The CDR Policy Scoop

In this episode, Eve Tamme sits down with Carbon Gap’s ETS experts, Francesca Battesby and Louis Uzor ahead of the European Commission’s ETS proposal, expected on 17 July. CDR is about to gain access to the world’s biggest compliance market for carbon, and this conversation lays out what is actually at stake. The discussion opens on the integration model: a public authority managing CDR procuremen...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme sit down for their second quarterly, unscripted catch-up of the year, working through what is actually moving in CDR policy right now with no guest in the mix, just two co-hosts comparing notes. The conversation opens on the member state CDR targets expected by the end of the year and why a patchwork of twenty seven national...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Kaya Axelsson, Research and Policy Fellow at Oxford Net Zero, just days after what she describes as the most anticipated Monday of her year: June 22, when both the ISO Net Zero Standard and the SBTi Corporate Net Zero Standard launched at London Climate Action Week. Kaya spent three years inside both standard-se...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Delia Meth-Cohn, Co-founder of Rethinking Removals, who has been part of the ISO Net Zero Aligned Organization Standard working group from its very first meeting, two years ago. The conversation opens on why Delia got involved, recruited by the British Standards Institute to make sure removals expertise was in the room from...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Dr. Ruth Dagan, Senior Partner and Head of Environment & Climate Change at Herzog Law, and Co-Chair of the IETA Legal Working Group, to cover two legal challenges that are quietly suppressing corporate demand for carbon credits. The first is litigation risk. Since 2022, climate washing claims have increased by seventy pe...

Guest: Robert Höglund, writer of Marginal Carbon, climate strategist at Milkywire, and co-founder of CDI FYI The Science Based Targets initiative has released its long-awaited Net Zero Standard, and Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme wasted no time pulling Robert Höglund, climate strategist at Milkywire, and co-founder of CDR.FYI back onto the show to work through what it actually means for CDR. The...

Recorded live at the Negative Emissions Platform (NEP) event in June 2026, this fireside chat brings Sebastian Manhart together with Oliver Geden for a rapid-fire sweep through the state of CDR policy.  Oliver Geden is Head of the Research Cluster on Climate and Energy Policy at SWP (the German Institute for International and Security Affairs), Vice Chair of IPCC Working Group Three, and a me...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme dig into the highly anticipated third edition of the State of CDR Report. At 300 pages and 75-plus authors, this edition is the most comprehensive mapping of the CDR landscape to date. Sebastian and Eve don't attempt to walk through the headlines they go deeper, pulling out the findings that stood out, challenged assumpt...

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 w...

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 del...

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. The...

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...

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 dis...

This is a different kind of episode. Gabrielle Walker. You probably know her as a scientist, author, science communicator, co-founder of CUR8 and Rethinking Removals. She has spent three decades at the intersection of climate science and storytelling. Too much to confine to a 30 minute episode. Introducing our new series, Digging Deep, we kick off our special long-form conversation where Sebastian...

CDR Policy Scoop is back with our next SHOWDOWN, this time on one of the hottest fault lines in carbon markets: should voluntary offsetting require corresponding adjustments? As Article 6 implementation moves forward, the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) faces a pivotal question: are corresponding adjustments NECESSARY for integrity, or OVERKILL, creating a constraint that could choke much‑needed fin...

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...

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...

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 mecha...

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 progra...

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 develo...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Maureen Walsh, Executive Director of the US Biochar Coalition (USBC), to discuss how biochar has quietly built one of the most resilient policy positions of any CDR technology in the United States. Recorded amid tariff pressures, farm bill limbo, and a Washington reshaped by the second Trump administration, the...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Eve Tamme is joined by Canadian Senator Colin Deacon from Nova Scotia. Senator Deacon is a former entrepreneur, who has been a driving force behind what may be the most comprehensive government study on marine carbon dioxide removal undertaken by any national legislature to date. The conversation centres on the landmark report published by Canada's Standing...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop , Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Jennifer Wilcox , Presidential Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the U.S. Department of Energy. Recorded amid major policy shifts in Washington, the conversation explores what has cha...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop , Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Robert Höglund , Manager of the Milkywire Climate Transformation Fund and co-founder of CDR.fyi, to unpack a new way of thinking about corporate net-zero targets. Recorded in early February, the conversation explores Robert’s proposal for conditional net-zero targets - a framework that distinguishes between emi...

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop , Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Josh Becker , California State Senator representing Silicon Valley, to discuss the future of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) policy in California. Recorded live on Presidents’ Day, the conversation explores how California quantified its carbon removal needs - 7 million tons by 2030 and 75 million tons by 2045 - an...