Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Wed, 25 Ma. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/why-carbon-removal-needs-a-new-story

TL;DR

  • Höglund argues CDR should shift from “speed and scale” to “prove and learn”: drive down costs, nail measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), demonstrate at relevant scale. Useful reframing.
  • Voluntary demand likely exceeds compliance demand through ~2040. EU ETS + UK ETS maybe a couple hundred million tons total by mid-2030s. First time I’ve seen the number stated that bluntly.
  • Aviation and shipping legislation (ReFuelEU, FuelEU Maritime) effectively locks CDR out as a compliance pathway. Advocacy gap, not science gap.
  • “Last resort” framing was a self-own. CDR is rate-limited, not stock-limited — building capacity today doesn’t deplete future capacity.
  • High-profit/low-emission buyers (tech, finance) sustain the beachhead market; heavy industry won’t buy voluntarily and shouldn’t be expected to. Reflects reality, not aspiration.

The Carbon Curve, Ep. 62 — Na’im Merchant interviews Robert Höglund (Milkywire, CDR.fyi co-founder, Marginal Carbon) for a state-of-the-sector check-in. The conversation is essentially Höglund’s argument for retiring the “we need 6–10 Gt by 2050, scale now” narrative and replacing it with a more sober “prove the methods, drop the costs, serve future decision-makers a credible menu” frame.

The load-bearing claim is the demand math. Höglund estimates EU ETS + UK ETS combined compliance demand for durable CDR at maybe a couple hundred million tons cumulatively, materializing meaningfully only post-2030. Switzerland adds some. Everywhere else, carbon markets accept cheap credits and won’t drive durable removal. Meanwhile voluntary demand is at ~30 Mt contracted in 2025, likely peaks temporarily as Microsoft ramps down, but tens of millions of tons/year by the early 2030s is plausible from corporate near-term targets. Net: voluntary > compliance through ~2040. If you’re building a company on a deck assuming compliance saves you in 2032, redo the model.

The aviation/shipping section is the other thing worth the listen. ReFuelEU mandates 70% SAF by 2050 (half e-SAF, half bio); FuelEU Maritime points at ammonia. Neither permits CDR substitution for the fuel mandate itself, even where carbon removal is plausibly cheaper than e-fuels. Corsia excludes durable CDR entirely. Höglund’s read: this is an advocacy failure — CDR had no lobby in the rooms where these rules were written. He’s sympathetic to not rug-pulling e-SAF investors now, but flags the UK greenhouse gas removal report as recommending a net-zero aviation mandate rather than a SAF mandate. Worth watching whether the UK actually moves.

The “last resort” critique is where Höglund gets sharpest. He lays out three assumptions that would have to hold to justify rationing CDR — some emissions are truly unavoidable, CDR is uniquely scarce/depletable, and markets can’t allocate it — and argues all three are false. The biochar example is clean: crop waste that isn’t pyrolyzed returns to the atmosphere; you’re not “saving” CDR capacity by not using it. For more on the underlying ability-to-pay logic, see prior Carbon Curve episodes with Eli Mitchell-Larson and Höglund’s own writing at Marginal Carbon. The Carbon Removal Canada Billion Ton Blueprint and Advanced Carbon Removal Coalition ($100M by 2030) get a mention up top but aren’t the substance here.

Useful for: developers stress-testing their 2030–2035 demand assumptions, policy folks working sectoral mandates, and anyone still deploying the “CDR only for residual emissions” line without having pressure-tested