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The first ship-based ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) experiment just delivered results. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution poured 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine in August 2025, and the findings are cautiously encouraging: 2–10 tonnes of CO₂ removed in four days, with up to 50 tonnes estimated total. No significant impact on marine life detected. Adam Subhas and his team presented these findings at the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2026 in Glasgow. “We can definitely say that there was additional CO₂ uptake as a result of this experiment,” Subhas said. ...

Kenya-based direct air capture company Octavia Carbon just locked in a new offtake agreement, facilitated by Carbon Direct. It’s the latest signal that demand for DAC credits from the Global South is real — and growing. Octavia’s Hummingbird pilot in the Kenyan Rift Valley has been running 24/5 since October 2025. Their Gen 2 system captures atmospheric CO₂ and stores it permanently underground through a partnership with carbon mineralization company Cella. They recently activated a cryogenic tank for liquid CO₂ storage — a meaningful technical milestone for any DAC operation, let alone one running in East Africa. ...

Boeing just signed one of the aviation sector’s largest carbon removal procurements ever: at least 40,000 tonnes of durable CDR through Carbonfuture, sourced from four biochar projects across the Global South. Full disclosure: Carbonfuture is a Carbon Drawdown Initiative portfolio company. We’ve been tracking their progress closely, and this deal validates exactly the kind of infrastructure the CDR market needs. Why This Matters#Aviation is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize. Planes can’t run on batteries (not yet, anyway), and sustainable aviation fuels are still scaling up. So for residual emissions — particularly Scope 3 business travel — durable carbon removal is the only honest answer. ...

China released its 15th Five-Year Plan this week. The headline number: a 17% reduction in carbon intensity (CO₂ per unit of GDP) from 2026 to 2030, with a 3.8% cut targeted for this year alone. Sounds ambitious. It’s not. The Math Problem#Carbon intensity drops even if absolute emissions rise — you just need your economy to grow faster than your emissions. And that’s exactly what analysts expect to happen. ...

New research from Cornell University modelled the global adoption potential of enhanced rock weathering and landed on a striking number: 1.1 billion tonnes of CO₂ removed per year by 2100. That’s roughly 3% of current annual fossil fuel emissions — meaningful at planetary scale. The headline is exciting. The fine print is where the real story lives. What the Study Actually Shows#The Cornell team did something most ERW projections skip: they modelled adoption rates rather than just theoretical capacity. Using historical data on how fast farmers adopt new practices (like irrigation), they estimated a range of 350 million to 750 million tonnes per year by 2050, scaling to 700M–1.1 Gt by 2100. ...

The European Commission just did something no other jurisdiction has managed: it adopted the world’s first voluntary standard specifically for permanent carbon removals. Under the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) Regulation, the Commission published certification methodologies covering three pathways: direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS), biogenic emissions capture with storage (BioCCS), and biochar carbon removal (BCR). What This Means in Practice#Until now, permanent CDR projects in Europe operated in a regulatory grey zone. Buyers had no common framework for evaluating project quality. Developers had no certification path to demonstrate they met EU standards. That changes now. ...

One of the persistent questions about biochar as a carbon removal pathway is permanence. Spread charred biomass on a field — does it actually stay there? A new study published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems provides some of the longest field data yet: a single biochar application in 2013 still shows significant soil carbon and pH benefits ten years later. The Study#Researchers tracked biochar applied once at rates of 11.2, 22.4, and 44.8 tonnes per hectare on dryland wheat fields in eastern Oregon. No reapplication over the entire decade. They measured soil organic carbon (SOC), pH, labile carbon, cation exchange capacity, and nutrient dynamics. ...

Materials science just produced one of those results that makes you do a double take. Researchers at Japan’s Gifu University created a rubber — technically a “CO₂-curable elastomer” — that absorbs carbon dioxide from its surroundings and transforms into a rigid, acrylic-like plastic. Published in Nature Communications. How It Works#The material combines polyethyleneimine (PEI), which reacts with CO₂, with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a silicone polymer that CO₂ passes through easily. On its own, PEI absorbs ~1mg of CO₂ per gram. Bonded with PDMS, it absorbs 220mg per gram — the PDMS creates internal “passageways” that let CO₂ reach PEI deep inside the material. ...

A new study from Cornell’s Chuan Liao and colleagues, published in Nature Communications Sustainability, models what enhanced rock weathering (ERW) could actually achieve under realistic adoption scenarios. The headline: 700 million to 1.1 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year by 2100. That’s less than half the theoretical ceiling of 5 Gt/yr that earlier studies floated. But it’s still enormous — roughly 2–3% of current global emissions, achieved by spreading crushed basalt on existing farmland. ...

The European Commission dropped a big policy package yesterday: the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), a regulation aimed at rebuilding European industrial capacity while decarbonizing strategic sectors. The headlines focus on “Made in EU” procurement quotas (25% for low-carbon steel and aluminum, 5% for concrete). But buried in the details are signals that matter for the CDR industry — both positive and concerning. What’s in It for Carbon Removal?#The IAA creates a framework for: ...