DAC

In October 2025, the Trump administration cancelled over $1.2 billion in federal funding for the two flagship US Direct Air Capture hubs — Project Cypress in Louisiana and the South Texas DAC Hub. It was the single largest withdrawal of public capital from the CDR sector in history. The fallout is still shaping the market today. What Changed The Biden administration spent 2021-2024 building DAC as a standalone climate industry. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act provided the architecture: direct federal co-funding for first-of-a-kind commercial facilities, designed to prove that DAC can work at scale and attract private capital. ...

Just ahead of the 2026 F1 season opener, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS has announced what may be motorsport’s most comprehensive carbon removal investment to date: 7 new CDR projects across 6 different technology pathways, bringing the team’s total portfolio to approximately 18,900 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. The technologies span the full CDR spectrum: Direct Air Capture (DAC) Biochar Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) Biomass Storage Projects are located across Brazil, Canada, the US, the UK, Denmark, and India — deliberately overlapping with regions where the F1 circus races. ...

Here’s the reality check the CDR industry needs to sit with: a new paper in Communications Earth & Environment (Nature portfolio) finds that scaling negative emissions technologies to the gigatons could create serious resource and environmental bottlenecks — some of which nobody is planning for. The paper by Cobo, Galán-Martín, and Guillén-Gosálbez runs a comprehensive life-cycle assessment across the full CDR technology portfolio and identifies what the authors call “previously overlooked bottlenecks.” ...

IEA: Carbon Removal Now Captures One-Third of Energy Venture Capital The International Energy Agency’s State of Energy Innovation 2026 report delivers a milestone data point: carbon dioxide removal, alongside nuclear and next-gen geothermal, now accounts for approximately one-third of all energy venture capital investment — up from less than 5% in the late 2010s. Nearly 400 companies have been founded in these emerging sectors over the past decade, with over 60% launched after 2020. ...

Kenya-based direct air capture company Octavia Carbon just locked in a new offtake agreement, facilitated by Carbon Direct. It’s the latest signal that demand for DAC credits from the Global South is real — and growing. Octavia’s Hummingbird pilot in the Kenyan Rift Valley has been running 24/5 since October 2025. Their Gen 2 system captures atmospheric CO₂ and stores it permanently underground through a partnership with carbon mineralization company Cella. They recently activated a cryogenic tank for liquid CO₂ storage — a meaningful technical milestone for any DAC operation, let alone one running in East Africa. ...

🔑 Key Takeaways Multi-year DAC offtakes are becoming the norm. Sirona Technologies’ deal via Patch follows a pattern: buyers are moving from exploration to long-term procurement with multi-year contracts securing permanent removals. The shift matters — it signals genuine market maturation, not just pilot-stage experimentation. Aviation’s CDR paradox deepens. Boeing is buying 40,000+ tonnes of quality CDR via Carbonfuture, while the SASHA Coalition argues that CORSIA lets the sector avoid harder decarbonization — leaving 1.1 billion tonnes unregulated since 2012. The gap between voluntary ambition and compliance reality is widening. ...

Your daily scan of what’s moving in carbon dioxide removal — markets, policy, science, and the companies building the industry. Quick Numbers Metric Value Source Total CDR market spend $787.7M cdr.fyi Total CDR tonnes sold 44.1M tCO₂ cdr.fyi Delivery rate 2.8% cdr.fyi Active purchasers 1,013 cdr.fyi Active suppliers 721 cdr.fyi Market Tone Bullish demand signals across geographies. Canada launched its biggest demand-side CDR initiative yet, backed by government and major banks. Boeing committed to 40,000 tonnes of durable removals through Carbonfuture. Climeworks chose Calgary for its Canadian HQ and could build its largest plant in Alberta. Meanwhile, the EU locked in its 90% emissions cut target — with a 5% carbon credit provision that explicitly opens the door for CDR. The demand side of the market is growing faster than the supply side can build. ...

🔬 Top Story: Cornell Study Puts ERW at Up to 1.1 Billion Tonnes/Year by 2100 A new study in Nature Communications Sustainability by Cornell’s Chuan Liao and colleagues models realistic adoption scenarios for enhanced rock weathering (ERW) — the practice of spreading crushed silicate rocks (like basalt) on agricultural fields to accelerate natural CO₂ drawdown. The findings: 350M–750M tCO₂/yr by 2050 and 700M–1.1B tCO₂/yr by 2100. That’s far below earlier theoretical ceilings of 5 Gt/yr but still a massive contribution to climate mitigation. A key takeaway: the Global South would eventually surpass the Global North in ERW deployment as supply chains mature, making the technique a potential equity lever for global carbon markets. (New Scientist · Nature) ...

Formula 1 teams aren’t usually associated with carbon removal. But Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS just made one of the most diversified CDR investments any sports organization has ever announced. Seven Projects, Six Pathways The team added seven new removal projects covering: Direct Air Capture (DAC) Biomass Storage Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) Biochar Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) Combined with earlier investments through Frontier and Chestnut Carbon, the total portfolio now covers approximately 18,900 tCO₂e across Brazil, Canada, the US, UK, Denmark, and India. The portfolio is curated by CUR8, a carbon removal marketplace focused on rigorous project evaluation. ...

Five stories. Three continents. One theme: the CDR field is moving from theory to measurement. 🪨 ERW’s 1.1 Billion Tonne Promise — With a Big Asterisk A Cornell University team published the most realistic assessment yet of enhanced rock weathering’s global potential. Spreading crushed basalt on agricultural land could remove 350–750 Mt CO₂/year by 2050 and up to 1.1 Gt CO₂/year by 2100. The numbers are encouraging. Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa have the highest potential — warmer, wetter climates accelerate mineral weathering, and farmers in these regions stand to benefit from the soil nutrient boost. ...