In January of 2022, New York Assemblymember Patricia Fahy and State Senator Michelle Hinchey introduced the Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act. The proposed legislation aims to use public procurement of carbon removal to help meet the state’s emissions reductions goals by purchasing enough removals to cover the state’s “hard-to-abate” sector’s by 2050- 15% of the state’s 1990 emissions.

Under this law, the state will use reverse auctions to purchase measurable and verifiable removals. The legislation also mandates that community benefits and job creation factor into the auction.

CDRLA was developed by a grassroots, online, volunteer climate advocacy community called the OpenAir Collective. Last year, OpenAir advocates successfully wrote and championed a bill in New York State that aims to decarbonize the concrete sector there. Members of the group are also working on other projects, such as building several open-source direct air capture prototypes.

In this episode Radhika and Chris are joined by OpenAir’s Toby Bryce who describes how the legislation was created through their organization’s open-source approach and how the law will work if it becomes law. Chris dives into how this kind of legislation could work from a convservative point of view, and how reverse auctions can be an effective way for public procurement to support competitive markets.

For more info on CDRLA and OpenAir visit…

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The Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act