Carbon Management

Challenges and Solutions for Carbon Dioxide Removal: From Governance and Regulation to Monitoring and Sustainability

The goal of the Paris Agreement, to limit global average temperature increase to well below 2°C, requires global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions to reach net zero by 2050 or soon thereafter (IPCC 2018, 2022). Achieving “net zero CO₂” means that, alongside deep reductions in anthropogenic emissions, any residual CO₂ must be compensated by carbon dioxide removal (CDR)*. In addition, the lack of progress on emission reductions, with emissions in 2024 reaching an all‑time high of 56.4 GtCO₂e, increases the likelihood of an emissions overshoot and the need for further CDR to return atmospheric concentrations below target levels. For net-zero across all greenhouse gases (GHGs), additional CDR will be needed to offset residual non-CO₂ emissions. CDR is therefore central to climate action, but its deployment faces critical challenges in governance and regulation, uncertain management, permanence, monitoring, and sustainability.

The thematic structure of this Collection is not merely a catalogue of topical areas; it is a framework designed to capture the mature complexity of carbon dioxide removals (CDR) as a governance, scientific, socio‑legal, and economic project. CDR is now a systemic rather than technological issue. To do justice to that systemic quality, the Collection aims to bring scholarship together across normative, technical, economic, legal, and institutional registers.

Given the rapid advancement of initiatives, regulations, standards, and support mechanisms there is also an on-going need for robust academic research to inform, critique, support, and challenge these developments. The focus of this Article Collection is to attract quality papers that address any issues pertinent to policies, standards, initiatives, or other mechanisms of support for CDR removals. We welcome original research, case studies, or perspective articles/commentaries. This call focuses on five thematic areas; the potential topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Normative foundations of GHG removals (CDR is a reallocation of risks, responsibilities, and rights among states, corporations, communities, and future generations. Questions of justice, precaution, legitimacy, and responsibility underpin every operational or regulatory choice.)

• • What principles (i.e. legality, justice, responsibility, precaution, stewardship) justify or critique CDR?
  • How do competing climate justice frameworks (e.g., historical responsibility vs. capability) inform CDR governance?
  • Public perception of CDR
  • Legal, ethical, and practical implications for corporate climate strategies
  • How do different actors (states, corporations, civil society) articulate and contest the values of CDR?
  • How do normative debates intersect with epistemic uncertainties in climate modelling?

2. Sustainability and scalability of GHG removals (CDR’s contribution to climate targets hinges not simply on its theoretical potential but on its real‑world scalability within ecological and social limits.)

• • Co-benefits of CDR
  • Sustainability constraints
  • Social impacts of GHG removals
  • Barriers and enablers for scalability
  • Economic costs of GHG removal technologies
  • Scaling up ‘baskets’ of CDR: Strategies to diversify portfolios, reduce delivery risk, and remain within sustainability thresholds
  • Does the pursuit of CDR risk entrenching techno-solutionism or perpetuating structural injustices?

3. Accounting and governance for GHG removals (CDR only functions in climate governance if it can be properly defined, accounted for, certified, and integrated into emissions mitigation efforts.)

• • Carbon accounting for CDR
  • Standards for certification of CDR
  • Legal liability for reversal emissions
  • Accounting and/or governance of permanence/durability
  • Fungibility of removals and emission reductions
  • Monitoring, reporting, and verification

4. Support mechanisms for CDR (Existing and novel support mechanisms need to be developed and deployed if CDR is to scale, with attention given to effectiveness, equity, and feasibility.)

• • Removals methodologies within the carbon offset markets
  • Incorporating GHG removals and within emissions trading schemes (ETS)
  • Compliance offset markets
  • Voluntary offset and contribution claims markets
  • Offsetting vs insetting
  • Carbon Takeback Obligation

5. Research on specific recent policies and initiatives (CDR governance is evolving rapidly across jurisdictions—EU CRCF, UK ETS inclusion proposals, US 45Q expansion, PACM negotiations. The field needs timely scholarly analysis.)

• • Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) and the treatment of removals
  • EU Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation
  • Inclusion of GHG removals in the UK, EU, Californian emission trading schemes
  • Reviews of the GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals Standard

Keywords

1. Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)
2. Climate Governance
3. Net‑Zero Policy
4. Sustainability and Justice
5. MRV and Accounting Standards

*The term ‘CDR’ is used as a synonym for ‘negative emissions technologies’ (NETS) and ‘greenhouse gas removals’ (GGR), and issues related specifically to storage.

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is November 13, 2026.

Please contact Kara Roberts at [email protected] with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Please be sure to select the appropriate Article Collection from the drop-down menu in the submission system.

Dr. Ghaleigh's research examines the legal, institutional, and justice dimensions of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) within domestic and international governance frameworks. His work interrogates how courts, regulatory regimes, and financial and corporate actors structure responsibility, risk, and legitimacy in emerging CDR architectures, with particular attention to the UK, and EU. He writes extensively on the interaction between legal theory, climate institutions, and the technical complexities of CDR, including durability, liability, and carbon‑market integration. His scholarship aims to clarify how law can both enable and discipline the deployment of removals in pursuit of just and effective climate transitions.

Dr. Brander holds the Chair of Carbon Accounting at the University of Edinburgh’s Business School. His current research focuses on the development of methods for corporate, product (life cycle assessment), project and policy-level greenhouse gas accounting.  He has particular interest in bioenergy, offsetting, electricity accounting, and greenhouse gas removal. He has served as a member of several technical working groups for the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), and the Science Base Targets Initiative (SBTi).

Dr. Butnar is an environmental scientist developing methods and tools to support decision making for climate change mitigation, with particular focus on greenhouse gas removals and scope 3 emission reduction. She is a member of the UKRI funded CO₂RE Hub, where she coordinates the co-development of the COXRE GGR Evaluation Framework and the harmonization of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods for GGR evaluation across the UK GGR-D Programme. Isabela is part of the technical team supporting the UK government in Mission Innovation - Carbon Dioxide Removal Mission, and British Standards Institute advisor on Minimum Threshold standards for GGR.

The Guest Advisors do not declare any potential conflicts of interests in line with our Editorial Policies.