Rising to the challenge: Funding CDR research, development & innovation for a net-zero competitive EU
Explore why the EU must increase funding for carbon removal research and innovation. Targeted investment is key to scaling CDR technologies, closing funding gaps, and achieving net-zero competitiveness.
Public funding is key to unlocking technological development and innovation, especially in early- stage projects. Whilst the EU is widely regarded as a global research powerhouse, its support for CDR so far has been fragmented and insufficiently targeted. Between 2020 and 2023, excluding member state funding, the EU has allocated approximately EUR 657 million to directly support
CDR methods through existing programmes such as Horizon Europe (including the European Innovation Council or EIC), the LIFE Programme or the Innovation Fund. This number represents a mere 0.1% of the total projected EU climate action budget between 2021-2027. Moreover, there are no clear CDR-specific funding streams among the EU’s many funding programmes, since existing calls tend to bundle CDR with carbon capture and storage (CCS), a related but distinct technology. As a result, opportunities to advance dedicated CDR research and development in Europe are limited, thereby slowing progress and discouraging innovation.
The development of the CDR sector will depend on the materialisation of a robust and diverse set of CDR methods, hence the urgency of catalysing support by harnessing the potential of a new EU funding cycle. A significant funding gap remains, for which the EU will need to direct around EUR 2.88 to 5.85 billion in the next 15-20 years in order to support the technical development of CDR methods and address cross-cutting research questions.
Building on DG RTD’s analysis of research needs for climate neutrality by 20506, which recognises CDR as a priority EU research area in need of support, the EU must develop a detailed roadmap with concrete actions to address remaining CDR research and funding gaps. Ahead of the negotiations for the EU budget for 2028-2034 as well as the EU’s main funding programme for RD&I (that will follow ‘Horizon Europe’), we propose 4 main recommendations for efficiently allocating the funding resources necessary for bringing the portfolio of CDR methods to scale.