Sylvain Delerce
Chief Scientist
Sylvain is part of Carbon Gap’s leadership team. As Chief Scientist, he focuses on analysing the growth of the carbon removal ecosystem to identify the key gaps that need to be addressed, to inform policy makers and unlock Europe’s potential for deploying carbon removal at scale. Sylvain is based in France and is also leading our activities there.
Sylvain is an engineer with more than ten years’ experience in research and development for agriculture in France, Latin America and Africa. He and his team received several distinctions, including a UN Global Pulse Prize, for their work on adapting agriculture to climate change using modern tools such as data science.
Convinced that climate change can be stopped and then reversed, he started to research carbon removal in 2017 and became an active member of the carbon removal community. He recently completed a PhD in geochemistry at CNRS in collaboration with the CarbFix project in Iceland, assessing the potential of using altered basalt rock to permanently store large quantities of captured carbon dioxide.
ARTICLES BY SYLVAIN DELERCE
2 Apr 2026 | Allix Baxter and Sylvain Delerce
The Biogenic Balance: Characterising emissions, matching removals and mapping EU policies
A new paper from Carbon Gap explores biogenic emissions. Our analysis shows that anthropogenic biogenic emissions are currently roughly 9 times greater than temporary nature-based removals globally.
10 Dec 2025 | Sylvain Delerce
Understanding and Implementing the Like-for-Like Principle
The like for like principle is key for reaching durable net zero. We look at the science and implementation of durable carbon removal.
20 Feb 2025 | Eloisa Viloria, Rodica Avornic, Sylvain Delerce, and Lydia Loopesko
Rising to the challenge: Funding CDR research, development & innovation for a net zero competitive EU
An analysis of current EU funding programmes and what has been allocated for carbon removal revealing a significant gap in spending
31 Oct 2023 | Kayla Cohen and Sylvain Delerce
How to create safe, effective and just soil carbon governance
We highlight the result of our stakeholder research on how to create safe, effective and just soil carbon governance
27 Sept 2023 | Robert Höglund, Eli Mitchell-Larson, and Sylvain Delerce
How to avoid carbon removal delaying emissions reductions
We examine how to avoid carbon removal delaying emissions reductions - 12 solutions to mitigation deterrence
6 Mar 2023 | Mengxue You and Sylvain Delerce
The low-carbon label
The Low Carbon Label is France's greenhouse gas certification scheme and provides rules on national emissions targets