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Last week, the Senate introduced the Foreign Pollution Fee Act to levy fees on imports based on carbon intensity. The bill allows manufacturers to reduce the carbon intensity of their goods by integrating carbon removal in production processes or purchasing verified carbon removal credits to offset embodied emissions. As we’ve written previously, while federal procurement of carbon removal is essential in the near term to set high standards for durable CDR and bolster demand, those emitting carbon should ultimately pay for its removal.

Over the past decade, the carbon removal field has seen unprecedented growth, but we’re still far from where we need to be. As Deputy Assistant Secretary for Carbon Management at the Energy Department (DOE), I saw the scale of what’s possible: billions of dollars invested, groundbreaking policy initiatives, and the first wave of commercial carbon removal projects. But I also saw the gaps: policy mechanisms moving too slowly; financing models not yet built for scale; and an industry that remains years behind other clean energy sectors in technical maturity, market development, and policy support.