The text for the Carbon Removal Certification Framework, as proposed by the European Commission in late 2022, is currently going through intense scrutiny by all parties involved, and recently entered the trialogue phase. In attempting to contribute to such a process, the MARVIC consortium published a series of recommendations on the baseline approach, as presented in the CRCF version available at the time (November 2023).

Such a publication tried to shed light on what it seemed a rather vague definition of baselines in the CRCF. Furthermore, it identified 8 points of attention, which are summarized here:

1. The need for a cleared definition of standardized baseline in the CRCF text.
2. The consortium recommends not to have a default order of priority between standardized and activity-specific approaches.
3. The need of carrying out multi-year baselines to consider interannual climate and management variability.
4. We suggest calculating the baseline on the perimeter of the entire farm to avoid leakage between fields within a farm
5. We suggest limiting the diversity of types of carbon certificates as much as possible.
6. It is advisable to express all credits in the same unit: T. eq. CO₂.
7. The standardized baseline approach is not suited to measure «GHG-associated» changes. CRCF should clarify the suited approach and the tools/ methodology that are accepted.
8. The need for clarifying the situation where «GHG-associated» is negative.

The full document is now available for download on this page. The MARVIC consortium is continuing the work on refining the options for calculating baselines with its advantages and disadvantages.