Sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere – 'carbon removals' – is essential to achieve Europe's 2050 net-zero climate goals. This report considers twelve nature- and technology-based carbon removal solutions, evaluating their climate mitigation potential and suitability for deployment across Europe. The report supports the European Commission's development of a certification mechanism for carbon removals.

We consider twelve carbon removal options:

• Afforestation & Reforestation
• Agroforestry
• Peatland rewetting
• Improved forest management.
• Increase in soil organic carbon on mineral soils
• Biochar
• Biomass in buildings
• Direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS)
• Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)
• Enhanced rock weathering
• Carbon capture and storage (CCS)
• Various Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) routes

Each solution is described in a multipage fiche that evaluates key aspects, such as EU mitigation potential, cost, and co-benefits and potential risks associated with the solutions. The fiches also consider key challenges for certifying carbon removals, including the risk of non-permanence and monitoring, reporting, and verification challenges.

We find that all carbon removal solutions have different strengths and weaknesses, posing different challenges and opportunities for a European carbon removal certification mechanism. For example, while nature-based solutions tend to be more mature and cost-effective than technology-based solutions, they typically pose higher risks of non-permanence. Conversely, monitoring, reporting and verification tends to be simpler for technology-based solutions, but they often have significant negative externalities, such as high electricity consumption. Each of these characteristics must be considered to design a robust and effective system to incentivise carbon removals within Europe.

Ecologic Institute led evaluations of all nature-based solutions, as part of a project funded by European Commission DG CLIMA. An accompanying report was published simultaneously, which reviews 24 existing carbon removal certification mechanisms and methodologies and identifies key lessons for designing a European carbon removals mechanism.