August 13, 2026
The EU Market Needs Room for Biomass Carbon Removal
Since setting its legally binding net zero by 2050 target, the European Commission has laid out an ambitious roadmap for cutting emissions across industry, energy, transportation, agriculture, and more. Given the scale of projected residual emissions, it was always clear that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) would be needed to deliver robust climate impact. With the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) framework, the EU took its first step toward defining carbon removal standards, outlining four key criteria for high-quality removals:
1. Accurate quantification
2. Additionality
3. Durability
4. Sustainability
The question since then has been how Europe would turn that framework into actual demand for CDR.
Last month, the European Commission took a big step towards creating a real market for CDR. Their new proposal outlined plans to fold CDR into the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) for the first time by purchasing up to 250 million tonnes of permanent CDR from 2031 to 2040. The number alone tells the story: that decade-long commitment dwarfs last year’s total global purchases of engineered CDR by nearly 10x. 
Source: European Commission
We applaud the Commission for taking this step and creating the kind of durable demand a flourishing European CDR market needs. The single most important piece of the proposal is the Commission’s commitment to support the true cost of removals by covering the gap between the EU’s carbon allowance price (EUA) and the real cost of durable CDR.
However, the CDR methodologies eligible to participate under the current proposal are limited, and there are several areas worth clarifying and strengthening as the proposal is negotiated into law over the next half year. Most importantly, a technology neutral approach—accepting any removal pathway that can meet strict EU quality criteria—is what lets the European Commission deliver on its CDR commitment in full, and cost-effectively.
Why a portfolio of carbon removal is needed
Expanding the market in this way would give Vaulted and other innovative companies the green light to invest in EU projects and begin to deliver cost-effective carbon removal quickly.
Direct air capture (DAC) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) are currently the only eligible removal types, excluding many proven CDR approaches. The EU Commission needs to expand the set of eligible removal technologies over time, for two reasons: one about risk, one about cost.
The risk case: a 2025 Commission study found that because DAC and BECCS will still be scaling up through the 2030s, annual removals from these two technologies alone could range anywhere from 9-32 million tonnes per year. Given the uncertainty in the rate of scale-up of DAC and BECCS, allowing a larger portfolio of different CDR methodologies to begin scale-up minimizes the risk of falling behind targets.
The cost case: There is a gap between the price of emissions allowances in the ETS and the cost of high-quality, durable carbon removal. This gap could make it difficult for CDR companies to operate. The Commission has committed to closing the price gap by purchasing 10 million additional ETS allowances, but it’s not yet clear whether that pool is large enough to cover the full commitment. Purchasing a portfolio of permanent removals, including biomass carbon removal, across various cost points will ensure that the cost of covering the price gap is limited.
Without a tech-neutral approach and a clear roadmap for how other permanent removal methods get integrated, the EU risks undermining its climate goals and facing a real CDR supply gap. Given that CDR must scale quickly to generate volumes needed to meet EU net-zero targets, CDR companies need assurance of ETS inclusion to make necessary investments and begin to develop much-needed projects for the EU’s targets.
The eventual goal should be to allow all demonstrably permanent removals to be eligible to contribute durable removals to EU climate goals, and to provide a clear roadmap for companies to secure approval.
A promising role for biomass carbon removal in the EU
Durable biomass carbon removal, such as Vaulted’s biomass slurry injection technology, already meets the four EU criteria for high-quality carbon removal. These pathways have delivered cost-effective CDR at scale today in many geographies, like North America. Vaulted operates two facilities in the US that have collectively removed 65,000 tonnes of CO2e since 2023.
With demonstrated scale and the ability to target excess, underutilized biomass waste, biomass carbon removal is well positioned to play a real part in the EU’s CDR portfolio. What’s more, it requires minimal processing and creates meaningful environmental co-benefits alongside CDR.
Biomass carbon removal takes biomass waste that can’t easily be used for materials or fuel—because of high moisture content, heavy metals, or other contaminants—and sequesters it permanently deep underground. This is a meaningful distinction: pathways like sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and BECCS generally require cleaner, more processable feedstock, while Vaulted’s approach is built for the wetter, contaminated, or otherwise unusable fraction of the biomass stream. In this way, biomass use for CDR can be complementary with other climate solutions like SAF rather than competing.
Biomass carbon removal typically requires minimal processing, making it land- and energy-efficient. Smaller-scale deployments let projects target underutilized biomass in remote or rural areas where transporting it long distances to a processing facility would be nearly impossible, physically and economically.
Vaulted’s approach takes materials like biosolids and digestate byproduct from anaerobic digesters at municipal waste facilities and locks them thousands of feet underground into secure geologic formations for permanent storage. Beyond removing carbon, this keeps nitrate pollution out of waterways and microplastics out of agricultural soil, and it integrates easily into existing waste management systems.
What’s next
Although biomass carbon removal could contribute meaningfully to an EU carbon removal portfolio, it’s gotten too little attention to date. This approach is proven and already delivering carbon removal in the US today. Research and modeling on optimal EU carbon removal portfolios hasn’t included biomass carbon removal so far, so its potential remains both unquantified and unaccounted for in current EU policy thinking.
Vaulted is ready to work with EU policymakers and researchers to bring our high-quality carbon removal into that research.
If you’re interested in better quantifying the role biomass carbon removal could play in a high-quality EU CDR portfolio, we’d love to talk.
