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ARE EU COUNTRIES’ CARBON REMOVAL PLANS ALIGNED WITH THE PARIS AGREEMENT?

Estimating the carbon removal responsibility of EU Member States.

INTRODUCING THE CARE CALCULATOR

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The clock is ticking on the carbon budget—who will step up to remove CO₂?

The 2015 Paris Agreement set a global goal to limit warming to well below 2°C and strive for under 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. To meet this goal, the cumulative amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted globally into the atmosphere must stay within set limits, referred to as the remaining carbon budget.

The latest estimates for staying below 1.5°C warming with little or no overshoot (meaning temporarily exceeding the temperature limits) and 2°C warming by the end of the century, suggest that the remaining carbon budget would be limited to around 130 and 1050 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2), respectively.

Climate pathways which stay within the boundaries of the Paris Agreement rely on both dramatic emissions reductions and significant amounts of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). During the second half of the century, these scenarios include CDR as the primary strategy, with a total of about 670 GtCO2 (450–1100 GtCO2) removed from the atmosphere globally by 2100.

But today, it remains unclear who will deliver these removals.

Mind the gap: are countries doing enough to scale carbon removal—or just covering their own emissions?

In the European Union, most member states currently aim for net zero emissions by 2050, with some aspiring to go net negative thereafter (visit Carbon Gap’s Policy Tracker). However, these plans often provide little indication of how or by how much, disregarding the need to work within the remaining carbon budget. There are several reasons for this situation:

  • The lack of a roadmap and coordinated planning for how countries should contribute to the global CDR need.
  • The heavy focus on reaching net zero can also explain why some jurisdictions do not plan for CDR beyond what they need to neutralise their residual emissions (i.e., those hard-to-abate emissions which will remain at net zero).
  • Adding to this gap, many countries still report natural uptake, for example by forests, as carbon removals, which overestimates their current CDR capacity.

The lack of clear and sustained commitment to scaling up CDR presents several challenges:

In the short term:

  • It fails to signal the importance and expected growth of CDR, which hinders the mobilisation of the private sector and investors.
  • This uncertainty also makes it difficult to advance policy measures, such as compliance mechanisms, that could stimulate the demand necessary to meet the CDR targets outlined by the IPCC.

In the long term, this lack of action threatens our ability to achieve climate goals.

There is a growing gap between the proposals of major economies to scale CDR and the volumes required to reach the climate goals of the Paris Agreement (see Lamb et al., 2024; Hahn et al., 2024; and the State of CDR report, 2024).  

How can a global perspective help countries plan smarter carbon removal?

Applying a global perspective to national policy:
In 2019, Finland reassessed its climate targets by considering the remaining global carbon budget and making realistic assumptions about the pace of decarbonisation in other countries.

Inspired by the example of Finland and drawing from research on coordinated CDR planning under the Paris Agreement, Carbon Gap has developed the Coordinated Allocation of Removal Efforts (CARE) Calculator as an interactive tool to support informed decision-making on CDR targets.

It enables users to explore coordinated and scientifically grounded EU and national CDR targets based on a global goal, using different methods for distributing responsibility among countries.

Evaluating different scenarios highlights the nuances and implications of sharing the responsibility of a common goal. Notably, the findings illustrate the importance of looking beyond merely neutralising residual emissions in national long-term strategies, emphasising the broader role CDR must play in achieving global climate goals.

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Read the full report to dig deeper into the analysis behind the tool

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HOW CAN WE DETERMINE APPROPRIATE CDR CONTRIBUTIONS?

To meaningfully contribute to the global climate crisis, EU countries must plan for more CDR than just neutralising their expected residual emissions, determined by isolated net zero strategies. Instead, countries should collaborate to reach the volumes of CDR needed to realise the global goals of the Paris Agreement.This approach is simulated in our CARE Calculator which explores possible ‘CDR contributions’ from the EU and member states to support reaching global climate goals. These estimated contributions can be used to benchmark CDR targets in future EU and national climate strategies.

Based on Paris-compliant climate scenarios, the tool explores concrete CDR removal rates (in Gt CO₂e per year) for the EU and its member states at key milestones between 2030 and 2100.

