The CDR Policy Scoop

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 Manhart and Eve Tamme have the privilege to go beyond the usual format to go deeper into the person. How Gabrielle thinks, her lived experiences, and how it has shaped her work in carbon removal and beyond.

The conversation moves from her earliest encounters with nature, through years as a science journalist at Nature and the BBC, multiple expeditions to Antarctica, and a career pivot from covering climate change to trying to solve it. Gabrielle reflects on what it means to hold doubt as a strength, how she has changed her mind on some of the biggest questions in CDR, and why she believes curiosity may be the most underrated skill in the field.

The discussion also gets practical: what it actually takes to move corporate buyers toward carbon removal, why the narrative needs to shift, and how Gabrielle thinks about building markets that can unlock real capital for the people building solutions.

Honest, wide-ranging, and at times surprising. This one is worth the extra time.

Show notes:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Gabrielle Walker: LinkedIn, CUR8, Rethinking Removals
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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 finance for mitigation and removals?

There's a clear rule that corresponding adjustments are required for CORSIA compliance and when credits count toward another country’s NDC, but should that same bar apply when companies use credits for offsetting and net-zero claims?

In the “Necessary” Corner: Olga Gassan‑zade, former chair of the Paris Agreement’s Article 6.4 Supervisory Body and leading expert on carbon markets and international climate policy, arguing that corresponding adjustments are needed to avoid double counting and align the VCM with the Paris Agreement.

In the “Overkill” Corner: Johan Börje from Stockholm Exergi, who very successfully convinced buyers that finance stacking without corresponding adjustments is essential right now. He brings the perspective of a pioneering CDR project developer focused on scaling real‑world removals within evolving policy and market frameworks.

Our co-hosts turned moderators, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart, will keep the conversation sharp, grounded, and accessible: cutting through the jargon and focusing on what this really means for buyers, projects, and host countries.

(Disclaimer: Both guests and moderators are speaking in a personal capacity and their views do not represent those of their respective organisations.)
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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 his diagnosis of why is sharper than you might expect, and it points to a fundamental gap that no country has yet closed.

Noah draws on the history of renewables to explain what CDR policy is still missing, identifies the two interventions he'd prioritise above everything else, and makes the case for why the current political moment, however bleak it looks, may be exactly the right time to be thinking big.

The AMC concept isn't dead. But the path there looks different than it did two years ago.

Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Noah Deich: LinkedIn and Substack
Report: A Government-Led Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for Carbon Removal
Previous episode: CDR at DoE is dead — or is it?
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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, may matter as much as the findings themselves. He covers the technologies that surprised him most and what Australia's unique geography means for the CDR opportunity.

The conversation turns to early policy signals: a new Australia-Canada CDR agreement, fresh federal and state-level funding, and how Australia's co-presidency of COP31 is shaping the agenda. Andrew reflects on what it has taken to build basic CDR literacy across government as a foundation for any of this to stick.

The episode closes on workforce, Australia's first novel CDR workforce report just landed, and Andrew outlines the four recommendations at its core. Sebastian brings in data from CDRjobs and European parallels to show why getting this right, and soon, matters.

Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Dr Andrew Lentoni: LinkedIn
Australian CDR Roadmap
Australia CDR Workforce Report

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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 mechanism's original purpose of incentivising domestic carbon pricing.

The conversation turns to the EU's broader reliance on international credits, including the 5% allowance under the 2040 target. Eve walks through the layered costs that make this look far less cheap than advertised, and the supply and infrastructure constraints that compound the problem.

Sebastian flags three parallel EU processes: CBAM revision, international credits consultation, and ETS revisions, and the Negative Emissions Platform's new ETS Needs Removals campaign. The price gap for DAC and BECCS, and how to bridge it through ETS revenues, closes out the policy discussion. Sebastian teases an upcoming paper with Rafael Cario on front-loading ETS revenues for carbon removals.

The episode ends with AI as the wildcard: a force driving up CDR demand, and potentially if the energy buildout outlasts the hype, a future catalyst for cheap direct air capture energy.

Links:
Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.