Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all.
The United States has injected 100 times more CO2 into oil fields than into dedicated storage over four decades. That is ProPublica’s finding, quoted by Lisa Song (@lisalsong.bsky.social on Bluesky): “Over the last 40 years, American companies have injected 100 times more CO2 into drilling fields as a way to extract more oil than they have into what CCS industry insiders call ‘dedicated’ CO2 storage reservoirs.” Meanwhile Octavia Carbon reports its Kenyan pilot is now pulling CO2 from the air, and CarpeCarbon has signed to put its first industrial-scale DAC unit at a Michelin plant in Italy. Capture is the visible half. The half that decides whether a tonne counts, the well, the permit and the certificate, is where the rules are being written now.
DACCS is two businesses, and the second one is harder to see
DACCS (direct air carbon capture and storage) means a machine strips CO2 from ambient air, then that CO2 is compressed, moved to a well, injected into deep rock and kept there. For an operator, storage is a separate project: a permitted injection site, an injection contract, and a monitoring plan a certifier will accept. In the US, wells built only for CO2 storage are called Class VI. The EPA issues those permits unless a state has “primacy”, meaning its own agency runs the program. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR), where CO2 pushes out more crude, uses other well classes and is not dedicated storage.
Four groups are now shaping the storage end
Capture operators: Octavia Carbon in Kenya’s Rift Valley and CarpeCarbon in Italy, with Michelin Italiana as the host. Certifiers: Puro.earth, whose rules a buyer uses to treat a stored tonne as removed. Regulators: the EPA and the state of Utah. Critics: Mark Jacobson, David Ho and ProPublica’s reporters, who ask whether dedicated storage is real at scale and whether anyone can tell if it leaks.
Permits, methods and plants moved in the same month, not the same week
Puro.earth has published its CCS+ methodology documents, which list DACCS as the first pathway under a multi-program framework. Separately, the EPA has proposed approving Utah’s primacy over Class VI permitting, a step reported by Carbon Herald. If finalised, a Utah storage developer deals with a state office rather than a federal one.
On the capture side, Octavia Carbon says Phase 1 of Project Hummingbird is complete and its “Carbon Nest” plant is capturing CO2 at the pilot site. CarpeCarbon and Michelin Italiana have announced an agreement to deploy the company’s first industrial-scale unit. Nothing is installed yet. It is a deal, not a plant.
Jacobson (@mzjacobson.bsky.social on Bluesky) puts new non-EOR capture plus DAC at 0.59 MtCO2/yr for 2026, a figure from a critic who draws the EOR line sharply, and it is small next to what the permits above are built to handle. Ho (@davidho.bsky.social on Bluesky) reports a secondhand account from Norway: “I spoke with a Norwegian researcher who told me that if 50% of the CO₂ leaked from the undersea geologic reservoirs, they wouldn’t know.” That is not a measurement. It is a claim about measurement, which is exactly what a methodology has to answer.
The questions an operator or buyer should track
- What monitoring does Puro.earth’s CCS+ actually require at the well, and at what detection threshold? A method that cannot detect a large leak cannot certify permanence.
- Does Utah primacy change permit timelines or monitoring stringency, or only the mailing address?
- Where will Octavia’s and CarpeCarbon’s CO2 go, under which storage regime, and is either site EOR-adjacent?
- How does the IPCC’s draft 2027 Methodology Report on CDR and CCUS, open for expert review until 11 December 2026, treat storage monitoring compared with private standards?
Further reading
- Puro.earth’s CCS+ document library, the primary text for the certification rules.
- Tapestry and Climeworks Sign 10-Year Carbon Removal Partnership, an example of the offtake contracts that depend on storage being certified.
- Why Carbon Removal Needs More Than Trees, on why durable geological storage matters for residual emissions only, never as cover for continued fossil use.
Before paying for a DAC tonne, ask for the storage permit class and the monitoring plan, not the capture photo.
Citations
- Bluesky — @lisalsong.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post
- Puro.earth — CCS+ methodology documents
- US EPA — approving Utah’s primacy — government source
- LinkedIn — Project Hummingbird — LinkedIn post
- Carbon Herald — announced an agreement
- Bluesky — @mzjacobson.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post
- Bluesky — @davidho.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post