News

Today’s digest covers 3 CDR stories. Themes: global, science. 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#14-Year Field Study Confirms Biochar Immobilizes Heavy Metals While Sequestering Carbon Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Captures CO₂ in Gulf of Maine: Updated Results From Loc-Ness Microalgae Carbon Capture in Indian Cities: From Kochi to Mumbai ...

Microalgae-based carbon capture is being deployed at street level in Indian cities, and the numbers are surprisingly concrete. A Scroll.in / Deutsche Welle documentary follows companies Lo Carbon Solutions and Zaara Biotech as they install bioreactor systems in Kochi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. The technology uses microalgae’s Carbon Dioxide Concentrating Mechanism (CCM), which allows these organisms to sequester CO2 faster than land plants, even in polluted urban conditions. The Hardware#Two systems are featured: ...

The CaptainDrawdown CDR Company Directory has grown to 825 companies — the most comprehensive public database of active carbon removal organizations worldwide. This month’s update adds 4 new entries spanning 4 CDR pathways and 4 countries. New Additions by Category#Direct Air Capture: 1 newIndustrial Process: 1 newNature-Based: 1 newCarbon Market Infrastructure: 1 newGeographic Spread#United States: 1 newUnited Kingdom: 1 newSierra Leone: 1 newSwitzerland: 1 newNotable Additions#Ctrl-S#Ctrl-S is a startup focused on salvaging and preserving valuable IP, experimental data, and ’negative learnings’ from direct air capture companies that fail or pivot. By acquiring this IP and making it accessible to materials-discovery AI models and new entrants, Ctrl-S aims to accelerate DAC develo ...

A market-heavy day. Four stories with deal and product announcements, anchored by a quiet but significant EPA regulatory first. The CDR procurement ecosystem continues to professionalize — and the buyer base keeps widening. What We Published Today#CUR8 and Isometric Launch a New “2030 Portfolio” CDR Offering Carbon removal market intelligence provider CUR8 and verification platform Isometric have launched a joint “2030 Portfolio” — a curated CDR offering designed to give corporate buyers access to a diversified mix of high-quality, Isometric-certified removal credits with delivery by 2030. This is the CDR market’s version of a managed fund: curated, verified, and structured to reduce buyer risk. It signals that the intermediary layer between CDR suppliers and corporate buyers is maturing fast. ...

The Misconception#“Carbon credits are all scams” This is CDR Misconception #4 in our weekly series debunking common myths about carbon dioxide removal with data and evidence. The Math#The legitimate grievances: Some REDD+ projects credited forests never under threatCookstove offsets with flimsy MRVPermanence gaps: forests sold as 30-yr sinks that burned in year 5Baseline manipulation to inflate claimed reductionsThe 2023 Verra REDD+ exposé was real. The critics aren’t wrong about these specific projects. ...

A busy science day. Five original posts covered ocean CDR ecology, EU carbon market policy, land justice, a corporate soil CDR deal, and biochar quality standards. Here’s the full picture. What We Published Today#Good News for Ocean CDR: Zooplankton Survive OAE in New PLOS One Study A new peer-reviewed study in PLOS One tested Oikopleura dioica — a gelatinous zooplankton species central to ocean carbon export — under ocean alkalinity enhancement conditions. The species showed resilience. One species, one data point, but the direction matters for the OAE risk literature. The study DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0344503. ...

Biochar is frequently cited as one of the most cost-competitive carbon dioxide removal pathways. Costs of $50–200 per tonne CO₂ are achievable at scale — far below direct air capture at $400–1,000+ per tonne, and competitive with enhanced weathering at larger deployment volumes. But there’s a catch: not all biochar is equal. The gap between high-quality and low-quality biochar is large enough to determine whether a buyer is purchasing centuries of durable carbon storage or a product that will degrade meaningfully within decades. ...

Most net-zero pathway models assume large amounts of land-based carbon dioxide removal. New forests. Bioenergy plantations. Soil restoration. The assumptions are baked into the models as givens. A new study in Nature Climate Change asks the question those models often skip: where, specifically, does this land come from — and who lives there? Ruben Prütz of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and colleagues analyzed five widely used 1.5°C pathway models. They mapped the geographic distribution of where land-intensive CDR deployment is expected to occur across the modeled scenarios. ...

A new study published in Joule (Cell Press) models what happens when permanent carbon dioxide removal is formally integrated into the EU Emissions Trading System. The headline finding: integration could incentivize 68–86 Mt CO₂ of removals per year by 2050. Researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) contributed to the analysis. The paper (DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2026.S2542-4351(26)00079-6) arrives at a moment when the regulatory and market infrastructure for CDR in Europe is advancing, but the critical link between the carbon price signal and CDR deployment remains unbuilt. ...

One of the persistent concerns about ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) as a carbon dioxide removal strategy is what it does to marine life. A new study published in PLOS One provides a useful data point: Oikopleura dioica, a gelatinous zooplankton species that plays a meaningful role in ocean carbon cycling, showed resilience to OAE conditions in controlled experiments. The study (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0344503) is not a definitive ecological clearance for OAE. But it narrows the uncertainty range in an area that matters. ...