Make better decisions on the carbon removal market

Carbon removal is growing up, but it still leans far too hard on a single buyer.

We've found a lot of interesting signals. For example, in April 2026, Microsoft reportedly told suppliers it was pausing new carbon removal purchases, after buying roughly 80% of all removal contracted so far. A month later, it still signed a deal for up to 650,000 tonnes with BioCirc, a Danish biogas company that stores its CO2 under the North Sea. And in February, the European Commission adopted the first EU certification methods for direct air capture, BECCS and biochar. The market can't keep living on one company's budget, and common rules are a first step toward more buyers.

In this section, we look at why other buyers are still hesitant, which removal methods keep winning contracts, and what the new EU rules could change for prices and demand.

Removing a tonne of CO2 is expensive, and proving it stays removed is just as hard. Sellers and buyers both feel it.

We compare six kinds of removal companies: direct air capture, BECCS, biochar, rock weathering, mineralization and ocean-based methods. Their buyers range from tech companies and airlines to governments and credit brokers. For each, we rank the pains that hurt most, like the cost per tonne, long waits before delivery, and doubts about whether the carbon really stays stored.

This shows which removals a buyer will pay a premium for, and which ones still struggle to convince anyone.

Long-term offtake contracts, spot credit sales, government purchase programs, fees for storing someone else's CO2 and side revenue from heat, power or biochar: carbon removal companies get paid in many ways.

We compare who pays and what each tonne costs to produce. A DAC plant sells expensive tonnes and spends heavily on energy. A biochar producer sells cheaper credits and can also sell the biochar to farmers. A BECCS plant may earn money from heat or power, but it needs a pipeline and a storage site nearby. And every supplier pays for measurement and verification before it can sell a single credit.

You'll see which models can survive if credit prices fall, and which ones only work while one big buyer keeps signing.

A forecast is only as good as the forces behind it, so we list them one by one.

Some drivers are obvious: corporate net-zero targets, climate scenarios that need removals to reach any target, and costs that fall as plants get bigger. Others reinforce each other. Common rules make credits easier to compare. Easier comparison brings in new buyers, which lets suppliers sign longer contracts. And longer contracts help them finance bigger plants at a lower cost per tonne.

Before building or investing, you should know what would get a second and a third large buyer to sign, and what would make governments pay for removals themselves.

Charm Industrial and Stockholm Exergi often come up first in carbon removal, but they're only a slice of the market.

Many of the most interesting players stay out of the headlines. Some spread crushed basalt on farms in Brazil or India and measure how much carbon it locks away. Others turn crop waste into biochar, pump CO2 into old wells, or build the software that checks every tonne before it's sold.

They're hard to compare because a tonne from a DAC plant and a tonne from a farm field don't cost the same, don't last the same and aren't checked the same way. Many also sell through brokers, so buyers rarely see who made the tonne.

Here, we share the market grids and ecosystem maps we've built to show each removal method, who supplies it, who buys it and where new players are getting in.

Exomad Green, Puro.earth, Terradot… a few carbon removal companies are already delivering tonnes, or certifying them, for paying buyers.

Exomad Green turns forestry waste into biochar in Bolivia and has signed one of the largest biochar deals so far. Puro.earth writes standards and certifies the credits that many removal suppliers sell. Terradot spreads crushed rock on farms in Brazil and works with scientists to prove how much carbon it removes. None of them has yet shown a business that works without a few large buyers.

We'll look at how these teams picked a method they could measure, signed buyers early, and kept the cost of each tonne under control.