New initiative seeks to make carbon dioxide removal count
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A new group, backed by big names in the climate world, just launched to ensure carbon removal policies verifiably keep CO2 stashed away.
Why it matters: Reliable tallying of what's sucked from the atmosphere — and whether it's truly staying out — is crucial for becoming a real weapon against global warming.
Driving the news: Enter the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI), which launched Tuesday. The nonprofit's mission is to help governments and NGOs craft science-based standards, with an emphasis on rigorous quantification.
- The founder and executive director is Anu Khan, former head of science and innovation at the group Carbon180.
- The Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy and the Grantham Foundation are among the six initial funders.
How it works: CRSI aims to inform policies in the U.S. and beyond — without financial conflicts that come alongside technical assistance from industry.
- "Government regulators have wide portfolios and can't be expected to know the technical aspects of the entire carbon removal ecosystem right away," Khan tells Axios.
- Take, for instance, CRSI efforts on "jurisdiction-level monitoring " of enhanced weathering tech. It's designed to fit into UN work on methodologies and use of carbon credits, she said via email.
Other program areas include a new database on quantification tools and resources and studying how standards development has worked in other industries.
Catch up quick: There's a thirst for this. An early 2023 open letter calling for an independent body drew support from startups, scientists, venture capitalists and others.
- "The carbon removal market today is still in its infancy, with investors taking on the burden of assessing quality in the absence of robust standards," Carbon Direct chief science officer Matthew Potts wrote last year.
The bottom line: While billions of dollars in public and private capital are flowing into removal, strong transparency is needed to enable public trust and ultimately build a gigaton-scale market, advocates say.
- Khan tells Axios that buyers, suppliers and other market participants are excited for governments to provide more clarity.
