This week, we launched the Community-Informed, Open Access, Reviewed, and Evaluated (CORE) Carbon Removal Framework (or simply, CORE). We know carbon removal will only succeed if it delivers real climate benefits while also supporting the communities and ecosystems where it takes place. Carbon180, and our partners, have learned a lot in the past few years about how to implement those goals.
It’s easy to think of carbon removal as a technical challenge. But carbon removal takes place in real places, intersecting with communities and local economies, and is judged by its real, not theoretical, impact. Decisions about where interventions happen, how impacts are evaluated, and how benefits and risks are shared will shape whether this work succeeds over the long term.
In other words, carbon removal isn’t just about whether an approach works in theory. It’s also about who has a voice in shaping those decisions.
Introducing The Framework
CORE provides a shared foundation for what responsible carbon removal looks like as the field grows.
At the center of the framework are three beneficiaries whose wellbeing determines whether carbon removal is truly successful: communities, climate, and environmental systems. Communities should have meaningful opportunities to participate in decisions that affect them. Carbon removal outcomes should represent measurable and verifiable removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And ecosystems – from soils and forests to coastal and marine environments – should be protected and strengthened wherever interventions occur.
CORE outlines a set of principles and practices that can guide how carbon removal projects and programs are designed, implemented, and evaluated. These principles – including justice, equity, transparency, accountability, inclusion, additionality, and net negativity – help define what responsible carbon removal should look like in practice.
This framework is informed by years of on-the-ground engagement with real people: farmers and ranchers, forest landowners, coastal communities, potential neighbors to direct air capture or BiCRS. It has incorporated lessons learned from early work by the Department of Energy and USDA, as well as trailblazers making voluntary commitments in the private sector.
Getting your hands on new resources
We’ve launched our framework into a dedicated CORE landing page that brings the framework to life, a first stop in familiarizing yourself with the content. You can navigate our work based on how you interact with carbon removal: 1) you want to support it, 2) you want to implement it, or 3) you are impacted by it. We’ve also put together the CORE Resource Hub, an interactive tool that houses templates, tools, and case studies that bring CORE carbon removal to life. For support on how best to maximize the Hub, we’ve shared a series of hypothetical scenarios that walk a person through major decision points and highlight concrete resources for implementation.
For those interested in exploring the framework more deeply, you can read the full CORE Carbon Removal Framework, which describes the principles, practices, and case studies in detail.
Why now?
Carbon removal is still early in its development. But it is rapidly moving out of research settings and into our farms, forests, industrial sites, and coastal environments. Governments are investing in programs, companies are purchasing removal, and policymakers are starting to design the systems that will shape how this field develops.
This creates an opportunity to establish shared expectations before systems and institutions become fixed. The CORE framework is one effort to help the field do exactly that, providing a common language and structure that anyone can use as carbon removal continues to grow.
Because, in the end, carbon removal will be judged not only by whether it works in theory, but by whether it can be implemented responsibly in the real world.