Implementing separate climate targets: A transatlantic exchange [Webinar]
To limit global warming to 1.5°C and avoid climate breakdown, carbon dioxide removals (CDR) will be needed to supplement urgent, deep, and sustained emissions reductions. CDR cannot replace decarbonisation. Countries and companies should ensure that their climate plans are not overreliant on removing carbon from the atmosphere and focus primarily on slashing emissions.
Setting and implementing separate targets for emissions reduction, biogenic sequestration, and permanent removals is a good way to achieve this. It ensures transparency and accountability, creates a dedicated space for assessing the benefits, risks, and trade-offs of CDR, and provides clarity to CDR project developers. This webinar assessed the state of CDR policies on both sides of the Atlantic. It will look at current and proposed CDR policies, and how they could aid or impede progress towards separate climate targets in the United States (including California), the United Kingdom, Germany and the wider European Union. Examples include the UK government’s plans to integrate CDR into its Emissions Trading System; the EU’s upcoming proposal for a 2040 climate target; the California bill on the role of removals in the state’s net-zero goal proposal (SB 308); the US Carbon Dioxide Removal Investment Act bill; and the German Carbon Management Strategy.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Fabiola De Simone, Carbon Market Watch
00:02:38 Setting the scene – The case for separate climate targets: Duncan McLaren, Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal
Implementing separate climate targets – A comparative perspective:
00:19:48 The US : Katie Lebling, the World Resources Institute
00:34:09 California: Danny Cullenward, the University of Pennsylvania
00:42:32 The UK: Josh Burke, the London School of Economics
00:50:44 Germany: Julia Teppe, WWF Germany
01:03:33 The EU: Fabien Ramos, European Commission
01:09:52 Q&A
⭐ Relevant links and references shared during the webinar:
- Slides on California: https://calepa.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/08/Cullenward-slides.pdf
- Draft of the advisory committee chapter on carbon offsets in California:
https://calepa.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/01/Chapter-7-Carbon-offsets.pdf
- Katie's slides covering CDR policies in the U.S: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IeLt8t12_VS6MH6CNiqLT6LcsUcQzkYS/view?usp=sharing
- Carbon Market Watch and more than 100 other stakeholders called for the EU to adopt separate climate targets in the upcoming proposal for a 2040 target. As the proposal has not been published yet, the letter is still open for signatories: https://forms.monday.com/forms/e2c0e969d1c54da5570b44773c1cc510?r=euc1
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