Captains-Log

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. What does “biochar carbon removal” actually mean in 2026? Two seed rounds closed this week under the same pathway label. PyroCCS in Germany raised from Lotus One and Counteract. Biochar Industrial Group raised $1.5M pre-seed for pan-African expansion. Both are called biochar. Reading the two announcements back to back, they describe different businesses. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. The largest enhanced rock weathering deal ever signed also quietly redefines what a “carbon removal” contract is. This week Google agreed to buy 1 million tonnes of methane elimination by 2030 and 1 million tonnes of ERW (enhanced rock weathering, spreading crushed basalt to draw down CO2) removals by 2040 from Terradot, and marketed the two together as one climate product. The bundling is the story. If this template sticks, every pure-removal seller will have to explain why their tonne is not swappable with a blended one. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. A biochar CORC transaction reportedly cleared at under $100 per tonne of CO2 this week. The print came from Carba, sold to U.S. Bank, and was flagged by Kevin Lee Caster (@kevinleecaster.bsky.social on Bluesky): “As I understand it, Carba sold the biochar based CORCs to U.S. Bank for less than $100/tonne of CO2. I’m disappointed that the biochar will not be used as a soil amendment as that can help increase s[oil].” ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. The policy at one glance Two industry position papers dropped inside a few weeks of each other, both aimed at the same target: getting permanent carbon dioxide removal (CDR) written into the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) before the Directive’s next review closes. The Negative Emissions Platform’s paper on integrating permanent carbon removals into the EU ETS is the supplier-side opening bid. The DVNE Policy Brief on Carbon Removal in the EU ETS is the national-level echo. Together they bind on nobody. But they tell the European Commission which arguments the industry will run through MEPs and DG CLIMA between now and the review. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. The consensus on enhanced rock weathering (ERW) - shared by most CDR buyers, the specialist press, and the pathway’s own marketing - is that ERW is fundamentally a carbon dioxide removal technology that happens to throw off agronomic co-benefits: better soils, higher yields, healthier microbiomes. Tonnes lead, farmers follow. That ordering shapes how contracts are written, how MRV (measurement, reporting, verification) protocols are designed, and how the pathway is pitched to buyers. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. This week three operating milestones landed at three different plants, and each one carried a specific number attached. That is the story: buyers are writing checks against measured performance, not pathway narratives. Start with the Icelandic geothermal capture number. Carbfix reported 99.6% capture of both CO2 and H2S from flue gas at an operating geothermal plant, with mineralization completing inside two years (ThinkGeoEnergy). Mineralization has been promising field-verified capture percentages for years. This is one, on real flue gas, at a working power station. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. In March 2025, Robert Hoglund published a line-by-line critique of the draft SBTi Net Zero Standard 2.0 arguing that interim carbon removal targets must cover a company’s total CDR need, not just its Scope 1 emissions. It is the kind of comment - technical, specific, aimed at one clause in one draft - that ends up rewriting the clause. That is what Hoglund does now. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. The critique, in the critic’s own words “We might ultimately spend 10% to 20% of our resources on removals and 80%-90% on mitigation. I’d suggest 99% on mitigation / 1% on removals is reasonable today.” That is Zeke Hausfather (@zekehausfather.com on Bluesky). It is the sharpest current mainstream-climate critique of CDR spending. Not “CDR is a scam.” Something harder to dismiss: the eventual share is fine, the ratio right now is wrong. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. The story Agreena, the Danish soil-carbon platform, has signed a seven-year forward contract for 4.45 million tonnes of soil carbon credits from Kazakh cropland, issued under Verra’s VM0042 Improved Agricultural Land Management methodology. By announced tonnage, that single deal is larger than most durable-CDR forward books signed this year. It also lands the same week Supercritical reported that 81% of high-quality biochar supply is already locked in by forward buyers. Two forward markets. Two very different definitions of what a “quality” tonne is. The comparison is where the story lives. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. Why this matters now Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard version 5 just earned an eligibility stamp from the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market. Press coverage is already collapsing that into “ICVCM-approved credits.” It isn’t. The tick applies to the program - the governance, registry, and tracking plumbing - not to the tonnage math of any specific methodology sitting on top. If you are buying, developing, or writing about carbon removal credits this week, that distinction is the whole story. ...