The EU Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) Regulation, adopted by the EU in 2024, sets out a voluntary certification framework for carbon removal activities for nature-based practices such as carbon farming, peatland restoration, and afforestation as well as permanent carbon removals such as direct air capture and storage. To receive certification, activities must meet four quality criteria: they must be quantifiable, additional (going beyond business as usual), long-lasting, and sustainable. Meeting these criteria in practice creates several challenges
- Quantification without cost-effective data: Measuring how much carbon a given plot of land is actually storing or sequestering requires spatially explicit data over time. Traditional methods, such as soil sampling or on-site instrumentation are expensive and difficult to apply consistently at regional or national scale.
- Establishing baselines and additionality: To prove that a carbon farming practice generates new sequestration, you need a reliable baseline showing what the land was doing before the intervention. Without spatially consistent historical data, credibly demonstrating additionality can be difficult.
- Monitoring peatlands at scale: Peatlands cover only 3% of Europe’s land surface but store enormous amounts of carbon. Degraded peatlands release carbon; whereas rewetted peatlands can resume sequestration. Monitoring whether restoration is working across multiple sites requires more than occasional field visits.
- Consistency and comparability across sites: The CRCF aims to create a credible, comparable certification system across the EU. This requires monitoring data that uses the same methods and reference periods regardless of where a site is located.
- Accessibility for non-specialist users: Many potential participants in carbon farming schemes such as farmers, local authorities, or land managers do not have access to remote sensing expertise or EO data analysis tools, even where relevant data exists.
How EO can help
Earth observation provides the spatially consistent, repeatable, and independently verifiable data that CRCF quantification and monitoring requirements demand. EO contributes in several specific ways:
- Soil organic carbon (SOC) baselines: Satellite data combined with soil archives enables the production of high-resolution SOC maps across Europe. These maps provide the before-the-intervention baseline needed to quantify change and demonstrate additionality in carbon farming programmes.
- Tracking land management change: Multi-temporal satellite imagery can detect shifts in land cover, tillage practice, or vegetation cover — evidence that a land management change has occurred and is being maintained, supporting CRCF additionality and sustainability criteria.
- Peatland condition monitoring: Satellite-derived water level indicators and surface change data make it possible to monitor rewetting outcomes across many peatland sites simultaneously, providing the proof of performance that CRCF verification requires.
- Independent and open verification: EO data is openly accessible and independently produced, making it suitable as a verification layer that is not controlled by any single applicant or certifier — a key requirement for credible certification.
- Scalable coverage: Unlike ground-based surveys, satellite data covers entire regions at consistent intervals. This makes it feasible to apply the same monitoring approach at national or EU scale, supporting the cross-border comparability the CRCF intends to create.
Key examples
- WorldSoils — European soil organic carbon monitoring
- WorldSoils is an ESA-funded application project developing a pre-operational soil monitoring system that delivers yearly estimates of soil organic carbon (SOC) at global scale. The system combines Copernicus satellite data with large soil data archives and modelling techniques to produce SOC maps with improved spatial resolution and accuracy. The project brings together authoritative end users — including bodies with reporting mandates on soils — with the soil mapping and EO communities to develop products directly usable in institutional and commercial applications such as reporting, soil management, and agricultural policy.
For CRCF purposes, the WorldSoils European SOC product — covering the 0-20 cm topsoil at 100m resolution for the 2020-22 reference period — provides the kind of continental baseline data needed to quantify starting-point carbon stocks, against which future changes from carbon farming activities can be assessed.
Figure: WorldSoils European SOC map showing soil organic carbon content (g/kg) at 100m resolution. Data from the WorldSoils SOC Product Browser at gui.world-soils.com.
- WorldPeatland — peatland mapping and monitoring
- WorldPeatland is an ESA-funded project developing EO-based tools and indicators to map and monitor peatlands in different states and biomes. The project works closely with the peatland stakeholder community — including conservation organisations, land managers, and policy bodies — to define what monitoring products are needed and validate them at test sites in tropical, temperate, and boreal peatlands.
- Peatlands are a priority ecosystem for the CRCF: with proper management they can curb climate change by continuously sequestering atmospheric carbon, but when degraded they become a significant source. WorldPeatland’s EO-based monitoring tools provide the peatland condition data — water levels, surface change, vegetation dynamics — that CRCF-certified peatland restoration projects need to demonstrate ongoing performance and permanence of carbon storage.
Figure: Water level trend map at Saddleworth Moor, UK (2017-24). Rising water levels following rewetting indicate recovery of hydrological conditions that support carbon sequestration. Data source: WorldPeatland.
- APEx SEF Geospatial Explorer — Carbon Farming demonstration
- The ESA SEF team has integrated WorldSoils and WorldPeatland datasets into an interactive geospatial explorer, freely accessible at explorer.sef-foodsystems.apex.esa.int. The Carbon Farming tab brings together:
- European SOC (2020-22): Soil organic carbon at 100m resolution with NUTS 2024 regional statistics, drawn from WorldSoils.
- Peatland Rewetting (UK examples): Water level trends (2017-24) at Saddleworth Moor, Hatfield Thorne, and Moor House, drawn from WorldPeatland.
- The explorer is designed for non-specialist users — farmers, local authorities, NGOs, and the public — who want to understand what EO carbon data looks like for their region without needing technical remote sensing skills. The SEF team uses this tool in outreach events and stakeholder workshops to demonstrate in a hands-on way how EO data supports CRCF-relevant monitoring, and to lower the barrier for land managers considering participation in certified carbon farming schemes.
Figure: Screenshot of the APEx SEF Carbon Farming explorer showing European SOC distribution. Users can zoom to any European region and explore soil carbon statistics by NUTS boundary.
Further resources
Related ESA-funded projects:
Relevant policy context:
