This was an online event.

This event was by invitation only.

Since the publication of the Sustainable Carbon Cycle Communication in 2021, CCUS and CDRs have gained increasing attention from stakeholders and policymakers and led to the adoption of various policy proposals, such as the Carbon Removal Certification Framework, in 2024.

As a next step to further incentivize the development and deployment of these technologies in the EU, the Commission published the Industrial Carbon Management strategy in the same year. It identified three main pathways to be developed – namely, CCS, CCU, and CDRs – and highlighted how building an EU’s CO₂ infrastructure is meant to become one of the priorities to focus on as it is considered a key enable of the pathways.

However, the EU may need to rely on other countries’ storage capacity to achieve its net zero emissions target by 2050 for various reasons, including the uncertainty over the volume of storage capacity in the EU and because of differences between Northern and Southern Europe. For some Member States, opting for storing their CO₂ in third countries may be the only choice.

In this roundtable, participants were invited to discuss the following questions:

           – How important is it to build a CO₂ infrastructure beyond EU borders?

           – What are the opportunities? And what are the risks?

           – What are the elements and criteria that need to be worked on?

Agenda Slides