The Carbon Removal Buyer the World Has Been Waiting For

The European Union is on the verge of making major changes to its carbon market, including integrating carbon removals into the scheme for the first time.

The bloc’s highest governing body, the European Commission, is expected to publish a proposal on Friday to reform the EU Emissions Trading System, or ETS, to align it with the EU’s 2040 emissions target. Under the current rules, companies cannot use carbon credits of any kind to comply with the regulations. But as 2040 grows closer, the EU plans to rely on carbon removal to offset some of the residual emissions from industries that are the most difficult to decarbonize.

Friday’s proposal will cover which types of carbon removal will be accepted, how many carbon removal credits can enter the market and when, and who will be allowed to buy them. One leading approach would have the EU government buy carbon removal directly, which would give the industry unprecedented market certainty.

“The ETS could be the single biggest driver of demand for carbon removal for the next decade,” Felix Grey, a policy manager for the carbon registry Isometric, told me.

The ETS enforces a cap on emissions that declines over time. Large emitters located in the EU must buy “allowances” for each ton of carbon they release, while the pool of available allowances shrinks apace with the emissions cap. Last year, the EU set a new target to reduce emissions 90% below 1990 levels by 2040, building off its earlier target of a 55% reduction by 2030. The upcoming proposal will address how the market should operate between 2030 and 2040 to achieve that goal.

There are many contentious questions surrounding this next phase, including how quickly the cap should decline over the decade. Another question is how many free allowances the EU should give to energy-intensive facilities such as steelmakers and fertilizer producers, which it does to prevent them from leaving Europe due to higher operating costs. Now that the EU has launched its carbon border adjustment mechanism, which taxes higher-carbon imports of these goods, free allowances may not be as necessary.

The integration of carbon removal is also controversial. At best, it could be an opportunity to improve and scale up nascent technologies that take carbon out of the atmosphere. At worst, it could enable polluters to avoid cutting their own emissions by purchasing carbon credits that don’t represent real climate benefits. Then there’s the possibility that removals will be so expensive that their integration into the ETS will have no effect at all — that is, it will be less expensive for companies to pursue emissions reductions than to buy their way out. The outcome will depend on the rules the EU Commission proposes and what its member states ultimately agree to.

Today, most carbon removal efforts are supported by research grants and voluntary carbon credit purchases from companies like Microsoft. A common mantra in the industry is that it will never reach a meaningful scale without government backing. Carbon removal startups aren’t selling a product with inherent value, they are selling a waste management solution. Unless governments require polluters to clean up their carbon waste, or else handle the job themselves as a public good, carbon removal will never take off.

Some governments have already dabbled in state-sponsored removals. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. launched a carbon removal purchase pilot prize, dedicating $35 million to buy carbon removal from a handful of promising companies. It never got past the initial award phase, however, and the Trump administration has not continued the program. A number of cities and counties across the U.S. have set up their own, much smaller purchasing programs in an effort to support the industry. Making carbon removal part of a regulatory program like the EU’s ETS could open the industry to a much bigger market.

As of today, there are a few knowns and a few unknowns about what the Commission plans to propose. For example, it’s relatively clear what methods of carbon removal the European Commission will allow into the market. Earlier this year, the EU finalized regulations for certifying three kinds of carbon removal under its official Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming scheme — direct air capture, biomass with carbon capture, and biochar projects — laying out criteria for quality as well as monitoring and reporting rules. For now, only these three project types can be considered.

Here’s the problem: Direct air capture and biomass with carbon capture are two of the most expensive project types. The average carbon removal credit from these methods costs hundreds of dollars. The average price of an allowance in the ETS, by contrast, has hovered between $70 and $90 over the past few years. Depending on how the Commission chooses to incorporate the credits into the market, it’s possible that no one will buy them.

The European Commission has said it is considering three options. The leading proposal is for the EU to create a central purchasing authority that buys removals using revenues from the ETS. For each removal credit the government acquires, it would issue an additional allowance into the market on top of the established cap. This would enable regulated facilities to emit a bit more than they could otherwise — a tradeoff that Grey argued would help them stay competitive. At the same time, it would also ensure that there’s demand for carbon removal regardless of the price.

The second option is to leave it to the market, giving emitters the option to purchase carbon removal credits as an alternative to purchasing allowances. In this version, similar to the first, the carbon removal credits would enter the market as an addition to the established amount of allowances. Whether or not anyone actually buys carbon removal will depend on how tight the allowance market is.

In the third option, emitters would be able to use carbon removal credits in lieu of allowances, but those credits would operate “below the cap,” so to speak. For every credit counted toward the ETS, regulators would reduce the number of allowances available to purchase by the same amount. It is hard to see why any company would purchase carbon removal in this version unless and until the price of a credit drops below the price of an allowance, however.

Carbon Market Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group, isn’t excited about any of these options. In a recent white paper on ETS reforms, it argued that Europe should support carbon removal separate from the ETS. “Direct integration of CDR in the ETS is either a dead end, or the start of a slippery slope,” the group warned. Carbon Market Watch also has concerns about the integrity of the EU’s carbon removal certification scheme. The group has formally challenged the methodologies for certifying biochar and biomass with carbon capture projects, arguing that they do not account for all the emissions associated with these processes, lack sustainable biomass sourcing safeguards, and in the case of biochar, are missing monitoring requirements. If ETS credits are built on faulty science, the EU could end up spending billions of dollars to little climate benefit.

The other big question about the integration is the amount of carbon removal the EU will allow into the market. Even if the bloc decides to create a central purchasing authority, its potential to help the industry scale will depend on how much it commits to buying. Grey, of Isometric, argued that staying on course for net zero by 2050 would require the EU to remove about 100 million metric tons of carbon per year by 2040.

“A strong proposal on Friday will confirm carbon removal’s integration from 2031, commit to buying removal at the scale required to meet net zero, and treat every credible method equally rather than picking winners,” he said.