CDR Week and notes

Banks Demand Tight Limits as EU Splits Over Carbon Credits in 2040 Goal

Carbon Herald just published EU Consultation Reveals Divisions Over Carbon Credits And 2040 Climate Goals. Carbon Herald reports that a European Union consultation on the proposed 2040 climate target has surfaced significant disagreement among stakeholders over the role of international carbon credits. The EU banking sector is pressing policymakers to set strict caps on the use of such credits toward meeting the bloc’s emissions targets, citing integrity and market stability concerns. The consultation feeds into the wider debate on how the EU should structure its post-2030 climate framework, including the share of domestic reductions versus credits sourced abroad. The piece also references Germany’s recently cleared 5.9 billion dollar carbon contracts scheme as part of the broader EU policy backdrop. ...

Captain's CDR Log #130: Public money is taking the wheel on capture infrastructure as majors step back

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. The pattern this week is sharp. Public balance sheets are moving into capture infrastructure faster than private capital is willing to underwrite it. BP wants out of UK clusters. Berlin and Brussels are writing the largest decarbonization cheques in European history. The counterparty stack for durable CDR is being rebuilt in real time. ...

CDR Daily Digest — 2026-05-09

The buyer base is getting wider, but it is also getting more fragile Today’s stories point to one pattern: the CDR offtake market is no longer a Microsoft monologue, but the supporting cast is not yet ready to carry the show. Boeing signed a real multi-pathway deal. Germany put almost six billion dollars behind industrial decarbonization. The EU’s CDR lobby is taking a victory lap on policy wins. And underneath all of it, the question I keep circling in the Captain’s Log is whether the demand side can survive one anchor buyer pulling back. ...

Boeing locks in 20,000 tonnes of biochar and rock weathering CDR

OneStopESG just published Boeing Buys 20,000 Tonne Biochar and Enhanced Rock Weathering Carbon Removal Portfolio Through Supercritical. OneStopESG reports that Boeing signed a 20,000 tonne durable carbon dioxide removal portfolio through marketplace Supercritical, announced on 1 May 2026. The credits come from six suppliers - Exomad Green, Ground Up, InPlanet, NetZero, Varaha and PlanBoo - operating biochar and enhanced rock weathering projects in Brazil, Bolivia, Namibia and India. Supercritical screened over 200 projects against a 118 point framework covering additionality, permanence, measurability and operational readiness. The piece frames the deal as a move away from single supplier contracts toward diversified, criteria led procurement, with Supercritical CEO Michelle You describing the shift as buyers trusting procurement partners to assemble portfolios meeting defined quality standards rather than picking individual developers. ...

Captain's CDR Log #129: What Microsofts climate pullback means for the CDR offtake pipeline

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. Microsoft is reportedly negotiating away its 24/7 carbon-free electricity pledge while New York waters down its climate statute. The voluntary buyer model that built durable CDR’s offtake pipeline is showing strain in the same week. Here is what people watching the seams said. “Voluntary measures were never gonna get us where we need to be on emissions. But the fact that data center growth has made it corporate-ly/socially acceptable for a big tech company with ambitious climate goals to abandon them seems like a really bad sign.” ...

Germany Greenlights $5.9B CCfD Scheme to De-Risk Industrial Decarbonization

Carbon Herald just published Germany Clears $5.9B Carbon Contracts Scheme Backed By EU. Carbon Herald reports that Germany has committed roughly $5.9 billion (€5 billion) to a redesigned Carbon Contracts for Difference (CCfD) scheme aimed at supporting industrial decarbonization. The program received approval from the European Union, clearing a key state aid hurdle. CCfDs work by covering the gap between conventional production costs and the higher cost of low-carbon alternatives, providing long-term price certainty for industrial operators investing in cleaner processes. The scheme is designed to help heavy emitters such as steel, chemicals, and cement producers transition to lower-emission technologies. Germany has positioned the instrument as a central pillar of its industrial climate policy. ...

Captain's CDR Log #128: A modeling error in enhanced weathering could inflate removal claims by 100x

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. CarbonPlan published a finding on Tuesday that should reset how every buyer, registry, and supplier in enhanced rock weathering thinks about their MRV stack. In How surface roughness scaling can mislead enhanced weathering predictions, the team shows that a mistaken surface area equation used in some widely circulated ERW (enhanced rock weathering) models can inflate predicted carbon removal by up to two orders of magnitude. That is a 100x overstatement. It lands in the same week Mombak issued the first Isometric-verified ERW credits, Boeing expanded its ERW offtake position, and Brazil moved the pathway into sovereign compliance market discussions. The timing is brutal, and that is exactly why it matters. ...

Worley wins FEED for cogen unit at Dow's Path2Zero — milestone, not FID

Carbon Herald just published Worley Selected For FEED Work On Dow’s Path2Zero Project. Carbon Herald reports that Worley has been selected by Dow to deliver front-end engineering design services for the cogeneration component of Dow’s Path2Zero initiative. The Path2Zero project is Dow’s effort to build out lower-emissions petrochemical capacity, with cogeneration playing a role in supplying power and steam to the site. The FEED stage typically sets the technical scope, cost basis, and execution plan that informs a final investment decision. The article frames the award as a step forward in the project’s engineering pipeline, with Worley taking on a defined slice of the broader development work. ...

Durable CDR price gap shrinks to $98/t, but $100/t by 2030 unlikely

The buyer-supplier price gap for durable carbon removal narrowed from $107 per tonne to $98 per tonne over the past year, and survey respondents expect it to shrink to roughly $48 per tonne by 2030. But here is the catch: durable CDR is unlikely to broadly hit the $100 per tonne benchmark by 2030, according to the second annual CDR.fyi/OPIS pricing survey released this week. That finding kills a comforting story the market has told itself for years. The $100 per tonne number was always a slogan more than a forecast, and the data now suggests buyers waiting for that price before engaging may be waiting through a supply squeeze. ...

Only 59 percent of CDR workers actually produce carbon removal

This chart is a stacked horizontal bar showing CDR-attributable headcount across pathways on the vertical axis, with each bar segmented by business focus: pure-play companies whose entire reason for existing is CDR, divisions inside larger firms where CDR is one line of business, and ecosystem players who sell tools, verification, brokerage, or software into the space. Bar length is total attributed workers; the color split is where those workers actually sit. ...