Publications

Since 2021, the GGR-D programme has piloted several GGR methods and investigated sustainable routes for large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, to inform decisions about greenhouse gas removal (GGR) deployment in the UK and globally. This report delivers important findings on technology potential as well as policy, legal and evaluation insights and methodologies. It reveals insights into entirely new approaches involving co-deployments of GGRs. Looking across the broad portfolio of GGR methods that could support the UK’s climate ambitions, it sets out a series of actions that would help scale up a portfolio of sustainable GGR options in the UK. For the five individual GGR methods that have been piloted – woodland creation and management, enhanced peatland restoration, enhanced rock weathering, biochar and perennial biomass crops for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) – the report summarises key findings and policy implications, and provides cross-cutting lessons on land-based GGR emerging from these demonstrator projects.

In the summer of 2025, CO2RE commissioned ERM to produce greenhouse gas removal (GGR) cost updates building on ERM’s prior analysis, "Greenhouse gas removal methods and their potential to scale UK deployment". This report presents the updated costs, reflects on changes from 2021 GGR cost estimates, and contextualises the findings within CO2RE research to inform GGR investment and policy decisions.

Natural CO2 removal is increasingly being claimed as anthropogenic climate mitigation. This misrepresentation is already prevalent for forests and coastal ecosystems; there is now the risk of the error reoccurring for open-ocean CO2 uptake via the biological carbon pump.

A clear, established and harmonious legal framework is crucial for the operation and scaling of any emerging industry, and this is no different for greenhouse gas removals (GGRs). The framework for GGRs is not a bespoke area of law tailored to GGR activities, but rather a complex landscape of pre-existing bodies of law applicable to particular GGRs or parts of GGR value chains. Based on 31 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in governments, industry, and the research community, this report serves as the first comprehensive review of these diverse bodies of law in the UK. It explores the common legal challenges across all major GGR techniques currently being developed in the UK and looks at potential solutions.

Researchers, industry and policy-makers are considering carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods as a way of accelerating the near-term mitigation of climate change, balancing residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors, and addressing potential overshoot of climate targets such as the 1.5°C limit set out in the Paris Agreement. However, in many cases, CDR methods are at an early stage of research and development and raise various societal concerns – so it is crucial that it is done in a way that is responsible towards society. Responsible innovation and societal engagement involves members of the public in considerations about things that concern their interests. This helps strengthen accountability and transparency of CDR through learning from citizens, and can help to strengthen trust and legitimacy by building relationships between citizens, government and non-government actors. More broadly, it helps to build public engagement with climate change. This briefing draws on evidence from CO2RE research to examine how CDR can be better understood, communicated, appraised and governed in the UK.

Coordinated mobilisation of public and private investment in greenhouse gas removal (GGR) technologies is key to developing the GGR capacity required for the UK to achieve its 2050 net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target. It is also vital to meeting the interim targets for engineered removals of 21.3 MtCO₂ by 2040 (CCC, 2025). However, current GGR market conditions are not yet conducive to attracting private capital into GGR deployment. Technological uncertainty, revenue uncertainty and the presence of an unstable market-led environment limit investor confidence and hinder the establishment of a GGR market. The policy interventions being developed by the UK government – namely the integration of GGR into the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS) and the introduction of carbon contracts for difference (CCfDs) – are welcome. However, based on our analysis, they are insufficient to kick-start and support GGR deployment at the necessary scale and pace. New groups of policies which strategically reduce GGR investment risk and create a more stable environment are required. This policy brief assesses and outlines public-private collaborations (PPCs) as an important intervention to unlock private-sector investment as part of a wider GGR policy ecosystem.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will be needed at scale in all scenarios that achieve the goal of the Paris agreement to limit warming to 1.5°C by 2050. To achieve its net-zero commitments, the UK needs to develop a CDR sector of at least 100 MtCO2 per year by 2050, split between technical removals at 60 MtCO2 and nature-based removals (NBS) at 40 MtCO2. The technical removal target is on a par with the present size of the UK water sector and requires infrastructure, business model, and a regulatory framework development to incentivise investment in 25 years from virtually a standing start. This report delves into the insights generated from a workshop held in London in January 2025 to explore what, from the perspective of a firm, the UK CDR sector will need in order to scale up from 2026. The workshop participants aimed to address the following questions: 1) What are the challenges and priority needs for market actors in the UK CDR sector post-2026 to 2050? And 2) What might the 2026–2035 technical, institutional, governance, organizational, policy and enabling ecosystem look like to address these needs?

The UK has targets to deploy >100MtCO2 of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) by 2050, with interim technical targets of 5 MtCO2 and 23 MtCO2 by 2030 and 2035, respectively. In 2019, a number of policy initiatives were announced that have kick-started a nascent UK CDR ecosystem. To build on these foundations, it is recognised that there is a need for a shift in UK CDR institutional, governance and policy development commensurate with a pathway to realise the 2035 and 2050 targets. The 2020–2024 Biden Administration in the US also announced a number of potentially game-changing policies that stood to generate spillovers which might reduce the cost of scaling the sector. The third region to have established CDR frameworks and targets is the European Union (EU) – which the UK left in 2019. A question for UK policy-makers is therefore how to collaborate with US and EU market-makers to track developments so as to design timely and effective policy to capture spillover effects. As a function of this, the CO2RE Ecosystem 26+ project sought to explore how the proposed EU interventions were being operationalised and received by the ‘market’. This report summarises the insights from three events held in partnership with EU-based CDR initiatives in order to better understand the EU CDR market and how it might interact with the CDR sector in the UK and the US.

The UK has targets to deploy >100MtCO2 of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) by 2050, with interim technical targets of 5 MtCO2 and 23 MtCO2 by 2030 and 2035, respectively. In 2019, a number of policy initiatives were announced that have kick-started a nascent UK CDR ecosystem. To build on these foundations, it is recognised that there is a need for a shift in UK CDR institutional, governance and policy development commensurate with a pathway to realise the 2035 and 2050 targets. The US has also announced a number of potentially game-changing policies that stand to generate spillovers which will reduce the cost of scaling the sector if they can be captured by the UK. The question for UK policy-makers is therefore how to capture these spill-over effects when they materialise, and how to collaborate with US market-makers to track developments so as to design timely and effective policy when they are opportune to capture from the US. This report shares the findings from three engagements with US CDR initiatives undertaken by the CO2RE Ecosystem 26+ project team in March 2025. The project sought to explore how the proposed US interventions were being operationalised, in order to analyse how they might relate to and interact with other international CDR sector initiatives – specifically those taking place in the UK and EU.

Marine-based CDR (mCDR) has substantive technical potential to sequester CO2 at gigatonne scale. Some techniques also have co-benefits such as addressing ocean acidification, enhancing biodiversity as well as generating negative carbon building materials. The focus of CDR policy in two pioneer nations that are seeking to establish, develop and scale CDR to 2050 – the US and UK – have very much posited their innovation policy on terrestrial based CDR value chains. The US is now ramping up substantive research programmes in this area. The UK is still very much focusing its CDR policy on terrestrial-based technologies with the establishment of a 100MtCO2 pa CDR sector in the UK by 2050; this will have a non-trivial land footprint. There is a need, therefore, to consider the potential role and optionality that mCDR has with regards to UK net zero policy to 2050 and how this might be accommodated for to keep this option open should it prove efficient and scalable. As part of its work on market transition risk, CO2RE held two sessions with stakeholders to explore what needs to be in place for mCDR to scale sustainably in the UK. This document presents the findings from those sessions.