March 2026 was the biggest single month for durable CDR purchase commitments in recent memory. Roughly 1.51 million tonnes of carbon removal were contracted, with two deals alone accounting for over 85% of that volume. The numbers signal that corporate buyers are no longer dabbling in CDR. They’re locking in multi-year, industrial-scale supply.
Why it matters
Until recently, most CDR purchases were measured in hundreds or low thousands of tonnes. A month where a single deal covers a million tonnes changes the math on what suppliers can finance and build. Large offtake agreements give project developers the revenue certainty they need to break ground on facilities that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. If this pace holds, 2026 could redefine what “market-ready” means for durable carbon removal.
The headline deals
Liferaft and Microsoft signed a 10-year offtake agreement for 1 million tonnes of CDR, facilitated by intermediary Supercritical. The credits will come from Liferaft’s large-scale pyrolysis facilities in Iowa and Illinois. A decade-long commitment of this size from Microsoft is notable not just for volume but for the signal it sends to capital markets: bankable demand exists. Altitude and Empacar agreed on 305,000 tonnes of CDR from Empacar, a Bolivian sustainable packaging company. Credits will be issued on Puro.earth or equivalent methodologies. Empacar is also building a new biochar facility in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in partnership with Puro.earth, Cula, and BioFlux, targeting roughly 70,000 tonnes of CO₂ removal per year. So the buyer commitment and the supply buildout are happening in parallel. Google and AMP struck a deal for 200,000 tonnes of CDR. AMP, based in Colorado, will use the purchase to add biochar production capacity to its existing recycling operations in the U.S. This is an interesting model: layering carbon removal onto existing waste-processing infrastructure rather than building greenfield. Boeing and Carbonfuture signed a multi-year agreement for at least 40,000 tonnes. Carbonfuture will source credits from a diversified portfolio, initially drawing from four biochar projects across the Global South. Smaller but symbolically important: Mercedes-AMG F1 invested in 18,900 tonnes across nature-based, hybrid, and engineered projects through CUR8, spanning five durable CDR methods across six countries. And the first publicly announced transaction for EU Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming (CRCF)-licensed credits was completed, with Adyen and Nasdaq purchasing from Stockholm Exergi in a deal structured by ClimeFi.
Biochar dominates, but the field is widening
The tonnage breakdown tells a clear story: pyrolysis and biochar accounted for the vast majority of March’s contracted volume. That’s not surprising. Biochar is among the most commercially mature CDR pathways, with established measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) protocols and lower per-tonne costs than direct air capture. But DAC didn’t sit idle. Sirona Technologies completed a multi-year offtake facilitated by Patch, with credits coming from modular DAC projects. Kenya-based Octavia Carbon secured an offtake through Carbon Direct to support its Hummingbird pilot. Neither disclosed volume or pricing. On the partnership front, Climeworks and Lithos Carbon formalized a collaboration to bring verified enhanced rock weathering (ERW) credits to market, building on a relationship dating back to 2023, with a target of 3.5 million tonnes over more than a decade. That’s a DAC leader betting on a complementary pathway, which suggests the industry is thinking in portfolios, not single technologies.
Money is flowing to match
The financing side kept pace. The Advance Carbon Removal Coalition launched in Canada, bringing together the Canadian government, BMO, RBC, Shopify, Vancity, NorthX, and ClimeFi with a goal of mobilizing $100 million CAD for Canadian CDR by 2030. The Canadian government also issued a tender for CDR credit suppliers as part of its commitment to purchase at least CAD 10 million in carbon removal services by 2030. Sweden’s Energy Agency opened two funding calls totaling about €29.4 million for research and projects focused on capturing, transporting, and permanently storing biogenic or atmospheric CO₂. Austrian mineralization startup Sequestra raised €3 million in seed funding. Frontier launched its 2026 Innovation Program targeting ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), surficial mineralization, and open-system MRV.
What to watch
The sheer volume of March’s contracts is encouraging, but a few caveats deserve attention. First, contracted tonnes are not delivered tonnes. These deals span years, sometimes a decade. Delivery risk is real, especially for facilities not yet built. Second, the concentration of volume in two mega-deals (Liferaft-Microsoft and Altitude-Empacar) means the market’s depth is thinner than the headline number suggests. Remove those two and March looks like a solid but not extraordinary month. Third, pricing transparency remains limited. Several deals disclosed no price per tonne. Without price signals, it’s hard to assess whether the market is getting cheaper or just bigger. Still, the direction is unmistakable. Corporate buyers are moving from pilot purchases to procurement at scale. Suppliers are responding with larger facilities and longer timelines. The CDR market in March 2026 looked less like a niche experiment and more like an emerging commodity market finding its footing.
Source: CDR.fyi Blog