A Philippine Province Just Made Southeast Asian Biochar History

A Philippine Province Just Made Southeast Asian Biochar History

Nueva Ecija — a rice-growing province in the Philippines — just became the first place in Southeast Asia to generate Puro.earth-verified biochar carbon credits. And the model is beautifully simple: take rice husks (agricultural waste), convert them to biochar, and distribute it to farmers. Project NuevaChar#Launched in 2022 under Governor Aurelio “Oyie” Umali, Project NuevaChar is a joint venture between the provincial government and Singapore-based Alcom Pte Ltd. The facility combines green heat production with biochar manufacturing. ...

March 9, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown
Japan's Largest Energy Firm Just Bet on Direct Air Capture

Japan's Largest Energy Firm Just Bet on Direct Air Capture

ENEOS Holdings — parent company of Japan’s largest energy firm — has made a strategic investment in AirMyne, a Berkeley, California-based direct air capture startup. And they’re not just writing a check: the two companies have begun a joint technical evaluation with plans to explore industrial integration and project development in the US, Japan, and globally. The Technology#AirMyne is developing a liquid solvent-based DAC system designed around three priorities: low energy consumption, supply-chain security, and operational simplicity. That last one matters more than it sounds — many first-generation DAC systems are engineering-intensive to operate, which drives up costs and limits where they can be deployed. ...

March 9, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown
Asia-Pacific Finally Gets Its Own CDR Initiative

Asia-Pacific Finally Gets Its Own CDR Initiative

Here’s a stat that should bother anyone who thinks about CDR markets: Asia-Pacific accounts for roughly 50% of global CO₂ emissions and over 60% of the world’s population, yet it barely registers as a player in carbon removal markets. The Carbon Business Council and Emerald Climate just launched APACdr — a Singapore-anchored working group designed to change that. What Is APACdr?#It’s a coalition bringing together policymakers, financial institutions, corporate buyers, project developers, and civil society leaders to build the CDR infrastructure that Asia-Pacific currently lacks. The inaugural session in January 2026 drew 26 organizations spanning financial institutions, multinational corporations, carbon project developers, rating agencies, and non-profits. ...

March 9, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown
Canada Assembles Its CDR Dream Team With $100M Coalition

Canada Assembles Its CDR Dream Team With $100M Coalition

Canada just made one of the boldest institutional moves in CDR to date. BMO, RBC, Shopify, Vancity, ClimeFi, NorthX, and the federal government have joined forces under the new Advance Carbon Removal Coalition, with a target of attracting $100 million in project investments by 2030. The coalition was announced at an Ottawa conference hosted by Carbon Removal Canada. Together, the partners have already contributed $75 million in financing to the CDR industry. ...

March 9, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown
$1.2 Billion in US DAC Hub Funding: Cancelled. What Happens Now?

$1.2 Billion in US DAC Hub Funding: Cancelled. What Happens Now?

In October 2025, the Trump administration cancelled over $1.2 billion in federal funding for the two flagship US Direct Air Capture hubs — Project Cypress in Louisiana and the South Texas DAC Hub. It was the single largest withdrawal of public capital from the CDR sector in history. The fallout is still shaping the market today. What Changed#The Biden administration spent 2021-2024 building DAC as a standalone climate industry. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act provided the architecture: direct federal co-funding for first-of-a-kind commercial facilities, designed to prove that DAC can work at scale and attract private capital. ...

March 8, 2026 · 3 min · CaptainDrawdown
Mercedes F1 Builds One of Motorsport's Biggest CDR Portfolios — 18,900 Tonnes Across 6 Pathways

Mercedes F1 Builds One of Motorsport's Biggest CDR Portfolios — 18,900 Tonnes Across 6 Pathways

Just ahead of the 2026 F1 season opener, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS has announced what may be motorsport’s most comprehensive carbon removal investment to date: 7 new CDR projects across 6 different technology pathways, bringing the team’s total portfolio to approximately 18,900 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. The technologies span the full CDR spectrum: Direct Air Capture (DAC)BiocharEnhanced Rock Weathering (ERW)Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE)Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS)Biomass StorageProjects are located across Brazil, Canada, the US, the UK, Denmark, and India — deliberately overlapping with regions where the F1 circus races. ...

March 8, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown
Germany Puts €98 Million Into CDR — Its First Dedicated Federal Budget Line Ever

Germany Puts €98 Million Into CDR — Its First Dedicated Federal Budget Line Ever

Germany just did something it has never done before: put carbon dioxide removal into the federal budget as a standalone line item. The 2026 Bundeshaushalt includes €98 million for CDR projects and an additional €11.5 million specifically for purchasing carbon removal certificates. According to the German Association for Negative Emissions (Deutscher Verband für negative Emissionen), the pipeline extends further — with additional funding planned through 2033. Handelsblatt broke the story, profiling two approaches already operational in Germany: biochar (led by Hamburg-based Novocarbo, which won the German Sustainability Prize 2025) and enhanced rock weathering. ...

March 8, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown
New Nature Paper: Scaling CDR to Gigatons Could Strain Global Mineral and Nutrient Supplies

New Nature Paper: Scaling CDR to Gigatons Could Strain Global Mineral and Nutrient Supplies

Here’s the reality check the CDR industry needs to sit with: a new paper in Communications Earth & Environment (Nature portfolio) finds that scaling negative emissions technologies to the gigatons could create serious resource and environmental bottlenecks — some of which nobody is planning for. The paper by Cobo, Galán-Martín, and Guillén-Gosálbez runs a comprehensive life-cycle assessment across the full CDR technology portfolio and identifies what the authors call “previously overlooked bottlenecks.” ...

March 8, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown
IEA Report: Carbon Removal Is Now One of the Hottest VC Categories in Energy

IEA Report: Carbon Removal Is Now One of the Hottest VC Categories in Energy

The International Energy Agency just dropped a data point that the carbon removal industry has been waiting for: CDR is officially one of the seven emerging energy sectors that have offset the decline in EV venture funding since 2021. In its State of Energy Innovation 2026 report, the IEA maps the full innovation pipeline — from early research to commercial-scale demonstration — and carbon removal sits alongside nuclear, next-gen geothermal, and critical minerals as the new magnets for venture capital. ...

March 8, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown
ERW Could Absorb 1 Billion Tonnes of CO₂ — But the Details Matter

ERW Could Absorb 1 Billion Tonnes of CO₂ — But the Details Matter

New Scientist highlighted a growing body of research suggesting that spreading crushed basalt on farmland could absorb up to 1 billion tonnes of CO₂. Field trials in Queensland, Australia, are among the latest to generate real data. Nations like Brazil are already deploying enhanced rock weathering (ERW) at scale, partly because crushed silicate rock also reduces fertiliser costs. Big number. Important caveat: “could” is doing a lot of work in that headline. ...

March 7, 2026 · 2 min · CaptainDrawdown