A Government-Led Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for Carbon Removal

RMI’s discussion paper, A Government-Led Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for Carbon Removal, highlights the need for carbon removal, how an AMC can fill critical industry gaps, and why governments should lead together on starting up an AMC.

Carbon removal, alongside deep decarbonization efforts, will be needed at the scale of gigatons (Gt) per year by midcentury to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

At least 100 megatons per annum (Mtpa) of carbon removal, across a portfolio of approaches, will be needed by 2035 to reach midcentury gigaton-scale targets, requiring funding of approximately $20 billion per year by 2035. Governments have made promising starts to support carbon removal, but significant new policy is needed to close the gap between where carbon removal is likely headed and the need by 2035.

In this paper, RMI discusses the critical gaps facing the carbon removal industry, analyzes how different interventions might fill those gaps, and concludes that an advanced market commitment (AMC) for carbon removal, alongside other policies, is a vital tool not only to scale up carbon removal but also to provide unique benefits to governments that choose to lead on its design and implementation.

Further, this paper identifies key decisions to be made when designing and standing up an AMC for carbon removal, from standards development to procurement. In addition to the high-level design decisions mentioned in the paper, RMI has published two pieces of supplemental material that outline a menu of over 110 design options and implications, called our AMC for Carbon Removal Design Decisions Hub.

RMI intends for this paper and supplemental material to spark and inform a process by which government, civil society, and industry stakeholders co-create an AMC. Each stakeholder group has a different but important role to play in supporting an AMC, and this paper outlines the necessary actions each should take and the benefits they could reap as a result of leading.

Download the complete Discussion Paper below to read about the case for a government-led AMC for carbon removal. Download the AMC Design Decisions Hub Summary Tables for an overview of more than 110 design options and implications, and the AMC Design Decisions Hub Detailed Spreadsheet to dive even deeper into the design tradeoffs.

The authors would like to thank the Hewlett Foundation for supporting the development of this paper. Further, they would like to thank those at RMI who helped shepherd this work to completion, including Vera Vinson, Bella Kiser, and Kyle Clark-Sutton. Finally, they would like to express gratitude to the team at Stripe who advised this work, as well as the several reviewers who provided essential feedback. Reviewer details can be found in the ‘Acknowledgments’ section of the paper.