Carbon Gap launches free toolkit to map countries’ carbon removal potential

Carbon Gap has launched a free, open-access toolkit enabling governments, researchers and civil society organizations to assess how much carbon dioxide removal (CDR) their countries could realistically deliver.

The toolkit is available through the newly launched Carbon Removal Readiness Assessment (CRRA) website, which also hosts all CRRAs published to date.

Bridging gap in net-zero plans:

Despite setting net-zero targets, many countries lack assessments of their domestic carbon removal potential, the methods best suited to their resources, and the policies needed to scale these solutions.

Over the past two years, Carbon Gap and its local partners have developed and refined a methodology to assess CDR potential across seven countries. The new toolkit makes this methodology accessible, allowing other countries to conduct similar assessments independently.

CRRAs examine a country’s available resources, including land, energy, minerals and geological storage capacity, before assessing their potential against national policies, stakeholder perspectives and public opinion to develop realistic scenarios.

“For two years we’ve been asking the same question, one country at a time: how much carbon could you actually remove? Now we’re handing over the recipe. Any government, university, or NGO can pick up this toolkit and get a credible answer for their own country, autonomously,” said Sylvain Delerce, Chief Scientist at Carbon Gap.

Tools for country-level assessments:

The toolkit provides a step-by-step guide outlining the methodology, timelines, budgets and staffing requirements, alongside templates for preparing background reports and national roadmaps.

It also includes materials for stakeholder interviews and citizen panels, a taxonomy of CDR methods, and a database of resource requirements developed in collaboration with RMI.

An optimization tool further enables users to model how a country’s resources could be allocated efficiently across different carbon removal methods.

Showcasing toolkit at COP31:

Carbon Gap will present the toolkit to national delegations at the Think Negative Pavilion during COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, scheduled for November 9-20.