CLIMIT Summit CDR Conference

On the 25^th February, the 2025 CLIMIT Summit in Larvik, Norway, opened with a special conference day dedicated to carbon dioxide removal (CDR). This year also marks the 20^th anniversary of the CLIMIT programme. Jørild Svalestuen (Gassnova) and moderator Camilla Brox welcomed the participants and handed over to the three keynote speakers of the morning.

Kristin Myskja (Norwegian Ministry of Energy) reminded the audience that the climate challenge is still on the table and needs to be tackled, even if the attention might be currently elsewhere. As demonstrated by the Hafslund Celsio waste-to-energy (WtE) plant, the potential of CDR in this sector is huge. International collaboration to scale-up the CDR value chain will be key and with around 800 projects and 13 storage licenses, Norway has a lot of knowledge to share.

Juho Lipponen (Coordinator of CEM CCUS and MI CDR) introduced the Mission Innovation (MI) CDR Mission, which aims to facilitate 100 Mt of CDR by 2030, while focussing on 4 tracks: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), direct air capture with CCS (DACCS), enhanced mineralisation and cross-cutting issues such as techno-economic assessment (TEA) and lifecycle assessment (LCA). The Mission has also launched several cross-cutting activities, of which the CDR Launchpad and the SMART-CDR Student Competition are only two examples. Juho’s key message was that no one stakeholder group can do CDR alone, so coalition building is highly needed.

Steve Smith (University of Oxford) talked about the current status of CDR, drawing from v2 of the “The State of CDR” (https://www.stateofcdr.org/) report. He highlighted the need to consider and appreciate the diversity of CDR options, with their durability being a key point. CDR is already happening today but only a fraction of this CDR is from novel methods, i.e. not from afforestation/reforestation (A/R). Among the novel CDR methods, biochar (BC) and BECCS are leading the field. Novel CDR is a fast-growing sector. However, some options are expensive and/or not straightforward in terms of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). Even with the currently observed fast growth, further growth of 120-760x will be needed in the next 10 years to achieve 1.5-2.0°C. We can see a growing diversity in CDR research and upscaling but this is not so much the case in national targets yet.

Paul Zakkour (Carbon Counts) dived deeper into the MRV topic, drawing from the recent IEAGHG report 2024-09 “MRV and accounting for CDR in the context of both project-based approaches and national greenhouse gas inventories” ( https://ieaghg.org/publications/measurement-reporting-and-verification-and-accounting-for-carbon-dioxide-removal/). Project-based MRV needs to consider a multitude of issues, such as e.g. baselines, additionality, reversals, adverse selection. The number of these certification protocols has been steadily increasing, especially in the last few years. National-level MRV has the aim to map emissions and removals for compliance with the Paris Agreement (PA), following the TACCC principles: transparency, accuracy, comparability, completeness, and consistency. This is subject to a much longer evolution time, using the IPCC Guidelines (GLs) as a main building block. However, there are significant CDR gaps here at the moment. Most of the attention is currently on project-based approaches but national-level MRV and the reconciliation of both systems are equally important to ensure environmental integrity. If proper allocation and visibility are not ensured, then there are the risks of “hot air” and “policy failure”.

After these keynotes, Kay Powe (Natural Resources Canada) opened the floor to both sponsors and students taking part in the MI SMART-CDR Competition. We heard short presentations from KAPSARC, Carbon Engineering and Elimini about their CDR activities and motivation for the sponsoring. Afterwards, the 6 finalist student teams presented their pitches to the audience and the judges’ panel:

• Hokkaido University ERW: Simple MRV for enhanced weathering on acid mine drainage)
• Carbon Smart CO₂: Integrating surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy with metal doped zinc oxide nanoclusters for accurate real time detection)
• Demetrics: Integrating LCA into financial accounting for accurate carbon reporting
• ERW Seekers: Field scale investigation of CDR through ERW using X-ray powder diffraction and CO₂ flux analysis
• Trace CO₂: Tracer based MRV technology for permanent CDR using mineral carbonation in basalts
• Equlantic: The Auto Spec Carbon Analyser (ASCA) – an integrated measurement package for marine CDR and beyond

Both judges and audience took to the vote and the winners would be announced later during an evening reception.

Next up was Julio Friedmann (Carbon Direct), giving an outlook on CDR. Although we have blown the 1.5°C target causing an overshoot, the good news is that lots of CDR is being ramped up and myriad protocols are emerging. The bifurcation of carbon markets into “high risk” vs “high quality” needs to be overcome and MRV is required because “no MRV, no product”. Julio noted that it is good that we are seeing more government procurement, and companies trying to match this, although the CDR buyer base would benefit from a growth in numbers and diversification. On the topic of “reductions or removals?” Julio underlined that it’s a “yes, and!”, as we are needing 1000s of projects to deliver on our targets. This will also require CDR commerce to improve, the availability of sustainable biomass and clean electrons, stronger involvement of the Global South and the training of skilled CDR professionals.

Following on from this presentation, the participants split up into three breakout sessions, each discussing the current status of DAC, BiCRS and EM in more detail, before reconvening for a session about carbon markets. Tim Dixon (IEAGHG) gave an update on Article 6.4 developments for CCS and CDR, Kristin Jordal (ZEP) provided and introduction to the EU CRCF, and Ole Henrik Ree (Microsoft) talked about Microsoft’s activities in the voluntary carbon market (VCM), being the largest procurer of CDR and also one of the largest procurers of renewable energy (RE). A short roundtable discussion followed with some of the key messages being that:

• Procuring high quality removals is harder than thought.
• Permanence is the linch pin.
• Regulatory equivalence, as was achieved for CO₂ geological storage, is essential.
• The Oxford Principles are very helpful.
• Digital MRV will have a role to play (AI, immutable ledgers, chain of custody systems, metering).
• Industry and government need to work together.

The final session of the day was on coalition building for CDR. The panel discussed the importance of regulations and permitting staff being familiar with the technicalities of CDR, so that the permitting processes are not delayed. They also need to better understand the needs, incl. potential barriers, that exist on the buyers’ side. The audience was polled on their view of the most important gaps that can be addressed through coalition building and the favourite responses were:

• Trust;
• Public acceptance;
• MRV and accounting;
• Finance; and
• Knowledge sharing.

Later in the evening, the SMART-CDR MRV Competition winners were announced and the three cash prizes of $10k went to:

• Hokkaido University ERW
• Trace CO₂
• Equlantic

Congratulations to the winners and a heartfelt “well done” to all six finalists, you all delivered great projects. I (Jasmin Kemper, IEAGHG) acted as a reviewer and mentor for the competition and it was amazing to see your motivation, truly inspiring! If the day can be summarised in one sentence, then it is Juho Lipponen’s statement during the wrap up of the day: “All roads lead to MRV”.