EU agrees a carbon removal certification framework, with BECCS among the technologies

On 20 February 2024 the Council and the European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on a voluntary EU framework for certifying carbon dioxide removals. For the waste and biogas sector, this means a potential source of revenue from "negative emissions", but only for that part of the CO₂ that is biogenic in origin.

What was agreed

The framework is meant to harmonise certification rules for three groups of activities: permanent removal of carbon from the atmosphere (e.g. BECCS, that is bioenergy with CO₂ capture and storage, and DACCS), carbon farming, and carbon storage in long-lasting products. Certification is voluntary and based on four criteria: quantification, additionality, long-term storage and sustainability.

The German economy ministry stressed that the framework does not cover CCS installations capturing fossil emissions from industrial processes – this is treated as emission reduction, not removal. The agreement still requires formal approval by the Member States and the European Parliament.

Why waste?

The European association of waste thermal treatment installations, ESWET, welcomed the agreement, pointing out that a hard-to-decarbonise sector could achieve negative emissions thanks to BECCS. Caution is needed, however: municipal waste contains both biogenic carbon (e.g. paper, food scraps, wood) and fossil carbon (plastics). Only the biogenic share can be counted as removal; the rest is emission reduction. The assessment of how many certificate units fall to an installation depends on waste composition and monitoring methods.

Significance for the industry in Poland

Poland is developing a network of thermal treatment installations for municipal waste (ITPOK), and rising allowance prices in the EU ETS and the prospect of covering waste under the emissions trading system mean that the question of CO₂ capture is no longer theoretical. Similar logic applies to biogas plants: the CO₂ separated when upgrading biogas to biomethane is in principle biogenic (provided the substrates contain no fossil carbon) and can be the subject of BECCS projects or used in products. Digestate applied to fields, in turn, falls within "carbon farming", which may in future open a discussion about certification for compost and digestate as well.

What next

After formal adoption of the regulation, the Commission is to develop certification methodologies in delegated acts. Their content will determine whether the framework is a real incentive for waste and biogas installations or remains a declaration. Further legal acts should be followed in the Official Journal of the EU.

What has not yet been settled

The agreement sets the framework but not the methodologies for individual technologies. For biogas plants and waste installations, the detailed calculation rules will be key: how to separate biogenic from fossil carbon, how to account for emissions across the whole life cycle and how to verify the permanence of storage. Until the delegated acts are adopted, investors should not count certificate revenues in their financial model as certain.