The European Commission will reward green farming practices like afforestation and soil conservation while putting rules to identify activities that “unambiguously remove carbon from the atmosphere” under draft proposals seen by EURACTIV.

A draft EU carbon strategy, first obtained by French news site Contexte, aims to contribute towards the EU’s climate effort by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and “pave the way for a policy of negative emissions in the future”.

The European Climate Law, approved earlier this year, requires that any carbon emissions remaining in Europe by 2050 are to be balanced by removals, “with the aim to achieve negative emissions thereafter,” says the paper.

The EU strategy on “sustainable carbon cycles,” due to be released on 14 December, takes this objective one step further by putting forward plans “to upscale carbon removal solutions that capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it for the long term”.

Guest post from Reuters