How far can we go in deploying carbon dioxide removal (CDR)? Which methods are best suited for each country? These questions are important for countries to answer to define achievable targets, avoid mitigation deterrence and harness the benefits of developing their domestic CDR capacity.

Mapping CDR readiness country by country

With the Carbon Removal Readiness Assessments (CRRA) project, we develop a pragmatic and data-driven approach to estimating countries’ CDR potential. We’ve previously conducted similar assessments in France and Norway, creating the first quantified estimations of the CDR potential of these countries, encompassing every CDR method available to us at the time.

In 2025, we are conducting CRRAs in five European countries selected based on their theoretical potential for carbon dioxide removal and/or the early stage of national conversations around its deployment: Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain.

We’re building these assessments from the ground up, combining:

• Desk research to map resources, feedstocks, and policy landscapes;
• Stakeholder interviews with policymakers, industry leaders, and civil society;
• Citizen panels to understand public perceptions and concerns around CDR.

This participatory process helps us go beyond theory, revealing what’s not just technically possible, but politically and socially achievable in each country’s unique context.

Currently, desk research is underway across all five countries. Citizen panels have been completed in Finland, Germany, Italy, and Poland, and 15+ stakeholder interviews have been conducted in every country.

What’s Next: Road mapping workshops

In Finland and Spain, we’re co-designing actionable national roadmaps with local stakeholders. They will outline how identified CDR potentials can be realised through research, policy, investment, and collaboration.

Each roadmap is aimed at offering clear, realistic actions, sequenced in time and backed by cost estimates, and ideas for financing whenever possible. It’s not just about strategy, it’s about building a shared vision among national stakeholders to enable effective progress in the coming years.

While each national roadmap will reflect local priorities, we expect several core themes and their related reflections areas to emerge:

• Research and innovation: What are the main open questions that research programmes should address to unlock the deployment of CDR pathways?
• Regulatory clarity: What legal and policy frameworks are missing to support the responsible growth of CDR?
• Infrastructure needs: What physical and digital infrastructure is required to support the deployment of CDR?
• Deployment incentives: What financial or policy mechanisms could accelerate the development of a national CDR ecosystem?

Join our local partners in Helsinki this upcoming 4 September, and in Madrid in early October (stay tuned for the exact date). These workshops are where theory meets practice, and your input can help shape the future.

What about other countries? Explore carbon removal potential with our open-access toolkit

Every country should have clarity on its CDR potential, and therefore, conduct a Carbon Removal Readiness Assessment. That’s why we are working to release a DIY Carbon Removal Readiness Toolkit – a resource designed to empower countries, to assess their readiness for scaling carbon removal.

This Toolkit will be fully open-access, meaning anyone can use it, adapt it, and build on it. It lays out the rationale and methodology behind our CRRA, offering a transparent, step-by-step guide to developing a robust assessment of the CDR potential in a jurisdiction.

Whether you’re a policymaker in a country not yet covered by our assessments, a researcher exploring national climate strategies, or a local advocate looking to spark action, the Toolkit is built to be:

• Replicable: apply the framework to your own national or regional context;
• Customisable: tailor the approach to reflect local priorities, data availability, and policy environments;
• Collaborative: use it as a foundation for multi-stakeholder dialogue and planning;
• Action-oriented: move from analysis to strategy with clear guidance on next steps.

By making this methodology public, we aim to foster a shared language and approach to assessing carbon removal readiness, one that can scale across borders and accelerate climate action globally.

Recap: How you can engage

We’re building a community across Europe and beyond. Here’s how you can get involved:

This is more than a project—it’s a collective effort to build a shared understanding of the realistic CDR capacity and inform CDR policy making at the national level. Are you ready to be part of it?

Reach out to us at crra@carbongap.org to start the conversation. Together, we can build the foundations for meaningful carbon removal across Europe and beyond.

This work is made possible thanks to the support of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment.

The report begins with an overview of existing CDR methods, and details which methods are considered in this study. The resource requirements to operate CDR (energy, water, land, storage, etc.) are characterized for the selected methods.

The report then assesses the availability of the various resources required, considering the constrained volumes and the essential (priority) non-negotiable uses. Beyond the current situation of the considered resources, possible trends are also analysed, to assess whether additional volumes can be generated to mitigate the competition of CDR with existing uses.

To complete this first part of the report, the current regulatory environment is analysed to identify the enabling and limiting factors for the development of CDR processes. Using published data, the report provides an overview of the structure of the Norwegian economy, its political landscape, and attitudes regarding climate change, as well as documented characteristics of Norwegian society.

By combining the maximum volumes of resources theoretically available with the requirements by method, and within the limits of the regulatory framework, the theoretical maximum potential for deploying negative emissions is estimated.

