Friday the 13th turned out to be a big day for carbon removal science. Two major ERW publications, a municipal biochar first, and corporate buyers continuing to stack their portfolios. Here’s everything we covered — and what else moved. Today on CaptainDrawdown 🧪 CDR Misconception #1: “Carbon Removal Is Just an Excuse to Keep Polluting” We launched a new Friday series tackling the most common CDR objections head-on. The data tells a clear story: the biggest CDR buyers — Microsoft ($1B+), Stripe ($15M/yr), Swiss Re, Shopify — are also the companies that have already made the deepest emission cuts. IPCC AR6 says 1.5°C pathways need 6–16 Gt CO₂/yr of removal by 2050. This isn’t optional. ...

The carbon removal industry is supposed to scale to gigatonnes. But how many people actually work in it today? I went looking for the answer. And as far as I can tell, nobody has published one before. The major CDR reports — the State of CDR, CDR.fyi, ClimeFi’s market analyses — track tonnes removed, credits sold, dollars invested, companies founded. IRENA and the ILO track renewable energy employment (16.6 million jobs globally as of 2025). But carbon removal isn’t broken out as a category in any of these. Nobody, it seems, has tried to systematically count the people who actually do this work. ...

The Myth “Carbon removal is just a license to pollute. Companies buy offsets so they don’t have to cut emissions.” You hear this from climate activists, policy wonks, even some scientists. It sounds reasonable. It’s also wrong — and the data proves it. Why It’s Wrong: The Math Even the most aggressive mitigation scenarios can’t get us to safety without removal. The IPCC’s AR6 is unambiguous: 1.5°C pathways require 6–16 Gt CO₂/yr of removal by 2050. That’s not optional — it’s baked into every scenario that keeps warming below 1.5°C. Cutting emissions to zero tomorrow still leaves us at 425 ppm. Pre-industrial was 280. Safe is roughly 350. Hard-to-abate sectors — cement, aviation, steel, agriculture — account for ~30% of global emissions. These can’t be electrified away on any realistic timeline. Removal isn’t an alternative to cutting emissions. It’s the second half of the same equation. ...

This one’s different. Not a tech startup. Not a corporate buyer. A local council in rural England just became the first UK local authority to partially own a biochar carbon removal system. Shropshire Council has partnered with Raft Energy and Biodynamic Carbon (a joint venture between the council and Carbon Hill Ltd.) to produce activated biochar and generate verified carbon removal credits. How it works The system — already operational near Welshpool — integrates biochar production with existing anaerobic digestion (AD) infrastructure. Raft Energy’s product, ActiCH4R, is an activated biochar that gets added to biogas plants. The biochar: ...

One of the persistent concerns about enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is trace metals. You’re spreading crushed rock on farmland — what happens to the nickel, chromium, and other metals in that basalt? A new preprint on CDRxiv offers some of the most detailed field data yet. Short answer: no detectable increase in harmful metals after two years. The study Researchers from Yale and collaborators applied 20 tonnes/hectare of iron- and aluminum-rich basalt to hayfield and pasture soils on a working Vermont dairy farm. They sampled agricultural soils (0–15 cm) twice before application and four times after, spanning fall 2022 through spring 2025. They also tracked a riparian corridor hydrologically connected to the treated fields. ...

ClimeFi just published its 2026 CDR market insights based on a December 2025 RFP that attracted 114 suppliers from 39 countries across 142 projects. The headline: durable CDR supply is getting tight. The numbers Only 52% of projected 2026 supply is still unreserved — making it the most constrained year in the 2026–2030 window Across 2026–2030, 58% of total supply remains available 66% of projects across all pathways (biochar, DACCS, BECCS, biomass, mCDR, mineralization) are now at commercialization stage Prices are converging within pathways as suppliers reach operations, secure verification, and build track records What’s driving the squeeze Demand from corporate buyers is outpacing supply buildout. Companies like Microsoft, Boeing, LEGO, and Mercedes F1 are locking in multi-year deals — and the supply side simply can’t scale fast enough. ...

A new paper in Communications Earth & Environment used formal expert elicitation to estimate how much CO₂ enhanced rock weathering (EW) on agricultural land could actually remove. The headline number: 0.2–0.7 Gt CO₂e/yr on average, depending on the feedstock — but with a wild range from below zero to above 5 Gt CO₂e/yr. The kicker? Only 27–39% of the potential CDR is actually realized. The rest gets lost along the way — through secondary clay formation, calcite saturation, deep soil processes, and freshwater emissions. ...

The LEGO Group just dropped another DKK 18 million ($2.6M) on carbon removal, bringing its total CDR investment to DKK 54 million ($7.9M). The new round, delivered through ClimeFi, supports four projects across three durable removal technologies plus a reforestation initiative in Mexico. What they’re buying The three tech-based projects span: Biomass geological storage — injecting organic waste slurry deep underground for permanent carbon lockaway Mineralization — converting captured CO₂ into manufactured limestone using reactive waste materials Marine CDR via wastewater alkalinity enhancement — converting organic carbon into inorganic carbon stored long-term in the ocean The fourth project is large-scale tropical forest restoration in Mexico, developed with Climate Impact Partners. ...

A big day in carbon removal. Five original CaptainDrawdown posts, from market milestones to multi-century timelines, plus a striking data point about Microsoft’s dominance of the credit market. Today on CaptainDrawdown Two-Thirds of CDR Projects Are Now Commercial ClimeFi’s 2026 market insights report dropped a headline number: 66% of durable carbon removal projects across all pathways have reached the commercialization stage. That’s biochar, DACCS, BECCS, marine CDR, and mineralization combined. Even more significant, 2026 credit supply is diversifying away from biomass dominance — large-scale DACCS and BioCCS, plus smaller ERW and marine CDR projects, are entering the market. ...

