According to most climate mitigation scenarios, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere will be required at large scale to limit global warming to 1.5-2°C. Until 2100, the equivalent of 3-11 years of current CO₂ emissions will need to be removed and safely stored, with an estimated global market volume of $4-14 trillion USD. Most of these removals are scheduled from 2050 onwards, yet actionable plans and viable financial mechanisms for ramping up CDR are missing in most countries.
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To commercialize CDR while ensuring it does not compromise present emission reduction efforts or become a burden on future taxpayers, this project develops and evaluates concrete financial and legal implementation mechanisms for Carbon Removal Obligations (CROs) — a regulatory framework first proposed in Nature (2021). CROs enforce the polluter pays principle by making emitters directly liable for CDR, thereby addressing intergenerational equity and minimizing the risks of offsetting today's emissions with removals in the future.
The project explores CRO implementation variants with respect to uncertainty and liability structures. It assesses their practical feasibility regarding financial flows, term structures, default risks, and legal requirements, and integrates the financial risk perspective with climate pathway modelling to steer emissions and removals towards safe climate outcomes.
The FINCRO project was funded within a package of 14 research projects (total funding sum of 3.2 million EUR) by the Anniversary Fund of the Austrian National Bank (OeNB) in the second decision meeting in 2023. The Anniversary Fund was established in 1966 to mark the bank’s 150th anniversary. Since then, it has provided a total of 10,204 projects in basic Research with funding of some 845 million EUR.
News
15 May 2026: Project results have been accepted for oral presentation at the 4th International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Removal, Milan, Italy (11 June 2026).
Publications
Bednar, J., Baklanov, A. , Macinante, J., Hall, J.W., Gasser, T. , & Obersteiner, M. (2026). Stabilizing time-lagged climate impacts requires net-negative emissions for centuries. Environmental Research Letters 21 (2) e021002. 10.1088/1748-9326/ae34ca.
Bednar, J. & Baklanov, A. (2025). A Reduced-Complexity Model of Process-Based IAMs. IIASA Working Paper. Laxenburg, Austria: WP-25-001