In this episode, co-hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Dr Andrew Lenton, Director of CSIRO's CarbonLock Future Science Platform, to discuss Australia's newly published CDR roadmap and its first novel CDR workforce report.

Andrew walks through what it took to build a credible national roadmap and why the coalition of partners, including Google as the sole private sector contributor, may matter as much as the findings themselves. He covers the technologies that surprised him most and what Australia's unique geography means for the CDR opportunity.

The conversation turns to early policy signals: a new Australia-Canada CDR agreement, fresh federal and state-level funding, and how Australia's co-presidency of COP31 is shaping the agenda. Andrew reflects on what it has taken to build basic CDR literacy across government as a foundation for any of this to stick.

The episode closes on workforce, Australia's first novel CDR workforce report just landed, and Andrew outlines the four recommendations at its core. Sebastian brings in data from CDRjobs and European parallels to show why getting this right, and soon, matters.

Links:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Dr Andrew Lentoni: LinkedIn
• Australian CDR Roadmap
• Australia CDR Workforce Report

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In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, co-hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme sit down for their unscripted quarterly catch-up to discuss what's top of mind in CDR policy.

They open on the EU CBAM and the question of whether Article 6 credits could satisfy CBAM liabilities. They cut through social media hype to examine what has actually been decided, and whether this logic undermines the mechanism's original purpose of incentivising domestic carbon pricing.

The conversation turns to the EU's broader reliance on international credits, including the 5% allowance under the 2040 target. Eve walks through the layered costs that make this look far less cheap than advertised, and the supply and infrastructure constraints that compound the problem.

Sebastian flags three parallel EU processes: CBAM revision, international credits consultation, and ETS revisions, and the Negative Emissions Platform's new ETS Needs Removals campaign. The price gap for DAC and BiCCS, and how to bridge it through ETS revenues, closes out the policy discussion. Sebastian teases an upcoming paper with Rafael Cario on front-loading ETS revenues for carbon removals.

The episode ends with AI as the wildcard: a force driving up CDR demand, and potentially if the energy buildout outlasts the hype, a future catalyst for cheap direct air capture energy.

Links:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The CDR Policy Scoop, Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme are joined by Hannah Bebbington Valori, Head of Deployment at Frontier, the advanced market commitment backed by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, McKinsey, and Meta that has become one of the largest and most experienced buyers of carbon removal in the world.

The conversation opens with Frontier's newly redesigned innovation program, which this year expands beyond pre-purchases to include R&D grants and more flexible check sizes. Hannah explains that roughly 60% of the R&D gaps Frontier identified at launch in 2022 have already been worked on or solved, a sign the field has matured enough to warrant a broader funding approach.

Much of the discussion centres on Frontier's theory of change and the concept of the "baton pass": The idea that voluntary corporate buyers exist to pull technology from lab to field and prepare a portfolio of proven solutions for governments to eventually take over. Hannah is direct that carbon removal is ultimately a public good requiring government-scale support, and that the voluntary market alone cannot get to gigatons. Sebastian and Eve push on how Frontier engages on policy across jurisdictions, how its buying criteria feed into legislative processes, and the tension between being "tech agnostic" in policy design and the practical pressure to fund what already works.

The episode also revisits Frontier's 2024 fellows program, which placed individuals around the world to build demand for carbon removal through policy. Hannah gives an honest assessment: the Nordic Carbon Removal Alliance was a genuine win, but one year is a short runway for systems change, and policy moves slowly by design. The conversation closes on the question the whole sector is watching, what happens to Frontier after 2030, with Hannah confirming the team is actively working on it.

Links:

• Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Hannah Bebbington Valori: LinkedIn
• Frontier: LinkedIn and Website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.