Karbonmat on fieldwork in Belgium and the Netherlands

Professor Natalia Mæhle and research professor Pia Otte recently carried out a research visit to Tilburg University to work with Professor Jonathan Verschuuren on legal and policy frameworks for carbon sequestering soils.

Carbon sequestration is an important topic at the EU level and three new rules have been recently adopted that the team is studying now to investigate the impact of these rules on carbon farming projects. The three rules include the Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience, the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) Regulation, and the Nature Restoration Regulation.

To inform business model development for carbon sequestration in agriculture, the Norwegian team interviewed policymakers, financial institutions, and civil society actors during their visit.

Professor Natalia Mæhle, Professor Jonathan Verschuuren and research professor Pia Otte.

Project leader Pia Otte emphasizes the importance of working closely together to develop new knowledge:

Traveling together to new places and spending so much time together enables a better thinking process that would not take place from home, and which is needed to solve complex problems and develop novel interdisciplinary solutions

A highlight for the researchers was a visit to the European Commission in Brussels to learn more about the EU’s ambitions and work related to carbon farming.

At the end of their trip, the team was invited to present Karbonmat and other Agrifood-related research projects at a seminar, arranged by the Agrifood research group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Tilburg University. The overall aim was to explore future opportunities for collaboration between the three institutions. One main outcome from this is to initiate an internal webinar series on business model innovation and methodologies to exchange more knowledge. This work will start in Autumn 2025.

Professor Natalia Mæhle and research professor Pia Otte

Natalia Mæhle spent two months as a guest researcher at Tilburg University and Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). During her stay, she gave a guest lecture in the graduate course “Sustainability Assessments for Emerging Technologies and Business Models,” where she presented the Karbonmat project. She also continued data collection for Karbonmat, conducting several interviews with carbon credit operators.

The insights from the interviews will be crucial for developing a Norwegian business model in collaboration with a stakeholder group consisting of farmers, soil health researchers, social scientists, and companies from the financial sector. Preliminary business model scenarios will be presented to the Norwegian stakeholder group involved in the project in September 2025.