Module 2: Demand for Carbon Removal
A critical question when thinking about carbon removal is where a market of potentially hundreds of billions of dollars per year will come from, and who will pay. In this module, we'll explore who the early buyers are today, and where the market needs to move in order for carbon removal to get to gigaton scale longer term.
High Flyer
Frontier
A coalition of Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey pooled almost a billion dollars to purchase carbon removals in an advance market commitment, making Frontier the largest buyer in the space by far. Read through their website's front page.
Website - 20 min
2. A trillion dollar carbon removal market?
Dai Ellis
A blog post that unpacks how the prospect of a trillion dollar carbon removal market isn't a total pipe dream, and actually has relevant and right-sized existing analogues like development aid funding.
Blog Post - 15 min
3. Carbon removals: How to scale a new gigaton industry
McKinsey Sustainability
CO2 removal (CDR) capacity is far from the gigaton scale needed to round out businesses’ net-zero efforts by 2050. McKinsey’s report explores a mature CDR market’s potential and possible first-mover advantages.
Report - 30 min
4. We won't achieve gigatonne carbon removal
Paul Gambill
In this piece, Gambill examines the structural barriers preventing gigatonne-scale carbon removal and propose a fundamental reset of how we approach this challenge.
Article - 10 min
Climate Student
7. Nan Ransohoff on how (and why) Stripe is kick-starting the carbon-removal market
Volts
Hear from the head of Frontier on their advanced market commitment and how they are planning on bringing demand-side heft to scale CDR.
Podcast - 43 min
9. Buying Carbon Removal, Explained with Shopify Head of Sustainability Stacy Kauk
OpenAir
Shopify is another large tech industry buyer of carbon removal, and this video is great for understanding the mentality of existing buyers.
Video - 59 min
Dai Ellis
Dai explores the different parties and waves of demand and that may come online over the coming decades, and they role that heavy industry and philanthropy make have to play in the future state.
Article - 10 min
Neil Hacker
A great interactive explainer on what it will take to buy carbon removal down the cost curve and get to scale.
Article - 60 min
12. Three countries positioned to lead on government procurement of carbon removal
Na'im Merchant
Direct procurement of CDR is one of the biggest levers that governments have for massively scaling the CDR market. Learn more here!
Article - 5 min
5. Carbon dioxide removal and the buyer of first resort
CarbonRisk
This article looks at the relationship between ‘the tragedy of the commons’ and carbon markets and explores challenges project developers face with limited buyer pools in the market today.
Article - 10 min
6. Carbon Removal's Wrong Turn
Paul Gambill
Gambill explores the ways in which the modern CDR market inherited traits from existing offset schemes and how that’s preventing market maturity and scaling to the levels required for gigaton impact. “The scaling crisis in carbon removal isn't the result of any single factor—it stems from the cumulative effect of market design choices that prioritized accounting precision over atmospheric impact. Breaking free requires fundamental restructuring, not incremental adjustment.”
Article - 10 min
10. How to buy carbon removal like Google
Patch
This conversation with Randy Spock, the head of Carbon Credits and Removals at Google, examines the strategies Google uses for offsetting its emissions, advice for other companies seeking to use high quality CDR offsets for their own climate strategies, and insights for scaling the carbon market as a whole.
Video - 58 min
13. What It Takes To Issue Carbon Credits And Build A System For Scale
Stacy Kauk, Isometric and Hannah Murnen, Graphyte
This article explores the 5 key ingredients for the issuing high quality credits and offers insights into how the CDR market can be improved with respect to more efficient issuances for suppliers and easier diligence processes for buyers, including updated protocols, frontloaded verification, and improved data integrations.
Article - 5 min
Climate Master
15. Criteria for high-quality carbon dioxide removal
Carbon Direct
This is Carbon Direct's detailed document for what high quality carbon removal looks like across a wide range of approaches, used to inform their buyers' purchasing decisions.
Report - 60 min
Carbon Gap
Carbon Gap’s conceptual framework for defining and quantifying the ambition gap between companies’ “ability to pay” for external climate solutions like carbon removal and their willingness to do so.
Report - 30 min
17. Best Practices for Diligencing Carbon Removal Purchases
AirMiners
This conversation with Grant Faber, the former Program Manager for the US DOE’s DAC Hubs initiative, dives into the strategies carbon buyers should be using to evaluate projects for their portfolios and looks at the criteria that sustainability teams can be using to make decisions on offsets, including technology pathways, permanence levels, and ratings.
Video - 60 min
14. VCMI Claims Code of Practice
VCMI
The VCMI Claims Code of Practice (Claims Code) aims to accelerate corporate engagement with voluntary carbon markets as part of net-zero pathways. It seeks to bring confidence and credibility to claims that involve the use of carbon credits. The VCMI Claims Code of Practice addresses integrity on the demand side by guiding companies and other nonstate actors on how they can credibly make voluntary use of carbon credits as part of their climate commitments and on how they communicate their use of those credits. It provides clarity, transparency, and consistency on what these commitments and claims mean and will give confidence to all those engaging with voluntary carbon markets. Together, VCMI and ICVCM work in close partnership to create and end-to-end model to achieve a voluntary carbon market with integrity, by providing clear guidance from both the demand and supply sides.
Website - 20 min