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
Climate Student
3. 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
4. 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
7. 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
Climate Master
8. 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