Setting EU CDR targets in alignment with global goals involves a debate on two levels:

1

At the international level, where the EU acts as one entity to define a total EU contribution;

2

At the EU level, where member states deliberate how to fulfill the collective goal by defining their individual contributions. 

Where to start? With the global CDR need…

An appropriate starting point for determining meaningful CDR contributions for the EU and member states is to define the global CDR need. Each Paris-compliant climate pathway, as categorised by the IPCC (e.g., C1, C2, and C3), is related to a set remaining carbon budget and differs in the amount of removals needed. Selecting the global CDR need within the context of these three categories is therefore akin to choosing a desired climate future.

Three Paris-compliant climate pathways:
  • C1 – warming stays below 1.5 °C by 2100 with minimal overshoot, requiring rapid emissions cuts and substantial carbon removal. The remaining carbon budget (from 2024) is 130 GtCO₂ (for 50% chance of staying below temperature target).
  • C2 – The 1.5 °C (C1) carbon budget is exhausted and warming temporarily overshoots 1.5°C by 2100. Large-scale carbon removals are included later in the century to cancel out the overshoot and bring warming levels back down.
  • C3 – warming stays below 2 °C. Net zero is generally achieved only after 2070. The remaining carbon budget (from 2024) is 1050 GtCO₂ (for a 50% chance of staying below the temperature target).

Target years

The CARE Calculator provides a snapshot approach using selected target years to estimate how much CDR will need to be delivered annually by a particular year (i.e., 2030, 2040, 2050, 2060, 2070, 2100). Yet, postponing the deployment of CDR will naturally lead to the need for greater emissions reductions and/or removals to reach the climate goals by the end of the century.

Thresholds for participation

Because the remaining carbon budget is a finite global common, it depends on the cumulative action or inaction of the countries. Similarly, joint CDR efforts delivered by all the countries need to match the global CDR need, posing the important question of which countries should be expected to contribute to the global CDR effort. For example, it may be logical to apply a threshold for participation to avoid placing unjust and/or unrealistic expectations on developing countries.

To explore the implications of such thresholds, the CARE Calculator allows the selection of different participating country groups, which include all EU member states.

Thresholds for participation:
  • All countries
  • Annex 1 – listed under the UNFCCC as expected to lead climate mitigation efforts; primarily industrialised nations and economies in transition with significant historical emissions.
  • High Income – classified per the World Bank as having a gross national income (GNI) per capita (Atlas method; current US$) above $13,846 in 2023.
  • Upper Middle & High Income – classified per the World Bank as countries with GNI per capita (Atlas method; current US$) above $4,466 and $13,846 in 2023, respectively.

How can we allocate the global CDR need?

The Paris Agreement is based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibility and capabilities, emphasising that mitigation efforts should be equitable, both in terms of sharing benefits and addressing burdens. To operationalise this concept, three common allocation principles are often used—polluter pays, ability to pay and equality—which can likewise be used to address the question of how CDR efforts can be fairly distributed. Within the CARE Calculator, these three criteria can be used to allocate the global CDR need and estimate a total EU CDR contribution.

Instead of defining CDR targets in isolation, the EU member states should coordinate to deliver on the total EU CDR contribution. The CARE Calculator explores how individual member state CDR contributions could be defined to reach the EU’s goal. Here, the three main allocation criteria (polluter pays, ability to pay, and equality) can again be considered. Additionally, the natural biophysical capacity of a country to remove and store carbon domestically, can also be used when determining member state contributions.

There are multiple legitimate ways to interpret how responsibility for CDR should be distributed, depending on the ethical or political perspective adopted. Since each of the presented principles has its own implications and limitations, it can be beneficial to consider multiple allocation principles simultaneously and assign them differing importance. The CARE Calculator gives the ability to apply weights (ranging from 0 to 100) to each criterion, enabling a flexible exploration of different burden-sharing approaches.

A detailed description of our methodology, data sources, and sensitivity analysis can be found in our full report available soon.

