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What does a corporate CDR offtake actually look like in 2026?
This week gave us two answers, signed within days of each other, and they are not the same answer. Microsoft locked in 650,000 tonnes of BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) from Denmark’s BioCirc over seven years. Lufthansa signed a multi-year deal with aggregator Senken covering both engineered and nature-based removals. Same market on paper. Two completely different transactions underneath.
Subject one: Microsoft–BioCirc
Microsoft contracted 650,000 tonnes of BECCS from BioCirc over seven years, averaging roughly 93kt per year. Single buyer. Single pathway. Single geography. The economics here are volume economics: lowest defensible price per tonne of durable removal, locked to specific Danish biogas-plus-storage infrastructure. Per TechCrunch’s reporting on Microsoft’s resumed purchasing, Microsoft alone accounts for roughly 90% of cumulative durable CDR contracting. This deal extends that concentration.
Subject two: Lufthansa–Senken
Lufthansa signed a multi-year agreement with Senken for a blended tech-and-nature portfolio. No single tonnage headline. No single project. Lufthansa is buying a basket of removals routed through an aggregator, not an offtake from a facility. As Biochar Today (@biochartoday on Bluesky) flagged, this is a structurally different transaction from the BECCS megadeals: aviation is buying portfolios, not projects.
The comparison
| Dimension | Microsoft–BioCirc | Lufthansa–Senken |
|---|---|---|
| Counterparty | Project developer | Aggregator |
| Pathways | One (BECCS) | Multiple (tech + nature) |
| Volume disclosed | 650kt over 7 years | Multi-year, undisclosed |
| Pricing logic | Lowest $/tonne durable | Blended premium for delivery certainty |
| Risk model | Concentrated, pathway-specific | Diversified across delivery risk |
| Driver | Voluntary net-zero claim | CORSIA + SAF-mandate exposure |
Aviation buyers carry compliance obligations under ICAO’s CORSIA scheme that hyperscalers do not. As one analysis of aviation CDR procurement put it, airlines pay premium for delivery certainty across pathways precisely because their downside is regulatory, not reputational.
Where they converge
Both deals are forward contracts. Both are multi-year. Both are corporate buyers reaching past spot markets to lock supply before 2030. And both buyers chose long-dated commitments over annual top-ups, which suggests that whatever the pricing logic, the underlying scarcity signal is the same: durable supply through 2030 is not assumed, it is reserved.
Where they diverge
Microsoft is buying tonnes. Lufthansa is buying a hedge. Microsoft can absorb pathway-specific delivery risk because it controls roughly 90% of the buy-side and can diversify across many separate offtakes. Lufthansa cannot. It needs one contract that already spreads the risk for it, which is exactly what aggregators sell. That is why Senken is the counterparty and not a single project developer.
The pricing wedge is sharpening on the other side too. CarbonCure Technologies (@carboncure on Bluesky) is pitching directly at the nature-based component of hybrid baskets: “Before you purchase any nature-based Offsets, what about certainty? Our impact can’t be reversed or released.” As portfolio buying proliferates, durable-only suppliers are aiming to reprice the nature slice down or out.
So what
If you supply CDR, the buyer dictates your contract. Hyperscalers want long-dated, pathway-specific megaton volumes at the lowest defensible price per durable tonne. Hard-to-abate corporates want shorter-dated, multi-pathway portfolios with diversified delivery risk, and they will pay a blended premium for that diversification. Pricing one tonne identically for both buyers ends in margin compression (Microsoft template) or losing the deal (Lufthansa template). Aggregators capture the airline-style demand. Single-site project developers capture the hyperscaler-style demand. The two are not converging.
This also has implications for permanence economics. Portfolios that blend BECCS, biochar, and nature credits, similar to the structure described in our earlier note on Climeworks integrating biochar to diversify CDR portfolios, only work when the buyer values optionality more than the lowest $/tonne. That is aviation. It is not yet cloud.
What to watch
The next big aviation offtake will set the reference price for hard-to-abate procurement through 2027. IAG, Delta, and ANA are all rumored to be circling. If they adopt the Lufthansa portfolio template, aggregators win the airline channel outright. If one of them breaks toward a Microsoft-style single-pathway megadeal, the two-tier market thesis weakens, and durable-only developers get a second hyperscaler-shaped buyer to negotiate against. Either outcome reprices the next 18 months. Both are live.
Citations
- OneStopESG — 650,000 tonnes of BECCS from BioCirc over seven years
- Techcrunch — TechCrunch’s reporting on Microsoft’s resumed purchasing
- Bluesky — @biochartoday on Bluesky — Bluesky post
- Icao — ICAO’s CORSIA scheme
- Carbonmeld — airlines pay premium for delivery certainty across pathways
- Bluesky — @carboncure on Bluesky — Bluesky post