In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down solo with Vikrum Aiyer, Head of Global Energy and Policy and Climate Policy and External Affairs at Heirloom, to trace the last eighteen months of US carbon removal policy. It starts with a survival story: Heirloom and partner Climeworks were awarded roughly 600 million dollars for a Louisiana direct air capture hub under the bipartisan infrastructure law, funding that looked shaky the moment the Trump administration began reviewing Biden era spending. Vikrum explains how a coalition of economic development groups, workforce organizations, and elected officials kept the project alive by leading with jobs, exports, and energy security rather than climate targets.

The conversation turns to 45Q, the tax credit that pays up to 180 dollars per ton for durable removal. Vikrum details how a shift in EPA greenhouse gas reporting policy left the credit's verification framework in a temporary gap, with a Treasury safe harbor expiring and a new reporting structure still being negotiated alongside the Carbon Capture Coalition and industry peers. He credits the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with not just protecting 45Q but expanding its reach across more carbon management pathways.

Sebastian and Vikrum close on California, where the state's cap and trade extension folded in an 85 million dollar annual pot for decarbonization technologies, including CDR, and wrote CDR integration into statute for the first time. Vikrum lays out the live debate over whether emitters should invest directly in removal project capex or whether those dollars should flow to communities instead, and argues the market needs both credit purchases and direct investment to hit the scale carbon removal requires.

Links

• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Vikrum Aiyer: LinkedIn
• Heirloom: Website

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In this episode, Eve Tamme digs into contracted durability with Luke Pritchard, Director at Beyond Alliance, a coalition of major carbon dioxide removal buyers.

Last month, Beyond Alliance published a white paper with RMI and the American Forest Foundation, developed with input from both engineered and nature based CDR developers, setting out what contracted durability could look like and how it fits into the wider policy landscape.

The conversation opens on why durability has stayed unresolved for so long. Luke explains that setting the threshold too low leaves open questions about who holds liability after the monitoring period ends, while setting it too high, without a mechanism like a permanence trust or horizontal stacking, locks nature based solutions out of the market entirely. Buffer pools and insurance, he argues, were never built to guarantee the long duration outcomes that durability requires on their own.

Eve and Luke get into what a permanence trust would actually cost, with Luke citing anecdotal buyer estimates of around 15 percent on top of the credit price, and the tension this creates: cheaper nature based credits paired with contracted durability could pull demand away from engineered removals unless separate price support policy exists. They also map contracted durability against the live policy moments where it could land next, from the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism and California's SB 905 process to the EU, SBTi's Net Zero Standard, and ICVCM's continuous improvement work.

The episode closes with a premortem: Luke's biggest worry is undercapitalization, a permanence trust that takes in too little up front, misjudges reversal risk, and runs out of money when it is needed most.

Links

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Luke Pritchard: LinkedIn
• Contracted Durability: A Framework for Performance Based Carbon Removal by Beyond Alliance, RMI, and American Forest Foundation.

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In this episode, Eve Tamme sits down with Carbon Gap’s ETS experts, Francesca Battesby and Louis Uzor ahead of the European Commission’s ETS proposal, expected on 17 July. CDR is about to gain access to the world’s biggest compliance market for carbon, and this conversation lays out what is actually at stake.

The discussion opens on the integration model: a public authority managing CDR procurement, or covered entities acting on their own. Francesca and Louis explain why a public authority could bring mandate and long term credibility, and they unpack the open question of credit vintage, including whether pre-2031 activity could be grandfathered in.

From there the conversation turns to where CDR sits relative to the ETS cap, and why Carbon Gap favours staying below the cap for now. They also tackle the price gap between DAC and BioCCS and EU allowances, pointing to the UK’s combined CfD and ETS model as a possible blueprint.

The episode closes on the numbers that will decide whether integration is meaningful: the Commission’s 75 megaton estimate for 2040, Isometric’s higher 100 megaton suggestion, and Carbon Gap’s own analysis of CDR’s share of ETS emissions. Francesca and Louis flag what to watch for on 17 July, from biochar and enhanced weathering to the EU’s 90 percent domestic reduction ambition.

Links:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Francesca Battersby: LinkedIn
• Louis Uzor: LinkedIn
• Carbon Gap, “Integrating CDR into the EU ETS” (June 2025)
• Carbon Gap, “Divide to Deliver”
• The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal, 3rd Edition (2026)
• UK Government consultation, “Extending the UK ETS cap beyond 2030”

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