The polluter pays principle

The polluter pays principle argues that countries which are historically responsible for the current climate crisis, for example through the large-scale burning of fossil fuels, have a greater responsibility towards remediation. Hence, there is a clear justification for applying the polluter pays principle to the question of who should contribute to CDR efforts. While the polluter pays principle provides a clear basis for assigning responsibility for climate action, its implementation occasionally faces criticism as it assigns obligations to present and future generations based on the actions of their past populations.

Using polluter pays, the global CDR need is distributed according to past cumulative emissions of participating countries, with an optional start date from 1850 or 1990. Data is sourced from the PRIMAP-hist historical emissions time series from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

The ability to pay principle

The ability to pay principle recognises the differing financial capabilities of countries and promotes that countries with greater economic means to combat climate change and its negative impacts have a greater responsibility to act. Since CDR requires substantial investment in technology, infrastructure, and research, its deployment can be effectively linked to the ability to pay principle, ensuring that wealthier nations contribute more to scaling these solutions in line with their greater financial capacity. This principle also has its limitations, namely, it does not address inequalities within countries, potentially overlooking vulnerable communities that may lack resources despite residing in high-income nations.

When prioritising ability to pay, the global CDR share is allocated based on countries’ gross national income (GNI) or GNI per capita. Using total GNI may overburden large economies with relatively lower per capita income (e.g., Poland), while using GNI per capita may overburden high-income countries with lower total national resources (e.g., Luxembourg). Hence, using GNI rescaled by GNI per capita aims to balance these effects. All metrics are based on 5-year averages ending in the latest available inventory year, using data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.

The equality principle

The equality principle advocates that all people should have an equal claim to a clean and healthy environment and that environmental benefits and burdens should be distributed equally between the global population. When applied to CDR, the implication is that all people share evenly the responsibility to combat the cause of global warming and thus share the responsibility to deploy CDR. However, this approach ignores historical inequality and may unfairly overburden developing countries with large population sizes. To apply this principle, the global CDR need is distributed according to the current population size (in 2023) of participating countries. Data is sourced from the World Development Indicators from the World Bank.

Biophysical capacity

Countries have differing potential to deploy CDR depending on their natural resources. Comparing countries’ natural biophysical capacity to remove and store CO2 from the atmosphere with their removal needs provides insights into what strategies they may need to use to secure sufficient CDR, i.e., through domestic development versus procurement from abroad. Although some countries have already voiced such positions, there is no consensus as to whether having higher biophysical capacity should increase the responsibility to act, or if a low capacity should validate reduced responsibility.

Unlike the traditional allocation principles (equality, ability to pay, and polluter Pays), which rely on well-established metrics, country-level data that can act as proxies for countries’ biophysical capacity are more difficult to generate. A handful of datasets provide reasonable measures for carbon removal and storage potentials for EU countries. The CARE Calculator includes two possibilities for datasets:

 

  1. Dataset 1: Reforestation, BECCS, and DACCS – this measure reflects a country’s on-site potential for carbon removal and storage through the methods of reforestation, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). This data is sourced from Pozo Fernández et al. (2020) and is given in total volume (Gt CO2).
  2. Dataset 2: Cost-effective land-based measures – this measure summarises countries’ average annual climate mitigation potential of a suite of cost-effective (available up to $100/ tonne CO2e) land-based solutions. For example, these include climate mitigation potential from conservation, restoration, and/or improved land management actions as well as from soil carbon sequestration and biochar application. This data is sourced from Roe et al. (2021) (summing the potential of activities from the ‘forestry & other ecosystems’ and ‘sequester carbon’ categories) and is given as an annual rate (Gt CO2e/yr) during the period 2020 – 2050. Note that like the authors we do not include the potential from BECCS in this aggregated total due to potential double counting with afforestation/reforestation.
To navigate the many scenarios stemming from the multiple combinations of the parameters listed above, we defined three illustrative example scenarios for the CARE Calculator called the Global participation – equality (GP-E), Upper income – balanced equity (UI-BE) and Upper income – balanced capability (UI-C) scenarios (Table 1). Whereas GP-E represents an idealistic scenario in which all countries contribute to global CDR efforts based solely on population size, UI-BE and UI-C offer more pragmatic approaches, factoring in countries’ emissions levels as well as their natural and financial capacities.

