320 Billion Tonnes: The Removal Scale Governments Must Build For

UNEP's latest Emissions Gap Report puts the century-scale task at roughly 320 billion tonnes of CO2 that must be removed and permanently stored — about eight years of global emissions at today's rate. Current durable carbon removal capacity stands at around 2 Mt per year. That gap, and what governments should do about it as they head to COP31 in Antalya, is the argument Jan-Willem Bode, president of Puro.earth, lays out in a new opinion piece.

His core pitch: treat carbon removal not just as a climate tool but as a domestic industry and an export product. And don't build it from scratch.

What changed since Belém?

COP30 gave carbon removal structural footing it hadn't had: a dedicated pavilion, a slot in the Global Climate Action Agenda, and a Global Carbon Harvest Coalition led by Brazil, India and Kenya. Since then, policy has moved.

• The EU has proposed bringing domestic removals into its emissions trading system and procuring up to 260 Mt of international credits from 2036. The first methodologies under the Carbon Removal Certification Framework are in place.
• Japan's GX-ETS became mandatory in April 2026 for its largest emitters, with removal credits eligible for part of their obligation.
• Canada has launched a CDR procurement programme.
• Brazil and China have opened talks on an Article 6 deal that could bring Brazilian removals into China's carbon market.

Bode's message to delegations in Antalya is blunt: "put carbon removal at the centre of national industrial and climate strategy" — while staying honest about what the sector can deliver today. Removal complements emissions cuts; it doesn't replace them. UNEP itself wants 45% emission cuts by 2035 before removal does any heavy lifting, and the agency is candid that removal at century scale is uncertain.

Beyond the tonne ledger

The more provocative part of Bode's argument concerns what counts as the product. Carbon is usually accounted as a ledger — tonnes emitted, tonnes removed. But carbon is also an embedded property of how goods are grown, built and powered. That creates two tradable values: the permanently removed tonne, and the verified lower carbon intensity of a product made with better practice.

One project can serve either market. A developer spreading crushed basalt on smallholder rice paddies in India can sell removals today — or a global food buyer can recognise the same practice inside its own supply chain. In Ghana, biochar made from cooperative agricultural waste sells removal credits to CDR buyers; applied on cocoa farms, the same biochar helps chocolate makers cut in-supply-chain emissions.

The integrity rule that makes both work: each benefit can be claimed once. With that in place, lower-carbon practices can be tracked through mixed supply chains the way renewable fuels and recycled materials already are. Markets already pay for intensity — California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard and the US 45Z clean fuel credit both reward fuel producers for lower lifecycle emissions.

Two engines for national programmes

Bode frames government strategy around two demand engines. The first is domestic: removals and lower-carbon practice built into farming, food, fuels and construction, strengthening industries that already exist. Policy should recognise both routes and let the market decide what a project sells.

The second is sovereign trade in durable removals. Demand is forming fast. Japan's GX-ETS lets companies cover up to 10% of compliance obligations with eligible credits, including overseas projects under the Joint Crediting Mechanism — and in July Japan's trade ministry selected two biochar pilot projects under the JCM. Add the EU's proposed international procurement and CORSIA's mandatory phase from January 2027, and the direction of travel is clear. Brazil is already building tradable removal certificates into its national ETS.

For practitioners, the lesson Bode draws from a decade of nature-based carbon programmes is straightforward: buyers and capital went where governments set predictable rules on authorisation, benefit-sharing and registries, and pulled back where those rules shifted.

Use the rails that exist

Bode's pragmatic close: don't reinvent market infrastructure. Established registries, uniquely identified instruments with clear labels — corresponding adjustment applied or not, compliance-ready or not, retired or available — and removals and carbon-intensity attributes issued as separate asset classes on shared rails. Transactions mirrored into national registries keep governments in control without parallel issuance.

Puro.earth practises what it preaches. The company has issued two million CO₂ Removal Certificates (CORCs), retired more than a million, and holds existing and future supply from facilities in 63 countries — nearly half in the Global South — serving more than 900 procuring companies. The programme is CCP-Eligible under the ICVCM and has procedures built for both the CRCF and Article 6. In Bode's words, "boring and reliable is what lets buyers and capital commit."

His ask of governments: plan for both removals and lower-carbon practice, base Article 6 technical layers on tried standards while keeping authorisation sovereign, and anchor demand through public procurement and bilateral purchase commitments. The rails are laid. What runs on them is the decision Antalya has to make.