In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Sebastian Manhart sits down with Rudy Kahsar, Principal at RMI and a founding member of its carbon removal team, to dig into the New Frontiers Report for CDR. The report traces up to three decades of progress across 14 carbon removal approaches to work out where the next breakthroughs could come from, and Rudy's answer to the question he gets asked most, which pathway to go all in on, is not the one most people expect.

Rudy makes the case that the technologies doing most of the removing in 2050 may not exist yet, and that breakthroughs tend to arrive when experts from one field wander into another. Policy sits outside the report's scope, but his message to policymakers is clear: rather than writing rigid rules around one or two of today's approaches, set aside some funding and regulatory attention for the approaches nobody has invented yet. Sebastian, who has long argued against picking winners this early, needs little convincing.

The conversation then turns to the numbers. RMI built bottom-up cost stacks for every approach across eight shared categories, using generative AI for the first pass before testing it with companies and experts, and Rudy explains why the future cost stacks are aspirational scenarios rather than predictions. Sebastian contrasts that transparency with the black-box cost estimates that have made their way into the EU ETS proposal.

They close on some of the report's boldest bets, from engineered crops that lock carbon away more durably to the convergence of AI, drones and sensors, and on direct air capture, where Rudy is blunt about cost. Tune in to hear why he thinks an outdoor clothing brand could be an unlikely ally for carbon removal.

• Sebastian Manhart: LinkedIn and Website
• Rudy Kahsar: LinkedIn and RMI profile
• RMI: Website
• The New Frontiers Report for CDR (RMI, October 2026)
• RMI: Beyond the First Frontier: What Comes Next for Carbon Removal
• Mining's Untapped Removals Opportunity — with Cara Maesano
• What Does CDR Actually Cost in Europe? — with Hansjörg Lerchenmüller and Eadbhard Pernot

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In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme moderates our fifth SHOWDOWN debate, live on stage at Carbon Unbound Europe in London. The motion takes on one of the hottest fault lines in European carbon removal policy: should Europe’s CDR strategy put BioCCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) first?

In the BioCCS corner, Kaja Voss, CEO and Founder of Inherit: an economist and believer in markets who has reached a painful conclusion. Three-quarters of durable offtakes to date are already BioCCS, it sits lowest on the cost curve among high-durability solutions, and the pipelines and terminals it builds will serve other pathways later. Europe should pick that winner “on purpose rather than by accident.”

In the tech neutrality corner, Alastair Collier, Chief R&D Officer at A Healthier Earth: “When you concentrate the technology, you concentrate the politics.” Pointing to Australia’s repeal of its carbon price, he warns that concentrating storage in a handful of member states and paying oil and gas companies to run it creates an easy target for climate sceptics.

From Northern Lights and storage as a public utility to the CRCF (the EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming certification framework) and a closing call to look to China, the room had plenty to weigh before casting its vote. Listen to the end to find out who won.

LINKS:

• Eve Tamme: Eve Tamme: LinkedIn and Website
• Kaja Voss: LinkedIn
• Inherit: Website
• Alastair Collier: LinkedIn
• A Healthier Earth: Website
• Carbon Unbound Europe

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