Governments are beginning to build the policies and institutions they need to manage the future of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), but globally, progress has been fragmented. Some governments have developed strong scientific capacity to support this work, but have little to no deployment. Others have developed carbon-market rules or procurement mechanisms but still lack a clear national CDR strategy. And still other governments have started addressing finance, safeguards, or accounting rules, but not in ways that add up to a complete public-policy system—particularly a system that can operate across borders.
To better understand these differences, the Vancouver Process is considering the idea of a new assessment framework called SCALE, which looks at five dimensions of government CDR policy: Strategic commitment, capacity and coordination, accountability and public value, long-term finance, and execution and delivery. The first SCALE assessment uses this framework to look at the CDR policies of Vancouver Process participants alongside a group of comparison jurisdictions, examining publicly available laws, regulations, strategies, budgets, procurement programs, and other government actions.
The most important finding from the first draft of this assessment is not that some governments are “ahead” and others are “behind”—the SCALE model isn’t a ranking mechanism. Rather, it is that no government—not even the most dedicated in CDR development—has developed anything close to a complete public system yet for managing CDR at the scale that will eventually be required, most with significant capacity gaps in strategic direction, institutional responsibility, long term financing, accountability, and especially delivery.
Understanding this policy landscape matters because CDR policy is still often embedded within much broader systems for emissions reduction, carbon markets, forestry, CCS, or climate finance. Those systems can provide useful building blocks, but they do not necessarily address let alone answer the key questions that large-scale atmospheric carbon removal will raise: Who is responsible for ensuring removals actually occur? How much removal will be needed, and when? Who pays? Who verifies atmospheric effect? Who carries long-term liability? How should governments account for removals that cross borders? And which public institutions are responsible for putting all of these pieces together?
SCALE is intended to help make those gaps more visible. It is not a performance ranking, scoring tool, or grading system, but a common way to identify where public-policy capacity already exists, where it is missing, and where governments may be able to learn from one another. Quantifying policy capacity in this way is not unusual. Many international organizations already use similar frameworks, such as World Bank’s World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators, and Country Policy and Institutional Assessment; OECD’s policy indicators; and the UN E-Government Development Index. These tools all share a common goal of reorganizing complex policy environments into clearly defined dimensions in order to help policymakers identify strengths, gaps, and priorities for improvement.
The August 2026 SCALE assessment is a first draft and will continue to evolve as governments review the evidence, make corrections, and develop new policies. Edits and recommendations can be sent to Vancouver Process coordinators at info@vancouverprocess.org.
This article was written by Glenn Hampson, CDRANet program director and Vancouver Secretariat Interim Director.