Carbon Removal Standards Initiative
The Challenge:
Carbon removal is essential for addressing climate change, but without strong standards and effective policy, we won’t know when carbon has truly been removed or whether carbon removal can reach the scale needed to meet global climate goals. Done well, carbon removal can help avoid the worst harms of warming and complement rapid decarbonization. Done poorly, it risks becoming ineffective, unaccountable, or another form of greenwashing.
Right now, the rules governing carbon removal are being written. Policymakers, regulators, and NGOs are navigating a rapidly evolving field that often lacks independent, science-based expertise. At the same time, many current market incentives favor approaches that are unlikely to generate enough durable carbon removal to meet future climate needs. Without clear, science-based policies and rigorous carbon accounting, we risk investing in solutions that fail to deliver real climate benefits or create unintended harms. And without integrating carbon removal into major sectors like agriculture, heavy industry, and waste management, the field will struggle to achieve climate-relevant scale.
What Can Be Done:
Carbon removal must be governed by science, accountability, and public-interest policy. Policymakers need credible tools to answer core questions: How much CO₂ is actually being removed? For how long? What policies and infrastructure are needed to support deployment at scale? Achieving meaningful carbon removal will require more than new technologies or voluntary carbon markets. It will require integrating carbon removal into existing industrial systems and regulatory frameworks across sectors of the economy. This also means ensuring that carbon accounting is rigorous, transparent, and trusted and that policymakers, regulators, and communities have access to independent expertise to guide decision-making.
How the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative is Meeting the Challenge:
The Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI) works to ensure that carbon removal is transparent, accountable, scientifically rigorous, and capable of delivering meaningful climate impact.
CRSI was founded on four core principles:
- Carbon removal is a public good.
- Carbon removal deployment will be driven by policy.
- Carbon removal must be integrated across regulated industries to achieve climate-relevant scale.
- Carbon must be counted correctly to ensure real climate benefit.
CRSI works with policymakers, regulators, researchers, nonprofits, and businesses to integrate carbon removal across society. Specifically, CRSI:
- Bridges knowledge gaps between carbon removal and other industries.
- Provides technical guidance to policymakers and regulators developing carbon removal policy.
- Catalyzes research partnerships to address unresolved scientific and policy questions.
- Supports rigorous carbon accounting and quantification approaches.
- Advances policies and projects that embed carbon removal into large-scale industrial systems.
As the field evolves, CRSI is focused not only on ensuring carbon removal policy is implemented well, but on helping ensure the right policies and projects happen so that we build a carbon removal ecosystem that is transparent, accountable, and worthy of public investment.
