Microsoft currently holds about 35% of all global carbon removal credits. That’s how concentrated this market is — and why the EU’s new regulatory framework, combined with a buyers’ collective model, matters for everyone else.
ClimeFi has structured the first publicly announced transaction under the EU’s Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming (CRCF) framework. The buyers: Nasdaq and Adyen, the Dutch payments processor. Both will receive CRCF-aligned carbon removal units from the Beccs Stockholm project, operated by Stockholm Exergi.
What Stockholm Exergi actually does
Stockholm Exergi’s BioCCS project takes agricultural and woody residues and converts them into heat and electricity for the city. The CO₂ that would otherwise re-enter the atmosphere gets captured and stored — permanently — in sedimentary bedrock beneath the North Sea, where it gradually mineralises into rock. Not sequestered in trees. Not in soil that could burn. Mineralised.
The project received €1.8 billion in EU Innovation Fund support, which is one reason it can credibly plan for operations starting in 2028. That’s not vaporware.
Why the CRCF matters
The European Commission adopted the qualifying rules for CRCF last month. This is the EU’s first attempt at a regulatory certification framework specifically for carbon removals — a framework with actual legal teeth, not just voluntary market standards.
Stockholm Exergi CEO Anders Egelrud put it plainly: “We believe we are well positioned to be among the first permanent CDR projects to have CRCF units issued.”
That “first” framing will matter a lot for buyers who want regulatory-grade provenance on their credits.
The buyers’ collective model
ClimeFi didn’t just broker a deal — they built a buyers’ collective that centralises due diligence, contracting, and monitoring. The point is to let companies of all sizes access BioCCS carbon removal at standardised terms, without each buyer having to hire a team of lawyers and carbon scientists to evaluate the project independently.
CEO Paolo Piffaretti: “From structuring the first Article 6.2 transfers in the carbon removal market last year to coordinating the first publicly announced carbon removal CRCF transaction, we are very proud to be shaping policy at the European level.”
That’s not just self-promotion. Structuring the first transactions under new regulatory frameworks does shape how the rules get interpreted and applied going forward.
The market trajectory
MSCI Carbon Markets estimates the removal credit market could reach $250 billion by mid-century. Right now it’s a fraction of that — which means either most of that growth is speculation, or we’re very early.
The concentration problem — Microsoft at 35% — partly reflects that large tech companies have had both the capital and the sustainability mandates to move fast on long-dated, high-quality credits. The CRCF framework, and collective buying structures like ClimeFi’s, are designed to broaden that base.
Nasdaq buying credits from a BECCS project in Stockholm under EU regulatory certification is not the end of that story. It’s closer to chapter one.