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While Washington is busy dismantling climate policy, Brussels is quietly building the market architecture that could make carbon dioxide removal a viable industry. A new paper published in the journal Joule on March 31st makes the case — with numbers. The Study#Led by Darius Sultani and Michael Pahle at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the paper — How the EU can utilize its carbon market to scale up Carbon Dioxide Removal — models what happens when CDR technologies are integrated into the EU Emissions Trading System. ...

A milestone day for carbon markets: one buyer crossed 1 million tonnes financed, new research turned industrial waste into a CO₂ sink, and Europe’s financial sector quietly showed up for certified removal. What We Covered Today#Altitude Carbon Reaches 1 Million Tonnes Financed — With Bolivia This is the number the CDR market has been building toward. Altitude Carbon, a CDI portfolio company, became the world’s first commercial CDR buyer to cross 1 million tonnes financed — pushed over the line by a 305,000-tonne biochar deal with Empacar S.A. in Bolivia. What makes this notable isn’t just the size: it’s that Altitude is operating as a market-maker at scale, financing CDR across Southeast Asia, Bolivia, and beyond. The 1 million tonne mark is a proof point that commercial demand for durable carbon removal can actually accumulate. ...

There’s a number the CDR market has been building toward for years. This week, it arrived. Altitude Carbon has become the world’s first commercial CDR buyer to cross 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide removal financed. The deal that pushed them over the line: a partnership with Empacar S.A. of Bolivia for over 305,000 tonnes of biochar carbon removal credits (CORCs) — on top of the 360,000+ tonnes Altitude had already financed in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. ...

CDR literacy has an English problem. Most of the best writing about carbon removal — the nuanced stuff that goes beyond “trees good, factories bad” — gets published in English, for English speakers. Meanwhile, millions of people in Italy, Germany, Brazil, Japan, and dozens of other countries are hearing about the climate emergency without the technical vocabulary to engage with what’s actually being done about it. That’s slowly changing. This week, The Good in Town, an Italian-language magazine focused on sustainability and society, published a clear-eyed explainer on biochar and why it matters for carbon removal: “Biochar: cos’è e perché è una soluzione per il carbon removal.” ...

Steel and cement production has a wastewater problem. The industrial processes that make these materials generate massive volumes of highly alkaline effluent — high-pH liquid waste rich in calcium and magnesium oxides that needs to be treated before disposal. It’s a well-understood problem. Treatment systems exist. The water gets processed, neutralized, and discharged. New research published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters (doi.org/hbvb57) asks a different question: what if the alkalinity is an asset, not a liability? ...

Today was a substantive day on several fronts: DAC materials science, electrochemical innovation, policy fragility, and a claim worth stress-testing. Plus the weekly deep-dive that ties it all together. What We Published Today#Can Electrochemical DAC Crack the Cost Problem? Brineworks Thinks So#Amsterdam’s Brineworks is betting on a redesigned electrolyzer that runs on cheap intermittent renewables — and co-produces green hydrogen to offset costs. CEO Gudfinnur Sveinsson presented the case at the European CO₂ Summit in Rotterdam. The target: sub-$100/tonne by 2035. What’s distinctive is the economic logic: instead of competing for expensive baseload power, the system chases cheap electrons and uses hydrogen co-production to carry some of the cost. That’s two independent mechanisms compressing the cost curve simultaneously. The e-fuels demand argument — aviation and shipping will need hundreds of megatons of CO₂ feedstock, and natural sources won’t scale — is a durable industrial case that goes beyond climate policy. ...

Direct air capture costs around $200 per tonne of CO₂ today. That’s already competitive with some biogenic carbon sources — but it needs to come down dramatically to scale. Brineworks, a 15-person Amsterdam startup, has a specific thesis about how to get there: redesign the electrolyzer from scratch. CEO Gudfinnur Sveinsson presented their approach at the European CO2 Summit in Rotterdam, speaking to gasworld’s industrial gas audience. The talk is worth watching in full. ...

The Weekly State of CDR — March 30, 2026#A million tonnes in a single week. Science closing in on cheap DAC. And a German think tank asking the question nobody wants to answer. The Gigaton Tracker#MetricValueSpent on CO₂ removal$11.5BCO₂ sold44.3 MtCO₂ delivered~1.2 Mt (2.7%)Active purchasers1,023Active suppliers735Target10 Gt/year by 2050Numbers held steady from last week — the CDR.fyi figures update as deals close, not as they’re announced. What changed was the rate of announcement: multiple deals, multiple continents, a single seven-day stretch. The procurement machine is running. The delivery machine still has a 2.7% completion rate against the contracts signed. ...

“DAC removes 1.3 million tonnes per year. A single good year of global forest growth removes 10 gigatonnes. Why are we spending billions on machines when we could just plant trees?” This framing shows up constantly, and it’s wrong in a specific way that’s worth unpacking — because the people making the argument often genuinely care about climate outcomes. Afforestation and DAC don’t compete for the same slot in the climate portfolio. They address different risk profiles, operate on different timescales, and fail in different ways. The question isn’t which one to choose. The question is how to use each where it actually works. ...

Drax just reported record renewable generation — and is now exploring data centre colocation on the same site where it’s trying to build one of the world’s largest BECCS installations. Sit with that combination for a second. Drax is the UK’s largest renewable generator by output. Its North Yorkshire plant burns biomass to generate electricity, captures the CO₂ from combustion, and plans to store it permanently — bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. If BECCS works as advertised, every unit of electricity generated is carbon-negative: you pulled CO₂ from the atmosphere (as trees grow), burned it for power, and buried the emissions. Net negative. ...