Today’s interview is with @Michael Byrd, Partner, @Philip Lee (US) LLP

What is Philip Lee?

For those unfamiliar, what is Philip Lee, and how has your legal practice evolved to support the growing carbon removal and storage (CDR) ecosystem?

Philip Lee is a commercial law firm with deep roots in energy, infrastructure, and environmental law, headquartered in Dublin with offices in London and New York. Our Climate Projects team is dedicated to helping clients navigate the legal, commercial, and regulatory challenges of decarbonization, particularly in the emerging CDR space.

Our legal practice has evolved in step with the market. Early on, we advised on traditional renewables and emissions trading. Today, we support the full spectrum of CDR innovators, engineered and nature-based, on matters ranging from offtake structuring and MRV frameworks to project finance, permitting, and cross-border carbon credit sales. We work with startups commercializing first-of-a-kind carbon removal technologies, large buyers entering the market for the first time, and governments shaping enabling legal frameworks.

U.S. Expansion

Philip Lee recently expanded into the U.S. by acquiring a law practice focused on carbon removals and forming a partnership with Skylight Law in New York. How does this strategic move enhance your ability to advise clients on global CDR transactions and climate-tech ventures?

Philip Lee’s expansion into the U.S. by bringing our team at Skylight Law onboard was driven by client need. The U.S. is a global leader in CDR innovation and deployment, particularly for engineered removals, and our clients increasingly operate across U.S., EU, and emerging Article 6 markets. By combining Philip Lee’s deep regulatory and infrastructure experience with Skylight Law’s transactional focus on carbon removal startups and project developers, we created a transatlantic platform purpose-built for climate-tech.

This move enables us to provide cohesive legal support across jurisdictions, from project structuring and credit offtake to tax credits (like 45Q), permitting, and investor due diligence. It also allows us to stay close to the market’s evolution in both Europe and North America, where legal strategies increasingly need to be interoperable.

EU Emissions Trading System

You’ve written about integrating engineered CDR into the EU Emissions Trading System. How crucial is this inclusion for scaling the sector, and what regulatory or legal barriers still need to be addressed?

Integration into the EU ETS would be a game-changer. It would provide a long-term demand signal, lower the cost of capital, and anchor CDR within a compliance-grade policy framework. But for that to work, the EU must resolve key legal and technical questions: What permanence thresholds are appropriate? How will reversals be monitored and enforced? Can new carbon accounting methodologies coexist with the system’s existing architecture?

There’s also the question of how to define and gatekeep quality, especially in a way that supports innovation while maintaining market integrity. Legal clarity around these issues will be essential to attract institutional investment and scale deployment.

Legal Frameworks

With experience across nature-based and engineered CDR solutions, from direct air capture to enhanced weathering, how do you tailor legal frameworks to account for the different risk profiles and compliance demands of these technologies?

No two CDR approaches carry the same legal risks. For example, engineered CDR often involves complex technology licensing, long asset life, and high capital intensity, so we focus on protecting IP, structuring long-term offtakes, and allocating liability for storage and reversals. Nature-based projects, by contrast, tend to face land tenure, leakage, and permanence risks, which call for robust landowner agreements, MRV design, and safeguards against double counting.

We tailor our legal advice to the specific project type, maturity, and jurisdiction. Our goal is to de-risk commercial agreements, ensure regulatory compatibility, and help clients access the most appropriate markets, whether voluntary, compliance or bilateral.

Legal Complexities in CDR

Philip Lee’s Climate Projects team works across voluntary, compliance, and Article 6 markets. How do you help clients navigate the legal complexities when bringing CDR projects to market in these overlapping systems?

We start by helping clients understand which markets are viable given their project attributes and location. Then we map the legal and contractual steps needed to access them: credit issuance rules, third-party verifications, eligibility under national NDCs, or bilateral authorizations under Article 6.

Much of our work is about future-proofing. Markets are in flux, so we structure contracts to allow flexibility (e.g., switching registries or standards), and we build in safeguards for changes in law or methodology. We also help buyers and investors assess legal risks around credit quality, ownership, and claims so they can participate with confidence.

Cross-Jurisdictional Reach

With offices in Dublin, London and New York, how does your cross-jurisdictional reach help clients manage regulatory risks in multinational CDR deployments, particularly when it comes to permitting, registry integrity, and international policy alignment?

CDR is inherently cross-border: carbon may be emitted in one country, removed in another, and sold as a credit in a third. That means legal advice must be international by design.

Our geographic reach enables us to help clients interpret and align the permitting, reporting, and crediting requirements across jurisdictions. We monitor developments in EU climate law, U.S. tax and regulatory incentives, UK carbon markets, and Article 6 rulemaking, so our clients can anticipate and adapt to policy shifts. We also work closely with local counsel in frontier jurisdictions to ensure compliance when deploying pilot or commercial-scale CDR infrastructure.

Key Policy Signals

Ireland’s environmental law landscape is evolving rapidly. How is Philip Lee helping to shape or interpret national-level legislation related to CDR, and what key policy signals are you watching in the EU or Irish climate frameworks?

Ireland is still early in defining its CDR strategy, but that’s starting to change. We’ve been advising on the legal treatment of negative emissions in national climate planning and exploring pathways for engineered and nature-based removals to contribute to Ireland’s net zero targets.

At the EU level, we’re closely tracking the Carbon Removal Certification Framework, the forthcoming 2040 climate target, and discussions around how CDR will integrate into the EU ETS and Member State climate budgets. We’re also engaged in consultations to help ensure that emerging policies are workable for innovators on the ground.

Mainstreaming CDR

Looking ahead, what’s the biggest legal or structural hurdle to mainstreaming high-quality CDR, and how is Philip Lee uniquely positioned to help address that challenge for project developers, investors, or governments?

The biggest hurdle is uncertainty, regulatory, contractual, and financial. Without clear, consistent rules for credit quality, MRV, liability, and long-term governance, many promising projects struggle to scale or secure financing.

Philip Lee is positioned to help bridge that gap. We bring legal rigor to the frontier: designing agreements that allocate risk fairly, advocating for smart policy, and helping clients operate with confidence in evolving markets. Our transatlantic platform, CDR-specialist team, and track record in project finance and market infrastructure make us an ideal partner for those looking to move from pilot to scale, while keeping quality and integrity at the center.