridahl, M., Felix Schenuit, Liv Lundberg, Kenneth Möllersten, Miranda Böttcher, Wilfried Rickels, Anders Hansson. 2023. Novel carbon dioxide removals techniques must be integrated into the European Union’s climate policies. Communications Earth & Environment 4, 459. https://doi.org/10.103/s43247-023-01121-9.