Here’s an uncomfortable truth the Paris Agreement doesn’t really grapple with: even if we hit 1.5°C and hold there, the damage keeps piling up. Two new studies from IIASA (the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna), published in Environmental Research Letters, lay out just how long the carbon removal commitment needs to last. The answer? Centuries. The Lag Problem Sea-level rise doesn’t stop when temperatures stabilize. Neither does permafrost thaw. These are slow-moving processes with enormous inertia — think of a supertanker that keeps drifting long after the engines are cut. ...

Felix Schenuit from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) just published a policy paper through LibMod that makes a provocative argument: CDR is politically fragile, and the way to protect it is to stop treating it as a carbon accounting exercise and start treating it as industrial policy. The Core Problem The paper’s central concern is “climate backsliding” — the strategic weakening and rollback of climate policy that’s happening in multiple countries. When net-zero commitments erode, CDR loses its political rationale. After all, if you’re no longer committed to neutralizing residual emissions, why fund the technology to do it? ...

Lego isn’t playing around with carbon removal. The Danish toymaker just committed another DKK 18 million (~€2.4M) to four CDR projects, pushing its total CDR investment to DKK 54 million ($7.9M). What’s interesting isn’t just the money — it’s the portfolio approach. Four Projects, Four Pathways Working with carbon removal platform ClimeFi and Climate Impact Partners, Lego is spreading bets across fundamentally different removal methods: 1. Biomass geological storage — injecting organic waste slurry deep underground. Permanent storage, no reversal risk. ...

Carbon Gap and Global Factor just published a Carbon Removal Readiness Assessment (CRRA) for Spain, and the verdict is clear: massive potential, minimal policy infrastructure. Spain has geology, solar irradiation, coastal access, and industrial clusters that make it a natural fit for multiple CDR pathways. What it doesn’t have is a national CDR strategy. What Spain Brings to the Table The CRRA identifies several advantages Spain has for scaling carbon removal: ...

ClimeFi just dropped its 2026 durable carbon removal market insights, and the headline number is striking: 66% of CDR projects across all pathways are now at the commercialization stage. That’s across biochar, DACCS, BECCS, biomass approaches, marine CDR, and mineralization. Two-thirds of the industry has moved past R&D and pilots into actual commercial operations. The Supply Shift Perhaps more important than the commercialization milestone is where the growth is coming from. ClimeFi signals that 2026 credit issuances are expected to shift away from the dominant biomass-based removals toward a more diversified supply: ...

Five original stories today, plus four we’re watching. Here’s what moved in carbon removal. What We Covered Today 🌊 First Open-Water OAE Test Absorbs 10 Tonnes of CO₂ The LOC-NESS project delivered the ocean alkalinity enhancement field’s biggest milestone yet. Scientists from Woods Hole pumped 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine — the first EPA-permitted open-water OAE experiment. Early results: up to 10 tonnes of CO₂ absorbed, local pH restored to preindustrial 8.3, and no significant harm to marine life observed. This is the data the OAE credit market has been waiting for. ...

A few days ago, I launched the CDR Company Directory based on Grant Faber’s comprehensive list of carbon dioxide removal companies. It was a solid starting point — but a static one. A list of names and methods doesn’t tell you which companies are still building, which ones have gone quiet, and which may no longer exist. So I went through every single one of them. What I did I investigated all 819 companies using multiple approaches — and it took me hours. Plural. Many of them. ...

Europe’s flagship climate policy instrument is suddenly in the crosshairs — from inside Europe. Italy’s industry minister has called for a temporary suspension of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), arguing that carbon costs are inflating electricity prices and hurting industrial competitiveness. At a meeting of “Friends of Industry” countries in Brussels, the push was framed as a practical necessity while the system gets reformed. The European Commission pushed back hard. Commissioners stated the EU is “not in an energy crisis as severe as 2022” and rejected talk of suspending the ETS or releasing emergency oil stocks. The current situation, they argue, doesn’t warrant dismantling the cornerstone of EU climate policy. ...

For four days last August, the waters 50 miles off the Massachusetts coast turned maroon. On purpose. Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) pumped 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide — tagged with a red dye for tracking — into the Gulf of Maine as part of the LOC-NESS project, the first large-scale open-water test of ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE). The experiment, licensed by the US EPA, took place in an area commonly fished for cod, haddock, and lobster. ...

Ethylene is everywhere. Plastics, packaging, antifreeze, construction materials — over 150 million tonnes are produced globally each year, almost entirely from fossil fuels. Every tonne of ethylene made the conventional way releases roughly a tonne of CO₂. A new process developed at Northwestern University flips that equation. The Breakthrough In a paper published in Nature Synthesis on March 10, researchers led by Ted Sargent describe a bismuth-copper alloy catalyst that converts CO₂ captured from ambient air directly into ethylene through an electrochemical process. ...

The Hajar Mountains in Oman contain one of the world’s largest exposed formations of peridotite — a rock from Earth’s mantle that naturally reacts with CO₂ and locks it away as solid mineral carbonate. The Semail Ophiolite alone has sequestered over one billion tonnes of CO₂ through this process, over millions of years. Now someone’s trying to speed it up. 44.01, an Omani startup named after the molecular weight of carbon dioxide, has signed a concession with Oman’s Ministry of Energy and Minerals for the world’s first commercial-scale peridotite mineralization project at Al Qabil in the Hajar Mountains. ...