Whats the use? European Commission messes up definition and utility of carbon removals

Carbon Market Watch argues that the draft EU Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) is fundamentally flawed due to poor definitions of carbon removals and a failure to specify their role in climate policy. The author contends that the proposal risks promoting 'mitigation deterrence' by allowing removals to substitute for deep emission reductions and by permitting the use of temporary storage for offsetting permanent emissions. Furthermore, the document criticizes the CRCF for conflating emissions reduction with removals, utilizing vague quantification baselines, and failing to implement social protections against land grabbing.

• The draft CRCF fails to define the specific role of carbon removals in EU climate policy, which may lead to 'mitigation deterrence' where removals are used to delay necessary decarbonisation efforts rather than supplementing deep emission reductions.
• The proposal contains a fundamental definitional error by equating emissions reduction from natural carbon sinks with actual carbon removals, and it includes non-permanent storage activities that do not meet the criterion of permanent storage.
• The framework allows for the temporary certification of carbon farming and storage in products, creating a risk that polluters will offset permanent emissions with temporary storage without clear liability mechanisms for carbon reversals.
• The CRCF's quality criteria are undermined by a vague definition of the baseline for quantification and a lack of social protections to prevent land grabbing and protect local communities and small-scale farmers.

APA

De Simone, F. (2022). Whats the use? European Commission messes up definition and utility of carbon removals. Carbon Market Watch. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2022/12/09/whats-the-use-european-commission-messes-up-definition-and-utility-of-carbon-removals/

Chicago

De Simone, Fabiola. Whats the use? European Commission messes up definition and utility of carbon removals. Carbon Market Watch, 2022. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2022/12/09/whats-the-use-european-commission-messes-up-definition-and-utility-of-carbon-removals/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=De Simone |first1=Fabiola |title=Whats the use? European Commission messes up definition and utility of carbon removals |publisher=Carbon Market Watch |date=9 December 2022 |url=https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2022/12/09/whats-the-use-european-commission-messes-up-definition-and-utility-of-carbon-removals/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{desimone2022whats, author = {De Simone, Fabiola}, title = {{Whats the use? European Commission messes up definition and utility of carbon removals}}, publisher = {Carbon Market Watch}, year = {2022}, month = dec, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2022/12/09/whats-the-use-european-commission-messes-up-definition-and-utility-of-carbon-removals/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }