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The mining industry produces billions of tonnes of alkaline waste rock every year. A new whitepaper argues this waste stream could become one of the largest pathways for scaling carbon dioxide removal. The Opportunity Geochemical CDR — using mineral reactions to permanently capture CO₂ — has a chicken-and-egg problem. You need large volumes of reactive minerals, processing infrastructure, and land. The mining industry already has all three. Mine tailings, waste rock, and processing residues are often rich in magnesium and calcium silicates — exactly the minerals that react with atmospheric CO₂ to form stable carbonates. The reaction is the same chemistry that drives enhanced rock weathering, but applied to materials already excavated and often already crushed to fine particle sizes. ...

A new study throws cold water on some of the rosier projections for biological ocean carbon removal. The core finding: carbon and phosphorus have different residence times in the ocean, and failing to account for this nutrient cycling mismatch could lead to serious overestimates of how much CO₂ actually stays sequestered. The Disconnect Here’s the simplified version: ocean iron fertilization (OIF) works by adding iron to surface waters to stimulate phytoplankton growth. The phytoplankton absorb CO₂, die, and sink — theoretically carrying that carbon to the deep ocean for long-term storage. ...

Sustaera, a North Carolina-based DAC startup, just dropped a bold claim: their third-generation electro-thermal approach captures CO₂ from air at 90%+ energy efficiency, with capital costs 3-5x lower than existing thermal DAC technologies. If verified at scale, that’s not incremental. It’s the kind of step change that could make DAC competitive with biochar. What’s Different? Incumbent DAC systems — including Climeworks’ solid sorbent approach and Carbon Engineering’s liquid solvent method — typically max out around 40% thermal efficiency. Sustaera says its proprietary nano-structured sorbent combined with integrated electric heating smashes through that ceiling. ...

North America’s carbon market map just got more interesting. Officials from Washington State, California, and Québec have released a draft agreement that lays out how their three emissions trading systems could be linked into a single cross-border market. What’s Actually Happening Washington’s Climate Commitment Act created a cap-and-invest program that launched in 2023. California and Québec have been running a linked cap-and-trade system since 2014. The new draft agreement — released last week — proposes connecting all three. ...

One of CDR’s persistent problems is simply keeping track of itself. Dozens of pathways, hundreds of companies, thousands of papers — and no single place to see where things actually stand. RMI and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability just launched a fix: an interactive CDR tracker that maps progress across 32 different carbon removal approaches. What It Does Built on RMI’s 2023 Applied Innovation Roadmap for CDR, the tracker is a live, searchable database covering: ...

Nueva Ecija — a rice-growing province in the Philippines — just became the first place in Southeast Asia to generate Puro.earth-verified biochar carbon credits. And the model is beautifully simple: take rice husks (agricultural waste), convert them to biochar, and distribute it to farmers. Project NuevaChar Launched in 2022 under Governor Aurelio “Oyie” Umali, Project NuevaChar is a joint venture between the provincial government and Singapore-based Alcom Pte Ltd. The facility combines green heat production with biochar manufacturing. ...

ENEOS Holdings — parent company of Japan’s largest energy firm — has made a strategic investment in AirMyne, a Berkeley, California-based direct air capture startup. And they’re not just writing a check: the two companies have begun a joint technical evaluation with plans to explore industrial integration and project development in the US, Japan, and globally. The Technology AirMyne is developing a liquid solvent-based DAC system designed around three priorities: low energy consumption, supply-chain security, and operational simplicity. That last one matters more than it sounds — many first-generation DAC systems are engineering-intensive to operate, which drives up costs and limits where they can be deployed. ...

Here’s a stat that should bother anyone who thinks about CDR markets: Asia-Pacific accounts for roughly 50% of global CO₂ emissions and over 60% of the world’s population, yet it barely registers as a player in carbon removal markets. The Carbon Business Council and Emerald Climate just launched APACdr — a Singapore-anchored working group designed to change that. What Is APACdr? It’s a coalition bringing together policymakers, financial institutions, corporate buyers, project developers, and civil society leaders to build the CDR infrastructure that Asia-Pacific currently lacks. The inaugural session in January 2026 drew 26 organizations spanning financial institutions, multinational corporations, carbon project developers, rating agencies, and non-profits. ...

Canada just made one of the boldest institutional moves in CDR to date. BMO, RBC, Shopify, Vancity, ClimeFi, NorthX, and the federal government have joined forces under the new Advance Carbon Removal Coalition, with a target of attracting $100 million in project investments by 2030. The coalition was announced at an Ottawa conference hosted by Carbon Removal Canada. Together, the partners have already contributed $75 million in financing to the CDR industry. ...

🌊 Vox Makes the Case for Marine CDR Vox published a major feature on ocean-based carbon removal, arguing it can address excess atmospheric CO₂ and ocean acidification simultaneously. Equatic plans to commission the world’s largest marine CDR plant in Singapore later this year, removing ~10 tCO₂/day via seawater electrolysis. The piece positions mCDR as a potentially superior pathway that doesn’t compete for agricultural land — but notes the field is “quite new” and MRV challenges remain. ...