Table 1: Scenario set-up for three illustrative scenarios from the CARE Calculator, detailing the countries which participate in global CDR efforts, the allocation criteria at the EU and member state level, and the specific calculation variant used. Present refers to 2023, i.e., the latest year available in the respective data inventories at the time writing.

Example Scenario Participating countries Allocation criteria – global level Allocation criteria – within the EU Explanation
Global participation – equality
GP-E		 All Equality (population, present) Equality (population, present) Minimum ambition scenario, requiring participation from all countries and solely based on population size

Upper income – balanced equality

UI-BE

 Upper middle- and high-income

Equality (population, present)

Ability to pay (GNI scaled by GNI per capita)

Polluter pays (cumulative emissions, 1990 to present)

Equality (population, present)

Ability to pay (GNI scaled by GNI per capita)

Polluter pays (cumulative emissions, 1990 to present)

 Limits participation to more developed countries, equally weighs the importance of the three most common allocation principles

Upper income – capacity

UI-C

 Upper middle- and high-income Ability to pay (GNI scaled by GNI per capita)

Ability to pay (GNI scaled by GNI per capita)

Biophysical capacity (Dataset 1: Reforestation, BECCS, and DACCS)

 Limits participation to more developed countries. Focuses on a forward looking approach only concerned with countries financial and biophysical capabilities. For allocation within the EU, ability to pay and biophysical capacity are weighted equality

A detailed description of our methodology, data sources, and sensitivity analysis can be found in our full report available soon.

How do estimated CDR contributions compare to current efforts?

The estimated member state CDR contributions from the CARE Calculator can be compared to several key political and scientific benchmarks to gain insights into setting CDR targets:

EU and national CDR targets

First, the contributions are compared to legally-binding and proposed national CDR targets (when available) for the selected target year (see Policy Tracker and Table 2), exposing the current lack of explicit targets and the gap between existing targets and the CDR needs to achieve the Paris Agreement climate goals. At the EU level, relevant regulations include the 2030 removals target in law for the Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) sector of 310 Mt CO2 per year (0.31 Gt CO2), and proposed targets for 2040 for LULUCF and industrial removals (see the European Commission’s communication and accompanying impact assessment).

Note that in Table 2, member states currently generally plan only for LULUCF removals and have not included permanent CDR targets in their national climate strategies. The volumes from the CARE Calculator on the other hand reflect a total removals volume, to be delivered by a combination of LULUCF and permanent CDR methods.

Residual emissions

We compare the estimated contributions with countries’ expected residual emissions reported in national long-term climate strategies (see also Carbon Gap’s Policy Tracker), since most countries plan to scale CDR only to meet these levels, highlighting potential ambition gaps.

CDR need modelled by Ieast-cost models

Additionally, the estimated CDR volumes for the member states are compared to member states’ CDR need calculated by an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) approach. The IAM model results shown for comparison in the tool relate to six illustrative pathways for Europe to reach net zero in 2050 by balancing declining emissions with removals from a portfolio of different CDR approaches. This exercise reflects an isolated approach in which Europe reaches climate neutrality in the least expensive way, irrespective of global climate goals. It is therefore interesting to compare the range of IAM model estimates to the contributions resulting from our approach of allocating the global CDR need.

Political and operational readiness

It is valuable to compare the outcomes from the CARE Calculator to the current state of political and operational readiness of individual member states to deliver carbon removals. Currently, Carbon Gap is in the process of systematically assessing the political readiness of EU member states related to several crucial themes for supporting the deployment of CDR (see our Policy Tracker), such as whether they have defined clear targets, or if they are taking actions to support research and deployment of CDR methods. To understand operational readiness, we looked at the number of active novel CDR operators per member state and the tonnes of carbon they have sold and delivered (data sourced from cdr.fyi; accessed June, 2025).

Biophysical capacity

Besides considering biophysical capacity during the allocation of CDR efforts, we also compare members states’ contributions to the global CDR need directly against the potential natural capacity of each country to deliver CDR domestically. This exercise will reveal where clear offsets exist between countries’ required CDR contributions towards reaching global climate goals, and their natural resources for removing carbon. Possible discrepancies might suggest some countries will need to trade or invest in removals beyond their own territories to meet their obligations.

