No Wasted Opportunities: Turning Waste into Climate Solutions
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has become increasingly critical to climate strategy, complementing the urgent need to cut emissions. CDR actively removes existing CO2 from the atmosphere, a capability that every IPCC climate scenario identifies as indispensable to limiting global warming to 2°C by 2100. Yet Europe is overlooking a major opportunity: three waste management sectors – wastewater treatment, concrete recycling, and mining waste management – could become powerful engines of carbon removal if equipped with the right policies and investments.
This report, developed by Deloitte in collaboration with Carbon Gap, reveals how embedding CDR technologies into existing industrial processes could transform these sectors from emissions sources into climate solutions, with minimal cost impact.
Three Sectors, Transformative Potential
The CDR potential across the three sectors could transform them from net emitters to net removers of CO2, as they have the opportunity to match, or even exceed, their own greenhouse gas emissions with CDR. Crucially, the economic impact of integrating CDR appears minimal across all three sectors, with costs distributed across consumers and businesses in ways that would be marginal on water bills, construction budgets, and product prices.
Despite this potential, several barriers slow down large-scale deployment: persistent knowledge gaps, incomplete emissions inventories, weak market demand, and the absence of clear policy mandates. Add to this the lack of CO2 transport and storage infrastructure, and the challenge becomes clear: without policy intervention, these opportunities will remain untapped.
From Barriers to Breakthroughs: A Policy Roadmap
The report sets out a clear, actionable policy framework to unlock this potential. It combines two complementary approaches:
- Facilitating Measures that can accelerate technology maturation through dedicated research funding, improved GHG monitoring and reporting frameworks, and integration into emerging CDR purchasing schemes that could be developed under the European Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation.
- Embedded Regulatory Mandates that can drive adoption at scale through targeted amendments to existing EU directives. For wastewater, extending the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive to include GHG emission targets for wastewater treatment plants. For concrete, adopting minimum carbonation requirements for recycled aggregates, as part of public procurement and new product standards. For mining, revising the Extractive Waste Directive to set GHG emission targets for mining waste management.
The result: a pragmatic pathway that leverages existing regulatory frameworks while creating the market conditions for CDR to scale rapidly across Europe.
Creating Carbon Space for a Net-Zero Future
By transforming these three sectors into net-negative emitters, Europe gains something invaluable: "carbon space" to offset hard-to-abate emissions in sectors where full decarbonization by 2050 is difficult to achieve, e.g. aviation, shipping, agriculture, and energy-intensive industrial processes. This is not just about waste management; it's about building the carbon removal infrastructure Europe needs to meet its 2050 net-zero commitments.
Implementing these recommendations will also position Europe as a global CDR technology leader, attracting investment in green innovation.
About Deloitte's Beyond Value Chain Mitigation (BVCM) Program
This project was initiated by Carbon Gap and supported with pro bono value-in-kind and funding from the Beyond Value Chain Mitigation (BVCM) program, led by Deloitte North South Europe (NSE).
Within the BVCM Program, Deloitte NSE is using its skills, capabilities, and investments to help tackle climate change, protect and restore nature, and drive societal impact through best practice BVCM collaborations aligned to the latest science and emerging standards.
About Carbon Gap
Carbon Gap is Europe’s largest philanthropically funded non-profit focused on scaling just and effective carbon dioxide removal. Carbon Gap provides independent, science-based advice to decision-makers and works with partners across the ecosystem to translate policy into real-world deployment.
Eline Brugman
