Making a Short-Term EU Purchasing Programme Work for Permanent CDR
By Atilla Yucel
The European Union faces a narrowing window to put in place credible, scalable support for permanent carbon dioxide removal (CDR). While long-term integration into the EU ETS remains under assessment, project developers, buyers, and investors are grappling with immediate questions: how to unlock demand now, secure bankable offtakes, and finance projects in the remaining years of this decade.
To contribute to this discussion, the Negative Emissions Platform has published a new discussion paper, Making a Short-Term EU Purchasing Programme Work for Permanent CDR, setting out practical design options for near-term purchasing support in the EU.
Why purchasing support now?
Permanent CDR is not only a climate necessity; it is also an industrial and competitiveness issue. High-integrity removals can ease compliance pressures for expensive-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement, and chemicals, while enabling new manufacturing value chains across chemicals, mining, and information technology.
However, today’s market remains thin. Transaction costs are high, buyer participation is concentrated among a handful of corporates, and the absence of clear regulatory claiming rules continues to deter wider demand.
Without targeted intervention, many CDR projects risk stalling before final investment decision.
What this discussion note adds
The note focuses deliberately on the near term: how the EU could act between now and 2030 to accelerate deployment, learning, and market formation under budgetary and time constraints. It draws on interviews with suppliers, buyers, technology developers, credit portfolio managers, and marketplaces across NEP’s network.
The paper sets out recommendations for a pragmatic EU purchasing programme designed to stimulate demand and mobilise state aid and private purchases and investment across a range of durable carbon removal methods, bringing as many buyers and suppliers into the market as early as possible.
It proposes an approach built around mutually reinforcing elements:
Buyer aggregation, via an EU Buyers’ Club, to lower entry barriers for mid-cap companies and pool fragmented demand into bankable offtake agreements.
EU funding support, using per-tonne subsidies paid upon CRCF-verified delivery, to strengthen anchor offtakes and unlock private and Member State co-funding, with the Industrial Decarbonisation Bank positioned to deliver scale by complementing Innovation Fund support.
Predictable implementation, starting with a €1 billion pilot from 2026, featuring support for purchasing across CDR pathways in recurring rounds, public communication and pitching events to foster engagement and market confidence
A contribution to an active policy moment
With DG Clima actively exploring demand-pull and supply-push instruments for CDR, this note aims to support sense-making and offer implementable options grounded in market realities. It is intended as a constructive input into an ongoing policy conversation, one that will shape whether high integrity carbon removals made in and by the EU will scale in time to meet climate and industrial objectives.
