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.
Why this matters
Durable CDR pricing sits at the center of whether net-zero plans are credible. If buyers expect prices to collapse and suppliers see structural cost floors, the market does not clear, contracts do not get signed, and capacity does not get built. The CDR.fyi/OPIS survey, now in its second year, is one of the few datasets that actually quantifies how far apart the two sides are and where they are converging. The convergence is real. The disagreement about 2030 is also real, and it is sharper for the methods doing the most volume today.
What the numbers show
The headline gap narrowed by $9 per tonne in twelve months. Respondents project it falls another $50 by 2030. That is a market learning from real transactions and clearer cost structures, not just guessing. But convergence is uneven. Biochar and BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) currently show the narrowest current-year price gaps because they are the most active pathways. Their projected 2030 gaps are wider than the average. Buyers in these pathways expect prices to keep falling as volumes scale. Suppliers see biomass constraints, financing costs, and tightening demand putting a floor under prices. Both sides are negotiating today. They do not agree on the trajectory. The other big shift in this year’s survey: CDR.fyi and OPIS asked buyers and suppliers to sort project attributes into core requirements, premium attributes, and nice-to-haves. The distinction matters because a core requirement is the price of admission, not something a buyer pays extra for. Both sides agreed on the core list: 100-plus year permanence, supplier transparency, and supplier track record. That alignment is a good sign. It means suppliers broadly understand the minimum credibility bar. Where buyers will pay a premium: certified co-benefits, 1,000-plus year permanence, and alignment with government or policy frameworks. Suppliers, the survey suggests, may be over-investing in attributes like geographic alignment and jurisdictional risk that buyers treat as nice-to-haves.
The blocker disagreement
The most revealing data point is where buyers and suppliers diverge on what is holding the market back. For buyers, the dominant blocker is price relative to internal budgets, cited by 65% of purchaser respondents. Delivery risk came in second at 40%. Verification confidence (measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), meaning measurement, reporting, and verification), policy incentives, and internal business case rounded out the list. Suppliers saw a different market. Two-thirds said the top blocker was the lack of a clear internal business case for buyers purchasing durable CDR. Only 17% pointed to price versus internal budgets. Nearly half flagged absent policy or compliance incentives. 40% cited lower-cost alternatives. CDR.fyi suggests this gap reflects who each side talks to. Buyer respondents are mostly experienced purchasers who have internal permission to buy but not at the scale they want. Suppliers talk to a much wider funnel that includes many organizations that have never bought a tonne and still lack the internal mandate to start.
Implications
For buyers banking on durable CDR falling below $100 per tonne before they engage: the survey says some pathways may get there, others will stay materially above due to capital intensity, energy requirements, MRV costs, and delivery risk. Waiting may mean getting locked out of supply if the market tightens. For suppliers: cost reduction remains essential, but the survey says competing on price alone is not the answer. Demonstrating core credibility attributes clearly matters more than piling on differentiators buyers do not actually value. For the market: the bid-offer spread is starting to look like a real bid-offer spread, especially in mature pathways. That is what a maturing market looks like before it harmonizes.
Caveats
The survey reflects expectations, not delivered prices. Forward-looking views from both sides are anchored to current information and could shift quickly with policy changes, large compliance demand signals, or supply shocks in biomass markets. The $48 per tonne projected 2030 gap is an average across methods that are not converging at the same rate. It hides the wider projected gaps in biochar and BECCS, the methods currently doing most of the volume. Aggregate convergence is not the same as method-level convergence. And one framing point worth keeping in front: durable CDR pricing matters because it determines whether residual, hard-to-abate emissions can be addressed at scale. It is not a substitute for cutting emissions at the source. A cheaper tonne of removal does not change that.
Source: CDR.fyi Blog