Carbon Gap launches the policy levers library, mapping 165 levers to scale carbon removal in Europe
The Policy Levers Library is a free, open resource mapping policy tools available to governments, companies, and institutions seeking to scale carbon removal.
Carbon Gap has launched the Policy Levers Library, a free, open resource mapping policy tools available to governments, companies, and institutions seeking to scale carbon removal. Consisting of 165 levers divided into six policy families and 22 sub-families, the Library allows policymakers, investors, and advocates to compare policy levers on relevant criteria, learn about new levers and build policy portfolios across various governance levels. It was announced at Carbon Gap's Carbon Removal Policy Summit last week in Brussels.
The Policy Levers Library is a response to a problem policymakers and practitioners have faced for years; the instruments needed to build a durable carbon removal industry exist, but are scattered across statute books, agency mandates and sector silos, with no single place to compare them. Now, policy instruments that can move the carbon removal sector forward are in one place, organised into six policy families:
Market creation and price signals - making a removed tonne visible and valuable.
Capital formation and risk sharing - making projects bankable.
Standards and obligations - making removals useful for industries.
Integrity and accountability - making tonnes real and trusted.
Voluntary and normative drivers - mobilising frontrunners ahead of regulation.
System and capacity enablers - building the foundations everything else stands on.
Every lever is scored against consistent criteria, including cost, complexity, and timeline, as well as its likely effect on eight independent barriers to scaling CDR. All scores have been independently assessed by Carbon Gap. The Library can be sorted by all 11 of these criteria. It is also filterable across seven governance levels, from international bodies down to city and municipal government, industry, and philanthropy. This capability gives users the ability to narrow down the site’s contents to the levers most relevant to them.
“No single policy will build a gigatonne industry. Not a carbon price, not a subsidy, not a mandate,” said Alexander Mäkelä, Chief Policy Officer at Carbon Gap. “What we've done is put every lever governments actually have on one map, scored the same way, so a policymaker in Warsaw and an investor in Amsterdam are looking at the same picture. That's how you build a portfolio of tools that works, instead of betting everything on one.”
Each lever also has up-to-date companion case studies. With 478 case studies across the 165 levers, users can understand exactly how and where a particular lever is being applied, by whom, and at what level of governance.
The Policy Levers Library is part of a forthcoming book called Foundations of Carbon Removal by Carbon Gap’s Chief Policy Officer, Alexander Mäkelä. This comprehensive resource is intended to serve as a practical reference for scaling carbon removal through policy, markets and implementation. It provides overviews on 24 carbon removal methods and includes visuals and tables that bring to life topics like demand and market formation, integrity safeguards and project economics. It will also have more than 20 interactive digital companion tools, allowing readers to conduct analyses, test assumptions and compare policies. To learn more about the book’s contents and to sign up for a free digital copy, visit carbongap.org/foundations.