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The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal

The third edition of the independent and global scientific assessment of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report will continue to analyse core developments in CO2 removal in May 2026.

The first edition (January 2023) established, among other things, the concept of the »CDR gap« - a quantitative estimate of the gap between the current or announced level of CO2 removal and the level that would be necessary to achieve the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. Building on this, the second edition of The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal improved and expanded the original approach, providing more comprehensive data collection and analysis, in the form of a status report and a new data portal.

In the third phase of the project, the status report will be expanded further, including a chapter on the costs and potential of individual methods. The data portal will be considerably expanded and visually prepared for a wider audience. The project team is also developing concepts for the international institutionalisation of the governance of CO2 removal. Shorter Insight Reports, the first on CO2 removal in the national climate plans (NDCs) to be submitted before COP30, will also be produced. In addition to these core products, The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal project also regularly produces peer-reviewed publications in which the analyses from the report are deepened and expanded.

The project is led by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, with the SWP as one of five organizations in the consortium. Over 50 authors have contributed to the second edition. SWP is represented on the consortium's executive team by Oliver Geden. Leona Tenkhoff works as a research associate primarily on the chapter on the politics and governance of CO2 removal. After co-leading this chapter in the second edition, Felix Schenuit continues to support the team in an advisory capacity.

Project duration: since 2022

The third phase of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal is funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council, the European Research Council and the Quadrature Climate Foundation.

Project Team

Publications

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