The Myth#“Carbon removal is just a license to pollute. Companies buy offsets so they don’t have to cut emissions.” You hear this from climate activists, policy wonks, even some scientists. It sounds reasonable. It’s also wrong — and the data proves it. Why It’s Wrong: The Math#Even the most aggressive mitigation scenarios can’t get us to safety without removal. The IPCC’s AR6 is unambiguous: ...
This one’s different. Not a tech startup. Not a corporate buyer. A local council in rural England just became the first UK local authority to partially own a biochar carbon removal system. Shropshire Council has partnered with Raft Energy and Biodynamic Carbon (a joint venture between the council and Carbon Hill Ltd.) to produce activated biochar and generate verified carbon removal credits. How it works#The system — already operational near Welshpool — integrates biochar production with existing anaerobic digestion (AD) infrastructure. Raft Energy’s product, ActiCH4R, is an activated biochar that gets added to biogas plants. The biochar: ...
One of the persistent concerns about enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is trace metals. You’re spreading crushed rock on farmland — what happens to the nickel, chromium, and other metals in that basalt? A new preprint on CDRxiv offers some of the most detailed field data yet. Short answer: no detectable increase in harmful metals after two years. The study#Researchers from Yale and collaborators applied 20 tonnes/hectare of iron- and aluminum-rich basalt to hayfield and pasture soils on a working Vermont dairy farm. They sampled agricultural soils (0–15 cm) twice before application and four times after, spanning fall 2022 through spring 2025. They also tracked a riparian corridor hydrologically connected to the treated fields. ...
ClimeFi just published its 2026 CDR market insights based on a December 2025 RFP that attracted 114 suppliers from 39 countries across 142 projects. The headline: durable CDR supply is getting tight. The numbers#Only 52% of projected 2026 supply is still unreserved — making it the most constrained year in the 2026–2030 windowAcross 2026–2030, 58% of total supply remains available66% of projects across all pathways (biochar, DACCS, BECCS, biomass, mCDR, mineralization) are now at commercialization stagePrices are converging within pathways as suppliers reach operations, secure verification, and build track recordsWhat’s driving the squeeze#Demand from corporate buyers is outpacing supply buildout. Companies like Microsoft, Boeing, LEGO, and Mercedes F1 are locking in multi-year deals — and the supply side simply can’t scale fast enough. ...
A new paper in Communications Earth & Environment used formal expert elicitation to estimate how much CO₂ enhanced rock weathering (EW) on agricultural land could actually remove. The headline number: 0.2–0.7 Gt CO₂e/yr on average, depending on the feedstock — but with a wild range from below zero to above 5 Gt CO₂e/yr. The kicker? Only 27–39% of the potential CDR is actually realized. The rest gets lost along the way — through secondary clay formation, calcite saturation, deep soil processes, and freshwater emissions. ...
The LEGO Group just dropped another DKK 18 million ($2.6M) on carbon removal, bringing its total CDR investment to DKK 54 million ($7.9M). The new round, delivered through ClimeFi, supports four projects across three durable removal technologies plus a reforestation initiative in Mexico. What they’re buying#The three tech-based projects span: Biomass geological storage — injecting organic waste slurry deep underground for permanent carbon lockawayMineralization — converting captured CO₂ into manufactured limestone using reactive waste materialsMarine CDR via wastewater alkalinity enhancement — converting organic carbon into inorganic carbon stored long-term in the oceanThe fourth project is large-scale tropical forest restoration in Mexico, developed with Climate Impact Partners. ...
A big day in carbon removal. Five original CaptainDrawdown posts, from market milestones to multi-century timelines, plus a striking data point about Microsoft’s dominance of the credit market. Today on CaptainDrawdown#Two-Thirds of CDR Projects Are Now Commercial#ClimeFi’s 2026 market insights report dropped a headline number: 66% of durable carbon removal projects across all pathways have reached the commercialization stage. That’s biochar, DACCS, BECCS, marine CDR, and mineralization combined. Even more significant, 2026 credit supply is diversifying away from biomass dominance — large-scale DACCS and BioCCS, plus smaller ERW and marine CDR projects, are entering the market. ...
Here’s an uncomfortable truth the Paris Agreement doesn’t really grapple with: even if we hit 1.5°C and hold there, the damage keeps piling up. Two new studies from IIASA (the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna), published in Environmental Research Letters, lay out just how long the carbon removal commitment needs to last. The answer? Centuries. The Lag Problem#Sea-level rise doesn’t stop when temperatures stabilize. Neither does permafrost thaw. These are slow-moving processes with enormous inertia — think of a supertanker that keeps drifting long after the engines are cut. ...
Felix Schenuit from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) just published a policy paper through LibMod that makes a provocative argument: CDR is politically fragile, and the way to protect it is to stop treating it as a carbon accounting exercise and start treating it as industrial policy. The Core Problem#The paper’s central concern is “climate backsliding” — the strategic weakening and rollback of climate policy that’s happening in multiple countries. When net-zero commitments erode, CDR loses its political rationale. After all, if you’re no longer committed to neutralizing residual emissions, why fund the technology to do it? ...
Lego isn’t playing around with carbon removal. The Danish toymaker just committed another DKK 18 million (~€2.4M) to four CDR projects, pushing its total CDR investment to DKK 54 million ($7.9M). What’s interesting isn’t just the money — it’s the portfolio approach. Four Projects, Four Pathways#Working with carbon removal platform ClimeFi and Climate Impact Partners, Lego is spreading bets across fundamentally different removal methods: 1. Biomass geological storage — injecting organic waste slurry deep underground. Permanent storage, no reversal risk. ...