News

Rock Flour Company just secured €1.6 million from INNO-CCUS to launch Project ICEFIELD, what will become Denmark’s first certified enhanced rock weathering (ERW) credit pathway. The project uses rock flour sourced from Greenland and will run field pilots ranging from small research plots to full commercial-scale fields across Denmark. Why it matters ERW is one of the more promising CDR approaches because it can work alongside existing agriculture. Farmers spread finely crushed rock on their fields, the minerals react with CO₂ in the soil, and the carbon gets locked away in dissolved form. But the pathway from “promising science” to verified, sellable carbon credits has been a persistent bottleneck. Denmark has had no certified ERW credit system until now. If ICEFIELD delivers, it creates a template that other European countries could follow. ...

Verra, the world’s largest carbon credit standard-setter, has released updated guidance for projects seeking Article 6 and CORSIA labels on their carbon credits, along with a new tool designed to help buyers figure out which credits qualify for compliance-grade use. The move signals that the voluntary carbon market’s infrastructure is steadily being rebuilt around the needs of regulated buyers, not just voluntary ones. Why it matters Two of the biggest demand signals for carbon credits in the coming decade are Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which governs international carbon trading between countries, and CORSIA, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. Both create compliance-level demand, meaning airlines and governments will need credits that meet strict eligibility rules. For CDR project developers, understanding whether their credits can carry these labels is the difference between selling into a niche voluntary market and accessing potentially massive regulated demand pools. ...

Microsoft has paused all new carbon removal purchases. The company that bought roughly 90 percent of durable CDR last year, more than 45 million tonnes in 2025 alone, is stepping back. Existing contracts continue. New ones are on hold with no resumption date. Microsoft cited a portfolio and market reassessment. That single decision rewires the entire buy side of the market. The next-largest buyer, Frontier, has contracted around 1.8 million tonnes lifetime. Microsoft was not just the biggest customer. It was the market. ...

The latest paper by Bernecker and Müsgens, “Direct Air Capture in Europe - Where to Integrate, Where to Store, and What Drives Cost?”, offers some compelling insights into optimizing DACCS deployment across the continent. They’ve taken a granular approach, dissecting DAC, transport, and storage, and integrating these elements into a long-term European energy system model aimed at a fully decarbonized 2050. This kind of holistic modeling is precisely what we need to move beyond back-of-the-envelope cost estimates. ...

Microsoft’s recent agreement to purchase 626,000 tonnes of durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credits over 15 years from the North Star bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) project in Saskatchewan, Canada, is a noteworthy development. This deal, struck with North Star Carbon Solutions LP—a partnership between Meadow Lake Tribal Council (MLTC) and Svante Technologies—marks Microsoft’s inaugural Canadian BECCS CDR offtake and is touted as the first such agreement in Canada involving Indigenous ownership. The project itself will be co-located at the MLTC Bioenergy Centre, leveraging waste biomass from an adjacent sawmill for renewable power generation. Once fully operational, the carbon capture plant aims to remove up to 90,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, with the captured carbon slated for permanent geologic storage by North Star. Commercial operations are targeted for early 2029, with Svante Technologies providing initial funding. ...

Today’s digest covers 5 CDR stories. Themes: science, market, global. Across today’s stories, a consistent thread emerges: the CDR field is moving from proof-of-concept to deployment — with capital, policy, and measurement catching up to the science. Today’s stories#Varhad Capital signs MoU with Velocys to develop Make-In-India, cost‑competitive biomass-to-SAF projects Italian infrastructure group backs carbon removal unit with €1 mln « Carbon Pulse ...

Boeing’s recent multi-year agreement with Grassroots Carbon, securing a minimum of 40,000 tons of durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credits, offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolving corporate engagement with nature-based solutions. Grassroots Carbon, a Texas-based provider formed in 2021, focuses on regenerative grazing, partnering with U.S. ranchers to sequester carbon in soil. Their approach emphasizes direct, one-meter deep, field-level soil measurements and laboratory analysis, coupled with third-party verification to recognized carbon standards. This detail about measurement depth and independent verification is crucial, addressing a persistent skepticism around the permanence and verifiability of soil carbon projects. ...

Google’s recent agreement with Commonwealth Sortation LLC, an affiliate of AMP Robotics Corporation, to remove 200,000 metric tonnes of CO2e by 2030 is a fascinating development for the CDR landscape, particularly for those of us tracking diverse removal pathways. This isn’t just another tech giant purchasing offsets; it’s a direct investment in a method that tackles both short-term climate warming and long-term carbon sequestration, leveraging waste management infrastructure. The core of AMP’s approach is the diversion of organic waste from landfills, which are, as the article reminds us, the third largest source of human-generated methane emissions in the U.S. Instead of allowing this organic material to decompose anaerobically and release potent methane, AMP’s AI-powered sortation technology recovers it and converts it into biochar. This biochar is then stable, sequestering carbon for hundreds of years. What’s compelling here is the dual climate benefit: immediately mitigating methane emissions, a super pollutant with a much higher short-term warming potential than CO2, while simultaneously locking away carbon in a stable form. It’s a pragmatic “two birds, one stone” solution. ...

The latest piece from AMCHAM India makes some rather bold claims about a new carbon capture technology that, if even partially true, would represent an seismic shift in the CDR landscape. The article describes a “revolutionary carbon-catching system” employing an “innovative molecular sieve method” using specially engineered nanomaterials. The standout technical claims are its operation at standard temperature with minimal energy input, achieving efficiency rates exceeding 95% – a dramatic jump from the 40-60% typically cited for existing direct air capture (DAC) methods. Furthermore, it asserts the technology’s ability to treat thousands of tons of atmospheric carbon annually per unit, validated in test facilities across three continents. ...

The recent Memorandum of Understanding between Varhad Capital and Velocys to develop “Make-In-India, cost-competitive biomass-to-SAF projects” is a development that merits a close look from our CDR lens, even if carbon removal isn’t the explicit headline. At its core, this agreement focuses on producing Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) from biomass using Velocys’s proprietary Fischer-Tropsch technology. While SAF is crucial for decarbonizing aviation, the immediate question for us is: where does CDR fit into this picture? ...