Comparing the CARE Calculator to EU and national CDR targets

Table 2: Summary of CDR targets in law as of June 2025 (see Carbon Gap’s Policy Tracker for updates), and proposed or projected CDR targets alongside results from the CARE Calculator. 
  EU or member state legislation Carbon Gap’s CARE Calculator
Region Method Target year Annual target removals rates (Mt/yr) Target year Estimated annual CDR contribution (Mt/yr)
EU LULUCF 2030 310 2030

240 (GP-E)

750 (UI-BE)

970 (UI-C)

EU

 

 LULUCF
Industrial
Total

2040

 

 317
75
392
(Proposed 2040 targets)

2040

 

400 (GP-E)

1200 (UI-BE)

1600 (UI-C)
Finland LULUCF 2035 21 2030

3 (GP-E)

10 (UI-BE)

14 (UI-C)
Germany LULUCF

2030

 

 

2040

 

 

2045

25

 

 

35

 

 

40

2030

 

 

2040

 

45 (GP-E)

182 (UI-BE)

209 (UI-C)

75 (GP-E)

300 (UI-BE)

345 (UI-C)

 
Sweden Unspecified 2045 ~11 Mt (i.e.,15% of 1990 GHG) 2040 9 (GP-E)
31 (UI-BE)
35 (UI-C)
Romania LULUCF 2050 ~ 4 2050 24 (GP-E)
60 (UI-BE)
113 (UI-C)
Netherlands LULUCF 2030 1.9 Mt 2030 9 (GP-E)
35 (UI-BE)
35 (UI-C)
France Unspecified 2050  65-80  (projected range) 2050 86 Mt (GP-E)
263 Mt (UI-BE)
384 (UI-C)
At the EU level, the 2030 LULUCF target and the proposed 2040 (sub)targets in the EU climate law (ECL) in the Commission’s impact assessment (modelled scenario 3; S3) are included. For Sweden and Romania, the targets are described as a percentage of historical GHG emissions or current removal capacity; estimates of the absolute volumes given here are approximate. Orange text indicates when the estimated CDR contributions exceed the relevant EU or member state targets following a global CDR need in line with median values from the C1 pathways for the respective year. Note that when a corresponding target year does not exist (i.e., for 2035, 2045), the preceding target year (i.e., 2030, 2040) is used for a conservative comparison. Values are reflected in millions of tonnes (Mt) of CO2e/yr, where one million tonne is equivalent to 0.001 giga tonne (Gt).

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What key insights does the CARE Calculator provide?

1

In any reasonable scenario—that is, any scenario which does not rely on participation by all countries based just on their population size (pure Equality-based approach)—the required CDR contributions are almost always higher than what currently exist in national and EU-wide strategies (see Table 2 and Fig 1).

At the EU level (Table 2, Fig. 1), the UI-BE and UI-C scenarios show EU contributions of upwards of 0.54 and 0.71 Gt CO2e/yr in 2030, respectively, to be compared with the 0.31 Gt CO2 annual target set for LULUCF. On the horizon for 2040, the UI-BE and UI-C scenarios once again indicate that the EU CDR contributions should be much higher than the ~0.4 Gt CO2e/yr target to be achieved via LULUCF and permanent removals proposed by the Commission for 2040.

At the member state level (Table 2), all countries—with the exception of Finland who has defined their removal targets considering the global carbon budget, as mentioned above—risk committing to removal levels that are substantially too low to meaningfully contribute to global climate efforts. Finland’s ambitious target should clearly not be seen as a reason to lower its own efforts. Since other countries with much higher targets will likely face substantial challenges in meeting them, it is vital that countries with the capacity to deliver removals maintain or even strengthen their commitments. 

Estimated EU CDR contributions from example scenarios

Figure 1: Total EU CDR contributions in Gt CO2e/yr for 2030, 2040 and 2050, predicted by the CARE Calculator for three illustrative scenarios described in Table 1 (blue bars). The sets of three clustered bars indicate the global CDR need in line with median values from the C1, C2 and C3 climate pathways. Also shown are the 2030 LULUCF target and proposed permanent and LULUCF subtargets for 2040 as modelled for the scenario S3 in the Commission’s impact assessment (orange bars).  

