Captain Drawdown’s weekly Sunday selection — 12 candidate stories considered, 6-9 picked. Each link carries our 1-2 sentence take so you don’t have to click everything to know what’s there. Two direct air capture companies made moves this week that say more about where the money is than where the CO2 ends up: one is relocating to Norway, the other is lining up oil producers as customers for enhanced oil recovery. Alongside that, mineralisation showed up in three different registers (a croplands field study, a lab concrete mix, and a cement-waste review), and the nature-based and ocean pathways drew the kind of scrutiny that arrives once a method starts scaling. The thread is that removal is being tested less on chemistry this week than on where it sits in the real economy and on the ground. ...

Carbon Herald just published Austria Drafts CO2 Storage Act To End 2011 Underground Storage Ban. Carbon Herald reports that the Austrian government has released a draft law, the Kohlenstoffdioxid-Speicherungsgesetz, which would formally end the country’s prohibition on geological storage of CO2. The ban dates back to 2011 and has kept Austria out of onshore carbon capture and storage development for more than a decade. The draft follows earlier signals from Vienna that it intended to move toward a national carbon management framework covering hard-to-abate industrial emissions. According to the outlet, the text is a draft at this stage, meaning it still has to move through consultation and parliamentary approval before storage projects could be permitted. The report frames the move as bringing Austria closer to EU-level policy on CCS and industrial carbon management. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Plan Sea: Ocean Interventions to Address Climate Change, originally published Thu, 10 Se. Listen: <> TL;DR Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) walks through the ReSCUE Oceans Act, a bipartisan bill to set up a federal framework for marine CDR research. Useful primer, light on specifics. Bill would coordinate NOAA, NASA, NSF around mCDR (including ocean alkalinity enhancement). No dollar figure — “we’ll work that out.” Notable gap. Bipartisan co-sponsors: Schatz (D-HI), Murkowski (R-AK) in Senate; Bonamici and Buddy Carter (R-GA) in House. Realistic path unclear this Congress. Separate win discussed: bipartisan bill to block NSF from decommissioning the Ocean Observatories Initiative buoys. Small but concrete measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)-adjacent story. On the Trump administration gutting NOAA’s mCDR capacity: acknowledged as a problem, no strategy offered beyond “hopefully rehire.” Wil Burns (American University’s Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal) and guest co-host Priyanka Hooghan (Carbon to Sea) interview Rep. Suzanne Bonamici in her Capitol Hill office. The conversation covers the ReSCUE Oceans Act — Removing and Sequestering Carbon Unleashed in the Environment and Oceans — plus her work as bipartisan Oceans Caucus co-chair and a side fight over ocean observing infrastructure. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Untangling Climate Finance, originally published Mon, 17 Au. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/untanglingclimatefinance/episodes/S4-E8-Anton-Root-on-the-State-of-the-Voluntary-Carbon-Market-e3n7jvj TL;DR Anton Root (AlliedOffsets) says weighted-average VCM credit price roughly doubled from ~$3 to ~$7/t since early 2024 — useful data point, driven by mix shift not scarcity. ~1.6 Gt of issued-but-unretired credits sitting in registries, growing ~200 Mt/year. That’s ~8 years of demand overhang. Underrated structural problem. CDR-specific read: >1,000 sellers historically, only ~800 all-time buyers of engineered removals. Consolidation is here; offtake-less projects are in trouble. CCP-tagged issuances in H1 2026 (~18 Mt) nearly matched all of 2022+2023 combined. Integrity signal is real in the numbers, not just the marketing. Asia overtook Europe as largest source of new credit demand last year. Tencent flagged as a high-quality-removals buyer. Jay Tipton hosts AlliedOffsets co-founder Anton Root for a data-heavy read on the voluntary carbon market. It’s mostly VCM-wide, but there’s a meaty CDR segment on seller/buyer imbalance, pricing, and offtake dynamics that’s worth an hour if you’re on the supply or buyer side of durable removals. ...

Carbon Herald just published Relae, Microsoft Publish New High-Quality CDR Criteria, Addressing Delivery Risk For The First Time. Carbon Herald reports that Relae, previously known as Carbon Direct, has published the sixth edition of its Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal alongside Microsoft. The update is notable for being the first version to directly address delivery risk, a factor that has become more prominent as long-duration CDR contracts scale and buyers face questions about whether tonnes will actually be delivered on schedule. The Criteria series is widely referenced across the voluntary carbon market and informs procurement decisions by major buyers. This edition continues the joint effort between Relae and Microsoft to standardize what counts as durable, verifiable removal. ...