Today’s three stories all point at the same uncomfortable truth: the gap between where CDR needs to be and where it actually is keeps widening, and the reasons are increasingly structural rather than technical.
A new capacity assessment finds the gap between planned CDR supply and what climate goals require is growing, not shrinking. Meanwhile a snapshot of the company landscape shows 377 of 969 tracked CDR firms are in biochar, a heavy concentration in one of the lower-permanence pathways. And Captain Drawdown’s own CDR Log #153 examined two assessments that both circle back to a geography problem: the rocks suitable for enhanced rock weathering and mineralization sit in jurisdictions whose rules are not built for them.
Put together, the day’s headline insight is this. The CDR shortfall is no longer mainly a technology problem. It is a distribution problem. Companies cluster where capital and policy already work. Durable pathways stall where the geology is right but the permitting, the measurement, reporting and verification frameworks (MRV), and the offtake demand are not.
The supply gap is widening
The capacity report makes the math plain. Pipeline announcements are growing, but the curve required to meet mid-century residual-emission needs is growing faster. Residual emissions are the ones that genuinely cannot be cut at the source: cement chemistry, some aviation, parts of agriculture. CDR exists to neutralize those. It is not a substitute for phasing out fossil fuels, and nothing in today’s data changes that.
What the report does show is that even on the optimistic side of project announcements, durable removal capacity (think direct air carbon capture and storage, mineralization, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) is tracking well below the trajectory implied by 1.5 and 2 degree scenarios. The shortfall is widening because announced projects keep slipping right while target dates stay fixed.
Biochar’s 39 percent share is a signal, not a verdict
Of 969 companies tracked, 377 are working on biochar. That is roughly 39 percent of the count in a single pathway. Biochar is real CDR. It is also generally shorter-duration storage than mineralization or geologic injection, and its accounting depends heavily on feedstock assumptions and end-use.
Why the concentration? Biochar has low capital expenditure (CapEx) per project, modest operating expenditure (OpEx), and a relatively mature technology readiness level. You can start a biochar company with a pyrolysis unit and a feedstock contract. You cannot start a mineralization company that way.
The concern is not that biochar is overrepresented. The concern is what the distribution implies about capital flow. Investors and entrepreneurs are clustering where the unit economics are legible today, not where the durable tonnes are needed by 2040. If the company count looked like the tonnage need, you would see far more firms in mineralization, ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) buildout.
Geography versus rules
Captain’s CDR Log #153 looked at two assessments that, read side by side, surface the same structural issue. The geology that makes enhanced rock weathering (ERW) and in-situ mineralization viable is concentrated in specific basalt provinces and ultramafic belts. Many of those sit in jurisdictions whose mining, water, and subsurface rules predate CDR by decades. Permitting timelines built for aggregate quarries or oil and gas do not map cleanly onto spreading crushed silicate on farmland or injecting CO2 into peridotite.
The result: projects that are technically sound and geologically well-sited get stuck in regulatory queues, while projects in friendly jurisdictions with marginal geology move faster. That is a recipe for slow tonnes from the wrong rocks.
Fixing this is not glamorous work. It is state-level mining code updates, MRV protocols that regulators trust, and clear answers on long-term liability for stored carbon. None of that shows up in a press release.
What’s next
Two things to watch over the next quarter.
First, whether any of the public CDR procurement programs explicitly weight pathway diversity, not just price per tonne. If the next round of offtake awards keeps tilting toward whichever pathway is cheapest this month, the company-count concentration we are seeing in biochar will deepen rather than rebalance.
Second, watch for any US state or EU member state moving first on a dedicated permitting track for mineralization and ERW field trials. The jurisdiction that gets this right will pull durable-pathway companies toward it the way Texas pulled DAC. The gap closes when the rules meet the rocks.