2Cooperation is key. The more countries which participate in CDR efforts at the global level, the more attainable EU and national CDR targets become.

For example, this principle is clearly demonstrated by the much higher CDR contributions for the UI-BE and UI-C scenarios where only the middle- and high-income countries contribute, versus the GP-E scenarios where all countries contribute (Fig. 1). If all countries participate, the EU’s contribution is much smaller, whereas if the participating countries are restricted, for example to only Annex-I countries, the EU’s share increases dramatically. It is clear that, in particular, the participating country group matters when calculating the total EU CDR contributions (Fig 2). This impact can easily outweigh the effects of other parameter choices, such as the global CDR need or certain allocation criteria.

Impact of choices on EU CDR contributions

Figure 2: This figure shows how much each decision we make about parameters (i.e., the global CDR need, the participating country group, or the specific allocation criteria) can affect the EU’s total estimated CDR contribution. Bigger circles (shown in Gt CO₂e per year) mean that choosing different options for that parameter makes a big difference. Smaller circles mean the choice doesn’t change the outcome much. In other words, this figure highlights which decisions have the most influence on how much CDR the EU would need to contribute. It does this by showing the biggest difference in impact between the available options for each factor, while assuming all other factors are held constant. For the climate scenario, we used global CDR needs that match the median values of the three different pathways in 2050 — C1 (10.1 Gt CO₂e/yr), C2 (8.8 Gt CO₂e/year), and C3 (7.1 Gt CO₂e/yr).

3When considering member state contributions, some allocation criteria and data choices produce dramatic differences in estimated CDR volumes and country rankings, while others show relatively little variation (Fig 3). For example, basing CDR responsibility on countries’ GNI per capita or on their biophysical capacity, greatly changes the distribution of CDR responsibility across the member states—this difference is more substantial than when comparing the polluter pays, equality, or other ability to pay variants, which have a more similar distribution of shares.

Ranking member state CDR contributions

The impact of polluter pays modelling variants
The impact of equality modelling variants
The impact of ability to pay modelling variants
The impact of biophysical capacity variants

Figure 3:  Comparison of the rank of estimated member states CDR contributions according to different allocation criteria and their data variants.

 

4

Isolated national planning for net zero goals won’t be sufficient for reaching global goals.

If EU parties intend to use their predicted residual emissions as a benchmark for CDR ambitions, these efforts will fall considerably short of meaningfully contributing to global climate goals (Fig. 4). In more pragmatic scenarios, where participation is limited or allocation is based on broader criteria, such as in UI-BE and UI-C, member state contributions almost always surpass residual emissions. In some cases, such as France, Italy, and Spain, estimated contributions are over three times higher.

A similar pattern emerges when comparing CARE Calculator results to the CDR needs modelled by an IAM exploring how Europe could achieve climate neutrality through a least-cost pathway, independent of global climate goals. When assumptions go beyond population size and full global participation, the CARE Calculator consistently projects substantially higher CDR contributions than the IAM (Fig. 4).

 

5

Several countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland) repeatedly appear as needing to contribute the most to Europe’s CDR efforts (Fig 3). For example, these countries are the top contributors in all three of the illustrative scenarios, regardless of their differing allocation criteria or how their importance is weighted (Fig. 4).

Estimated CDR contributions for EU member states for 2050

Figure 4: Estimated CDR contributions for EU member states for 2050 (blue bars) using median values for the global CDR need from the C1 climate pathway (10.1 Gt CO2e) when applying the three illustrative scenarios. Also shown are the projected residual emissions reported in national long-term climate strategies (light teal bars; see Carbon Gap’s Policy Tracker), and the range (suite of 6 pathways) of CDR needed to reach carbon-neutrality in Europe in 2050 (orange shaded areas).

6

Despite being top contributors, these countries—and the EU more broadly—remain insufficiently prepared politically to support the deployment and upscaling of CDR (Fig. 5).

Of the countries assessed for their political readiness by Carbon Gap thus far (see our Policy Tracker), Germany, France, Italy and Poland are regularly ranked as requiring the highest CDR contributions. Although these countries show early or clear signs of progress in some key areas, they are not yet fully on track to support the deployment of CDR in their countries and ultimately to contribute to meaningful EU-wide targets.

