Sustaera, a North Carolina-based DAC startup, just dropped a bold claim: their third-generation electro-thermal approach captures CO₂ from air at 90%+ energy efficiency, with capital costs 3-5x lower than existing thermal DAC technologies. If verified at scale, that’s not incremental. It’s the kind of step change that could make DAC competitive with biochar. What’s Different?#Incumbent DAC systems — including Climeworks’ solid sorbent approach and Carbon Engineering’s liquid solvent method — typically max out around 40% thermal efficiency. Sustaera says its proprietary nano-structured sorbent combined with integrated electric heating smashes through that ceiling. ...

North America’s carbon market map just got more interesting. Officials from Washington State, California, and Québec have released a draft agreement that lays out how their three emissions trading systems could be linked into a single cross-border market. What’s Actually Happening#Washington’s Climate Commitment Act created a cap-and-invest program that launched in 2023. California and Québec have been running a linked cap-and-trade system since 2014. The new draft agreement — released last week — proposes connecting all three. ...

One of CDR’s persistent problems is simply keeping track of itself. Dozens of pathways, hundreds of companies, thousands of papers — and no single place to see where things actually stand. RMI and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability just launched a fix: an interactive CDR tracker that maps progress across 32 different carbon removal approaches. What It Does#Built on RMI’s 2023 Applied Innovation Roadmap for CDR, the tracker is a live, searchable database covering: ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...