This report has been used as an information base to develop a roadmap of actions required to accelerate the deployment of CDR in Norway, which was designed jointly by the project team and a sample of key stakeholders in Norway. The roadmap is published in a separate document. The project brought together a network of key stakeholders in Norway to develop this roadmap and it is our hope that this group will be instrumental in promoting its recommendations to policymakers – ensuring that the roadmap is not only actionable, but also put into action.

In addition to the background report and the roadmap, the Norwegian Board of Technology (NBT) conducted a citizen engagement panel on assessing the impacts and options of CDR for Norwegian society. The results of this panel engagement are summarized in the Annex 5 of this report. This work has been commissioned by Carbon Gap, a non-profit organisation which is advocating for accelerating the development and deployment of carbon removal in Europe.

To achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and stabilise global warming well below two degrees Celsius, most countries must achieve climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest. In addition to reducing their emissions as quickly as possible, countries must rapidly develop their carbon dioxide removal (CDR) capacities to neutralise their residual emissions and prepare the net negative phase required to stay within the carbon budget.

However, it remains unclear how much CDR each country should deploy, what are their potential capacities for deploying CDR without tampering with their efforts to cut emissions, and finally how to achieve a rapid and fair deployment that is supported by civil society. This information is necessary to enable countries to plan for the deployment and use of CDR, and to avoid the risks of mitigation deterrence if some countries are tempted to rely more heavily on future deployment of CDR and reduce the pressure on short-term emissions reductions. 

Providing answers 

This report presents the results of the “Country CDR readiness assessment” project for France, carried out by Carbon Gap. The main objective of this project is to provide initial quantified answers to the questions mentioned above, to support countries in adopting ambitious yet responsible CDR objectives. The study proposes a bottom-up analysis of the resources available in France to estimate the theoretical and then achievable potential for deploying CDR methods. Because the deployment of new methods such as CDR is not just a technical issue, the study also looks at the ‘social geography’ to characterise the perceptions of stakeholders on this subject, including the general public. It is structured around the following steps:

1. Evaluation and selection of the CDR methods to be considered in the assessment;
2. Characterisation of resource requirements for the selected CDR methods;
3. Assessment of the maximum theoretical availability for each of the resources required for the CDR methods: renewable electricity, waste heat, biomass, capacity for geological storage of CO2, etc…;
4. Estimation of the maximum theoretical CDR potential;
5. Evaluation of the French regulatory, economic and political environment;
6. Analysis of societal perceptions of the desirability of deploying CDR in France;

Estimation of the practical CDR potential in France up to 2050, with a cut-off point in 2030, based on three scenarios; Significant potential The various CDR methods, grouped into (i) biomass conversion, (ii) improved ecosystem management, (iii) electrochemical methods and (iv) geochemical methods, are all reviewed in the report, and their respective theoretical potentials are assessed based on the available resources. This “maximalist” assessment initially leads to a theoretical CDR potential of around 780 MtCO2eq/year in France by 2050. This potential represents a theoretical maximum if all available resources were directed towards CDR, which would be unattainable in practice under current conditions.

Three possible scenarios 

In drafting this report, the researchers applied additional constraints and more conservative assumptions on resource uses to identify the proportion of this theoretical potential that would be achievable under conditions close to the current situation. Three scenarios were then built and compared with the level of residual emissions anticipated by the SNBC2, i.e. 80 MtCO2eq of which ~30 MtCO2eq of fossil origin and ~50 MtCO2eq of biogenic origin. With the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) at a level of 10 MtCO2eq/year to intercept part of these residual emissions, natural sinks and CDR would have to neutralise around 70 MtCO2eq/year for France to meet its carbon neutrality target by 2050. This assumption is used as a target value in the construction of scenarios.

A portfolio approach 

The proposed deployment scenarios leverage a variety of CDR methods. Nevertheless, the study clearly shows that the availability of geologic storage capacity, the availability of additional decarbonised energy, and the level of remuneration for carbon farming practices are the main limiting factors for a deployment at scale. Proactive, coordinated policies are needed to remove these obstacles and build a regulatory environment that provides the necessary guarantees for a responsible use of CDR. Given the diversity of methods and the multiple dependencies on related sectors (such as energy), it seems important to build a genuine French CDR strategy that would enable France to meet its climate commitments while harnessing the benefits of the chosen CDR activities and their organised development throughout the territory.

L’atteinte de l’objectif de neutralité carbone semble plus difficile que jamais dans la préparation de la SNBC3, notamment au vu des moindres performances du puits forestier sur lequel la France s’est largement appuyée jusqu’ici. En plus de renforcer son action sur la décarbonation, il est urgent que la France diversifie sa stratégie sur les puits de carbone. L’élimination du dioxyde de carbone atmosphérique (EDC) est le troisième pilier de l’action climatique : réduire, s’adapter, éliminer. Il existe une large palette de méthodes d’EDC qui permettent de générer des émissions négatives.