EU member states’ policy progress, ranked by contributions in the CARE calculator
Figure 5. Scorecard summarising EU countries’ current political readiness relating to a number of key policy themes supporting the deployment of CDR. The colouring scheme indicates areas in which countries are moving in the wrong direction or show no signs of progress (red), show early signs of progress (orange), show clear signs of progress (yellow), or are well on track (green). Countries which are not listed have not yet been assessed systematically by Carbon Gap. Visit Carbon Gap’s Policy Tracker for information on the methodology for categorisation and the latest member state developments.

7On the operational side of things, the EU will also need to make dramatic progress in scaling up novel CDR technologies to meet future targets (Fig 6).

Of the five countries most often ranked as top CDR contributors, Spain and Poland stand out for their lack of active novel CDR operators. Germany, France, and Italy have begun building limited capacity, with Germany hosting the most operators. Still, the overall picture shows that even these frontrunners are only in the early stages of meaningful CDR deployment.

Operational readiness for CDR in the EU

Figure 6. Summary of operational readiness, indicating the EU countries with active novel CDR operators and the associated tonnes of removals purchased and delivered. Data is sourced from CCDR.fyi (June, 2025).

8

In many cases, the necessary member-state contributions are likely to exceed countries natural biophysical capacity to removal and store carbon domestically.

There can be a mismatch between which countries should supply the most CDR and which countries have the greatest biophysical capacity to do so (Fig. 7). This discrepancy suggests that countries may need to trade carbon removal units across borders or invest in removals beyond their own territories to meet their obligations.

Estimated CDR contributions for EU member states for 2050

EU member-state carbon removal needs based on the global participation-equality scenario
EU member-state carbon removal needs based on the upper income-balanced equity scenario
EU member-state carbon removal needs based on the upper income-capability scenario

Figure 7: Estimated CDR contributions for EU member states for 2050 (dark blue bars of right plot) using median values for the global CDR need from the C1 climate pathway (10.1 Gt CO2e) when applying the three illustrative scenarios. Also shown on the same x-axis is the biophysical capacity Dataset 2: Cost-efficient land-based measures, where values reflect the annual average climate mitigation potential (orange bars). The biophysical capacity Dataset 2: Reforestation, BECCS, and DACCS is also shown also shown using the left x-axis (teal bars), where the values reflect the total removal and storage potential relating to these methods.

Conclusions

The CARE Calculator underscores the urgent need for coordinated CDR planning across countries. Because the global carbon budget is finite, lower CDR ambition in one country inevitably shifts greater responsibility onto others, calling for structured international negotiations The explicit inclusion of CDR commitments in countries Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) could represent a useful first step towards such negotiations. The tool highlights which negotiation parameters most significantly influence national targets and the distribution of responsibility, offering a clear lens into the trade-offs at stake.

Crucially, it shows that CDR targets aligned with Paris-compliant climate scenarios are consistently higher than what countries are currently planning. This gap signals a pressing need for governments to scale up their ambitions. Net zero targets alone are not enough—what matters most is whether countries stay within the global carbon budget, the true objective of the Paris Agreement. To effectively stabilise the climate, countries must rapidly raise their CDR deployment goals to help achieve global net zero as swiftly and equitably as possible.

Along with more ambitious targets, countries must speed up the development of an enabling environment to maximise chances for the rapid scale up of CDR. National strategies must outline credible roadmaps to creating the policy mix, infrastructure and incentives aligned with the CDR need.

Read the full report to learn more

Read the analytical report

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C1 Pathway – 2050 – Upper Income – Capability

C1 Pathway – 2050 – Upper Income – Balanced Equity

C1 Pathway – 2050 – Global Participation – Equality

C2 Pathway – 2050 – Upper Income – Capability

C2 Pathway – 2050 – Upper Income – Balanced Equity

C2 Pathway – 2050 – Global Participation Equality

C3 Pathway – 2050 – Upper Income Capability

C3 Pathway – 2050 – Upper Income Balanced Equity

C3 Pathway – 2050 – Global Participation Equality

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