Carbon Removal Readiness Assessments underway in Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain
Explore Carbon Gap’s Carbon Removal Readiness Assessments across Europe, mapping CDR potential, policy gaps, and pathways to scale carbon removal at national level.
How far can we go in deploying carbon dioxide removal (CDR)? Which methods are best suited for each country? These questions are important for countries to answer to define achievable targets, avoid mitigation deterrence and harness the benefits of developing their domestic CDR capacity.
Mapping CDR readiness country by country
With the Carbon Removal Readiness Assessments (CRRA) project, we develop a pragmatic and data-driven approach to estimating countries’ CDR potential. We’ve previously conducted similar assessments in France and Norway, creating the first quantified estimations of the CDR potential of these countries, encompassing every CDR method available to us at the time.
In 2025, we are conducting CRRAs in five European countries selected based on their theoretical potential for carbon dioxide removal and/or the early stage of national conversations around its deployment: Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain.
We’re building these assessments from the ground up, combining:
Desk research to map resources, feedstocks, and policy landscapes;
Stakeholder interviews with policymakers, industry leaders, and civil society;
Citizen panels to understand public perceptions and concerns around CDR.
This participatory process helps us go beyond theory, revealing what’s not just technically possible, but politically and socially achievable in each country’s unique context.
Currently, desk research is underway across all five countries. Citizen panels have been completed in Finland, Germany, Italy, and Poland, and 15+ stakeholder interviews have been conducted in every country.
What’s Next: Road mapping workshops
In Finland and Spain, we’re co-designing actionable national roadmaps with local stakeholders. They will outline how identified CDR potentials can be realised through research, policy, investment, and collaboration.
Each roadmap is aimed at offering clear, realistic actions, sequenced in time and backed by cost estimates, and ideas for financing whenever possible. It’s not just about strategy, it’s about building a shared vision among national stakeholders to enable effective progress in the coming years.
While each national roadmap will reflect local priorities, we expect several core themes and their related relfections areas to emerge:
Research and innovation: What are the main open questions that research programmes should address to unlock the deployment of CDR pathways?
Regulatory clarity: What legal and policy frameworks are missing to support the responsible growth of CDR?
Infrastructure needs: What physical and digital infrastructure is required to support the deployment of CDR?
Deployment incentives: What financial or policy mechanisms could accelerate the development of a national CDR ecosystem?
Join our local partners in Helsinki this upcoming 4 September, and in Madrid in early October (stay tuned for the exact date). These workshops are where theory meets practice, and your input can help shape the future.
What about other countries? Explore carbon removal potential with our open-access toolkit
Every country should have clarity on its CDR potential, and therefore, conduct a Carbon Removal Readiness Assessment. That’s why we are working to release a DIY Carbon Removal Readiness Toolkit – a resource designed to empower countries, to assess their readiness for scaling carbon removal.
This Toolkit will be fully open-access, meaning anyone can use it, adapt it, and build on it. It lays out the rationale and methodology behind our CRRA, offering a transparent, step-by-step guide to developing a robust assessment of the CDR potential in a jurisdiction.
Whether you’re a policymaker in a country not yet covered by our assessments, a researcher exploring national climate strategies, or a local advocate looking to spark action, the Toolkit is built to be:
Replicable: apply the framework to your own national or regional context;
Customisable: tailor the approach to reflect local priorities, data availability, and policy environments;
Collaborative: use it as a foundation for multi-stakeholder dialogue and planning;
Action-oriented: move from analysis to strategy with clear guidance on next steps.
By making this methodology public, we aim to foster a shared language and approach to assessing carbon removal readiness, one that can scale across borders and accelerate climate action globally.
Recap: How you can engage
We’re building a community across Europe and beyond. Here’s how you can get involved:
In Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain
In countries not yet covered by a CRRA
Share your data and insights
Do you have insights, research, datasets, or local knowledge relevant to CDR in your country? Your contributions can help fill critical gaps and strengthen the evidence base for smarter strategies.
Join the road mapping process
If you care about how CDR will be rolled out and you’re based in Finland or Spain, help shape national roadmaps that will guide climate action and carbon removal for years to come.
Become a Toolkit early adopter
In countries not yet covered by our assessments, we invite you to become an early adopter of our open-access methodology. Reach out to get an introduction to CRRA and the toolkit, and to discuss how you could initiate the CRRA in your country.
This is more than a project—it’s a collective effort to build a shared understanding of the realistic CDR capacity and inform CDR policy making at the national level. Are you ready to be part of it?
Reach out to us at [email protected] to start the conversation. Together, we can build the foundations for meaningful carbon removal across Europe and beyond.
This work is made possible thanks to the support of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment.