Understanding the CRCF: The EU's New Framework for Certifying Carbon Removals

Nature+ Coalition · Explainer

Carbon credit markets have long relied on a patchwork of private standards. With the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation (CRCF), the European Union is building something different: a single certification framework bringing harmonised rules, third-party verification and a public registry to carbon removal, carbon farming and carbon storage-in-products activities across the continent.

For organisations working on Nature-based Solutions, the CRCF is likely to become an important reference point for how carbon-removal and carbon-farming activities are recognised at EU level.

A voluntary framework built for harmonisation

The CRCF is the EU's voluntary certification framework for carbon removals, carbon farming and carbon storage in products. Published in the EU Official Journal as Regulation (EU) 2024/3012, it answers three problems Member States had, until now, been handling each in their own way: fragmented national schemes, weak quality control that left the door open to greenwashing, and no shared way to track a tonne of CO₂ from generation to retirement. The CRCF addresses all three at once, through harmonised standards, strict quality criteria and a centralised EU registry that rules out double counting.

Importantly, the CRCF does not certify carbon units in the abstract; it certifies activities, measured against a shared EU methodology. That is the real shift here: moving from a fragmented landscape of private standards to a single, auditable reference system.

Four criteria: QU.A.L.ITY

At the core of the CRCF sits a quality framework known by the acronym QU.A.L.ITY, built around four requirements every certified activity must meet.

• Quantification: absorptions and reductions must be measured precisely and transparently, on a solid scientific basis, with a baseline set by the relevant sectoral delegated act and verified by an accredited third party.

• Additionality: a certified credit can only be issued if the activity goes beyond what would have happened without the support of the mechanism, whether the case rests on regulatory or financial additionality.

• Long-term storage: permanence must be actively managed over time, through minimum monitoring periods, a mandatory buffer pool to insure against natural or human-caused reversal, and a remediation protocol if a loss of stored carbon is detected.

• Sustainability: activities must generate documented co-benefits for biodiversity, water and local communities, recorded in the public registry alongside the carbon data itself.

Three categories of activity, one shared logic

The CRCF structures certification around three categories: industrial and technological carbon storage (e.g. DACCS, BECCS and biochar), carbon farming (e.g. afforestation, agroforestry, peatland restoration and soil carbon management), and temporary storage in durable products. They are all certified against the same QU.A.L.ITY criteria and recorded in the same EU registry.

The first validated methodologies focused on technology-based removals. In July 2026, methodologies for several nature-based activities were formally adopted, enabling the first certified units of this kind. Other approaches, including improved forest management and continuous-cover forestry, remain in development.

Why this matters beyond the CRCF itself

The CRCF does not sit in isolation. It is emerging alongside the EU's 2040 Climate Law, which sets a legally binding target of a 90% net reduction in emissions by 2040. Because a share of emissions in hard-to-abate sectors cannot realistically reach zero, the EU's own climate architecture assumes that high-integrity carbon removals will need to play a growing role in closing that gap, alongside deep emission cuts.

Two regulatory questions now sit at the centre of that debate. The first is whether, and how, permanent removals, potentially including CRCF-certified units, could be integrated into the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) after 2030; the Commission is expected to present its assessment of this integration, with implementation not expected before 2030. The second is a separate, more concrete decision: starting in 2036, the EU will allow international carbon credits to cover up to 5% of its 2040 climate target, the first time the EU has formally given international credits a role in its own climate commitment. How exactly this will work is still being defined.

For now, CRCF-certified units are mainly finding buyers in the voluntary market. To help that market mature faster, the Commission launched the EU Buyers' Club in February 2026: an initiative that groups together companies willing to buy CRCF-certified credits early, giving project developers a clearer signal of demand before the market is fully up and running.

What this means for standards already active in France

For project developers and companies already working with the French Label Bas-Carbone (LBC), the direction is toward alignment rather than replacement. French authorities are working to build continuity between the LBC and the CRCF, so that projects already labelled under LBC, particularly afforestation and forest management, could also obtain CRCF certification, with LBC's own technical teams involved in reviewing those files. That alignment will not be automatic: certain project types, such as some reforestation activities, may face additionality-based exclusions at EU level, and projects focused solely on emission reductions in categories such as livestock could fall outside the CRCF's scope. This is precisely the space where coordination between existing national standards and the emerging EU framework will determine which high-quality nature-based projects retain access to the market.

Nature+ Coalition's role

This is where Nature+ Coalition positions itself. As a facilitator between established standards and the CRCF, the coalition brings together project developers, companies and stakeholders committed to ensuring that Nature-based Solutions are recognised on equal footing with technological removals within the CRCF, the ETS discussion and the wider post-2030 EU climate framework.

Nature+ Coalition welcomes the improvements made to the CRCF's afforestation methodology since the late-2024 draft, particularly stronger tree diversity requirements and mandatory monitoring of soil, water and biodiversity co-benefits. In our response to the Commission's consultation, we are pushing for three changes:

• A 40-year project duration and monitoring period with a dynamic, project-specific baseline, bringing the CRCF in line with international standards like Verra and ACR.

• More flexibility in the fixed five-year audit cycle.

• Leaving reversal-risk liability to be negotiated contractually between developers and buyers, so smallholders, who own most of the EU's forests, can still rely on tools like force majeure clauses and early-stage pre-payments.

We are also pressing the Commission to deliver the remaining forestry methodologies (restoration, conservation, improved forest management), without which afforestation alone will not carry much weight against the EU's climate and Nature Restoration Law goals. The same gap appears in the ETS debate: current discussions on integration after 2030 focus primarily on technological removals, while nature-based removals remain largely excluded, reflecting concerns about their permanence and reversal risk rather than an inherent lack of permanence. Closing that gap matters to us as much as recognition within the CRCF itself.

The CRCF is still a framework under construction: delegated acts for several activity categories remain in consultation or drafting, the EU registry is not expected to be fully operational until the end of 2028, and its relationship with the ETS and with the EU's international credit allowance is still being negotiated. Understanding where that construction stands, and where the open questions remain, is the first step toward shaping it.

Nature+ Coalition works to make sure Nature-based Solutions are recognised on equal footing with technological removals under the CRCF. Explore membership with Nature+ Coalition to get involved.