Greenhouse Gas Removals (GGR) Standards and Methodologies

Services to design and deliver Greenhouse Gas Removal Standards in the form of Minimum Quality Thresholds and a series of Publicly Available Specifications (PASs) for Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS).

- An initial contract is awarded for 33 months valued at £1,839,032 (net) for the design and publication of Minimum Quality Thresholds and a series of Publicly Available Specifications (PASs), covering quantification methodologies for Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage only.

- Under the initial contract, the supplier will define methodological Minimum Quality Thresholds for early Greenhouse Gas Removal projects seeking support from the Government's Business Model. These will specify what projects must cover as part of their removal quantification, monitoring and reporting and reference best practice and existing government Standards where appropriate, such as the Carbon Capture and Storage regulations and Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation.

- The Minimum Quality Thresholds are expected to address crediting periods, life cycle assessment boundaries, counterfactuals, carbon leakage, emission allocation to co-products, additionality, whether there is a rationale for monitoring, reporting and verification differentiation based on project scale, and possibly other aspects that stakeholders identify as priorities. We expect the Minimum Quality Thresholds to be published in 2025.

- Following publication of the Minimum Quality Thresholds, the supplier will then develop more detailed Greenhouse Gas Removal technology-specific methodologies via a series of Publicly Available Specifications (PASs) which is an internationally recognised format for Standards. Each PAS will cover a subset of the GGR value chain such a biomass supply, or carbon capture and transport and storage.

- The PAS development process generates high integrity Standards or benchmarks, leveraging cross sector industry specialists, academics and policy makers through working groups in the design process to produce a consensus based final product. This iterative approach will ensure that the technology-specific methodologies are robust and allow for the development and innovation associated with first of a kind deployment.

- There is an optional contract extension of up to 24 months valued up to £2,551,000 (net). This covers the delivery of up to six additional PASs for non-carbon capture and storage enabled GGR technologies, and updates to the PASs developed under the initial contract. The need for these methodologies is subject to further approvals and the policy needs of the Department.