Monday’s lineup covers three continents — a research breakthrough from Cambridge, a national strategy from Berlin, a new carbon market from Delhi, and a Formula 1 team putting real money behind six different removal pathways. Our Coverage Today#MIT Turns CO₂ and Water Into Jet Fuel Using Only Renewable Energy — A Nature Energy paper describes an electrochemical cell that converts CO₂ and water directly into jet fuel hydrocarbons using renewable electricity. No biomass, no Fischer-Tropsch. Aviation is responsible for ~3% of global emissions and notoriously hard to decarbonize — batteries are too heavy for long-haul, and sustainable aviation fuel supply is nowhere near demand. If this electrochemical approach scales, it sidesteps the feedstock bottleneck entirely. ...

📊 v2.1 Collaboration Atlas This is the collaboration layer of our CDR Researcher Census. The data reflects v2.1 paper classifications (31,234 papers). Co-authorship is a proxy for collaboration, not a perfect measure of it. Some edges are noise (250-author mega-papers), some real collaborations happen without shared papers. I’m publishing because the patterns are too interesting to sit on. Tell me what I’m getting wrong — Bluesky or X. CDR research looks like 122,674 individuals. It isn’t. ...

Global durable carbon removal today stands at roughly 0.1 million tonnes per year. Germany alone could be doing 95 million tonnes annually by 2045 — if it gets serious. That’s the headline finding from a new Carbon Removal Readiness Assessment (CRRA) published by Sweco Finland and Carbon Gap. The report is the most comprehensive analysis yet of what CDR deployment could actually look like in Europe’s largest economy. The Numbers#Germany’s climate targets are among the world’s most ambitious: climate neutrality by 2045, net-negative emissions by 2050. The theoretical CDR potential is enormous — approximately 258 MtCO₂ per year by 2045. But “theoretical” does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. ...

490 companies across 7 energy-intensive sectors in India are about to face mandatory carbon obligations. This isn’t a pilot program. It’s a national-scale compliance market launching in months. India’s Power Minister Manohar Lal announced at Prakriti 2026 in New Delhi that formal carbon credit trading will begin within four months. The government has launched a dedicated carbon market portal for registration, verification, and trading — the full infrastructure stack, not just a policy announcement. ...

An F1 team just assembled one of the most diversified carbon removal portfolios in the corporate world. Not a tech company. Not an energy major. A racing team. Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 announced a major expansion of their carbon removal commitments, adding 7 new projects across 6 distinct CDR technology types, curated by CUR8. The total commitment: approximately 18,900 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. The technology spread: Direct Air Capture, Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage, BECCS, Biochar, Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, and Enhanced Rock Weathering. ...

Sustainable aviation fuel currently makes up less than 1% of global jet fuel consumption. A new paper in Nature Energy from MIT might explain how to change that — without touching a single crop. Dr. Anya Sharma’s team at MIT has developed an electrochemical cell that takes two inputs — CO₂ (captured from air or industrial sources) and water — and produces jet fuel hydrocarbons. The only energy source: renewable electricity from solar or wind. No biomass. No farmland. No food-vs-fuel tradeoff. ...

Saturday’s coverage stretched from Dutch greenhouses to Houston conference halls — five pieces that together tell the story of a field maturing faster than most people realize. Our Coverage Today#Biochar + Basalt: Wageningen Shows Co-Deployment Changes the Weathering Game — A Wageningen University study in Geoderma found that mixing biochar into enhanced weathering plots boosts mineral dissolution by raising soil pH and reactive oxide formation. The catch: soil respiration spiked too, temporarily outpacing inorganic carbon sequestration. Stacking CDR pathways works, but the math isn’t simply additive. CDI’s own lysimeter data shows the same pattern — soil type determines everything. ...

Ninety-five percent. That’s the share of CDR credits issued in the voluntary carbon market in 2025 that came from nature-based approaches — tree planting, soil carbon, mangroves. Only 5% came from high-durability pathways like biochar or BECCS. According to Carbon Direct’s 2026 State of the Voluntary Carbon Market Report, published February 10, this isn’t just a gap. It’s a structural failure. The numbers paint a grim picture across the board. CDR represents just 5-6% of total VCM retirements. Credit retirements fell 7% in 2025 compared to 2024, landing at 157 Mt total. Corporate climate commitments surged 227% — and the market still shrank. Five consecutive years of stagnation. The VCM isn’t growing into its potential. It’s treading water while the planet warms. ...

Mixing biochar into your enhanced weathering plot doesn’t just add carbon — it changes the entire soil chemistry playing field. That’s the headline from a new Wageningen University study in Geoderma, and it has real implications for how we think about stacking CDR approaches. The researchers deployed dunite (an ultramafic rock, rich in olivine) with and without biochar on two different soil types. What they found: biochar co-deployment boosted reactive (hydr)oxide mineral formation and raised soil pH — both factors that accelerate silicate weathering. In clayey soils specifically, biochar slightly enhanced dunite dissolution rates. Two CDR methods working together, each making the other more effective. Sounds great, right? ...

Five years ago, carbon removal at CERAWeek would have been a hallway conversation between three people and a potted plant. This week, it has its own Innovation Agora track. When the world’s largest energy conference — 8,000+ attendees, every major oil company, every energy minister who matters — gives CDR dedicated stage time, something has shifted. CERAWeek 2026 runs March 23-27 in Houston. Among the speakers at the #CWAgora: Jessica Hinojosa, Senior Carbon Removal Program Manager at Microsoft. She joined Microsoft from Shell in September 2024, which is itself a telling career arc — from one of the world’s largest oil companies to one of the world’s largest CDR buyers. That pipeline of talent moving from fossil energy into carbon removal is becoming a pattern, not an anomaly. ...