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Mitsubishi Electric, VTT Hit Key Milestone in Electrochemical Ocean CO2 Capture

Carbon Herald just published Mitsubishi Electric And VTT Reach Milestone In Electrochemical DOC Project. Carbon Herald reports that Mitsubishi Electric and Finland’s VTT Technical Research Centre have hit a development milestone in their joint direct ocean capture (DOC) project, which uses an electrochemical process to remove CO2 dissolved in seawater. The partnership, announced previously, pairs Mitsubishi Electric’s engineering capacity with VTT’s research work on electrochemical separation. The piece frames the progress as a step toward a scalable DOC system, though specifics on capture rates, energy use, and timeline to pilot deployment are limited in the coverage. Direct ocean capture is positioned as a complement to direct air capture given the higher concentration of CO2 in seawater. ...

Pathway 101: Ocean CDR

What “Ocean CDR” actually means Ocean carbon dioxide removal is a family of techniques that use the sea — the planet’s largest active carbon reservoir, holding roughly 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere — to draw down atmospheric CO₂ and keep it down. The ocean already absorbs about a quarter of annual anthropogenic emissions through air-sea gas exchange (Friedlingstein et al., 2023). Ocean CDR approaches either accelerate that natural uptake (by shifting seawater chemistry) or use biology to fix carbon and export it below the mixed layer, where it stays out of atmospheric contact for centuries to millennia. The appeal for buyers chasing durable removal is straightforward: the storage reservoir is enormous, and the residence times — particularly for bicarbonate ion in the deep ocean — are on the order of 10,000 years (Siegel et al., 2021). ...

Summit Carbon hit with $15M Welspun suit as CO2 pipeline slips

Carbon Herald just published Summit Carbon Solutions Faces $15M Lawsuit As Pipeline Delays Continue. Carbon Herald reports that Summit Carbon Solutions is set to face trial in a $15 million lawsuit filed by pipe manufacturer Welspun. The dispute centers on contractual obligations tied to pipe purchases for Summit’s planned multi-state CO2 pipeline, which has been hit by repeated permitting and construction delays. The case adds to a growing list of legal and regulatory hurdles for the project, which would gather CO2 from ethanol plants across the Midwest and transport it for underground storage. The outlet notes the litigation comes as Summit continues to push back its in-service timeline. ...

Captain's CDR Log #161: Why Jutland cement gets $2.6B and Iowa corn-belt CO2 gets sued

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. Why does one industrial CO2 project on the North Atlantic rim get a $2.6 billion sovereign check while another, on the opposite shore, gets sued by its pipe supplier? Same capture chemistry. Same decade. Same broad climate logic. Different geography, and the geography is doing almost all the work. ...

CDR Daily Digest — 2026-06-09

The day’s signal: CDR is being financed, sized, and priced like a real industry now Today’s four stories share one through-line. Carbon removal is moving from “interesting science” to “financeable infrastructure,” and the people doing the financing, the headcount math, and the price-discovery work are starting to sound like grownups. We got a banker’s rent-versus-buy framework, a headcount reality check, a structured debt-plus-offtake deal from a major bank, and a grounded look at village-scale biochar. Different corners of the field, same maturation curve. ...

YouTube take: Biochar Series - 016 | Distributed & Small Scale Village-Level Biochar Productio

Take: Biochar Series - 016 | Distributed & Small Scale Village-Level Biochar Production / Naved Ahmad

Take on a YouTube video from ShekruTV, originally posted 2026-06-08. Watch the source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1YlrZJoxyI TL;DR Naved Ahmad of Ecosis pitches village-scale biochar via modified drum kilns costing ~₹2,000–3,000 ($25–35) per unit. Useful datapoint on the floor of distributed kit cost. Frames carbon finance as debt relief for Indian farmers carrying ~3x annual income in debt. Reasonable framing, not new. Cites Verra-style methodologies as a dead-end for smallholders: ~$100K project costs, 3–4 year waits, no payouts. Matches what other practitioners report. Pivot point: Carbon Standards International’s 2022 biochar methodology is what made Ecosis viable. Worth knowing if you’re tracking registry choice for smallholder projects. Heavy on personal journey, light on production numbers, yields, or carbon volumes. Skip if you want hard data. A long-form interview on ShekruTV’s biochar series with Naved Ahmad, founder of Ecosis, a Bangalore-region biochar outfit working with smallholder farmers. The substantive claim: distributed, drum-kiln biochar at the village level — financed via Carbon Standards International (CSI) credits — is the only carbon-market structure that actually reaches Indian smallholders, because the Verra-track methodologies price them out and pay too late. ...

569 pure-play CDR firms employ just 9,499 people

This violin plot sorts every pure-play CDR company in the Directory by its pathway (columns) and its headcount (vertical axis, log scale from 1 to 100+). Each dot is one company, coloured by its current liveliness tier — Active, Moderate, Suspect, or Likely Dead. The grey shape behind each column is the size distribution: where it bulges, that’s where most companies in that pathway sit. The value here is comparative. A raw company list tells you who exists; this view tells you where the weight sits. Pathways with most dots stacked at the bottom are dominated by sub-10-employee firms — many small entrants, few that have grown. Pathways with dots reaching up the column have produced operators that scaled past the founder-and-a-few-engineers phase. Colour (not vertical position) is what tells you the health story: red dots high up the column mean a sizeable operator went quiet; red dots on the floor are the long tail churning as it always has. ...

JPMorgan Backs Charm With CDR Offtake Plus Debt—A Stronger Market Signal

Carbon Herald just published JPMorganChase Deepens Charm Industrial Partnership With A New CDR Deal And Debt Financing. Carbon Herald reports that JPMorganChase has broadened its existing relationship with Charm Industrial via a fresh carbon dioxide removal agreement paired with debt financing. The deal builds on prior offtake activity between the bank and the bio-oil sequestration company, signaling continued institutional backing for Charm’s approach of converting biomass into bio-oil and injecting it underground. The arrangement combines a CDR purchase commitment with credit support, a structure that pairs voluntary market demand with project-level capital. Specific tonnage, pricing, and loan terms are detailed in the original article. ...

Captain's CDR Log #160: Zeke Hausfather puts a price on rent-versus-buy for carbon removal buyers

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. On Wednesday, Zeke Hausfather posted a thread that quietly reframed the most expensive argument in carbon removal procurement. “We have a new paper out on the value of reversible carbon storage in a zero-emissions world,” he wrote. “We try and answer the question of when it makes sense to ‘rent’ vs ‘buy’ CDR” (@hausfath on Bluesky). ...

CDR Daily Digest — 2026-06-08

Three different checkbooks, three different bets The pattern across today’s stories is that CDR financing has split into distinct lanes, and each lane is picking a different kind of winner. Venture debt is backing hardware that already has revenue. Offtake contracts are pulling early-stage removal projects through their first commercial deployments. Strategic equity from industrial buyers is locking in supply before it exists. Same industry, three checkbooks, three theories of what scales. ...