CaptainDrawdown

338 of 476 pure-play CDR companies were founded in 2020 or later. This chart: one dot per company, founding year on x, headcount on a log y-axis. The density underlay sits almost entirely in the bottom-right corner - young and small, median headcount of 9.

Founding year is a weak predictor of scale in CDR - a company started in 2022 can already rank among the largest employers, so the real question is which of the 338 post-2020 dots will make the same jump.

338 of 476 pure-play CDR companies were founded in 2020 or later. This chart: one dot per company, founding year on x, headcount on a log y-axis. The density underlay sits almost entirely in the bottom-right corner - young and small, median headcount of 9.

Substrate Biochar Launches First Production Site In South Africa Substrate Biochar has opened its first production site in South Africa, per Carbon Herald. The company is positioning itself as an industrial biochar supplier for the African market.

Our take (Heads-up): A first site in South Africa is notable because African biochar supply is still thin relative to demand from credit buyers. The summary we saw gives no production volume, feedstock source, or certification pathway, so treat this as a launch notice rather than evidence of...

8,061 of Enabling Tech's 8,069 CDR workers sit in "ecosystem" firms - verification, software, brokerage, tooling. None of them remove a tonne. This chart: CDR headcount by pathway, split by pure-play, division, or service firm.

If you use hiring as a proxy for deployment, strip out Enabling Tech first: the total drops to about 16,660 and biochar, not DAC, is the pathway actually putting people into production.

8,061 of Enabling Tech's 8,069 CDR workers sit in "ecosystem" firms - verification, software, brokerage, tooling. None of them remove a tonne. This chart: CDR headcount by pathway, split by pure-play, division, or service firm.

Will we cool the earth? Robert Höglund reports from the first Global Risk and Stabilization Summit in Reykjavík, where researchers and funders weighed whether solar radiation modification and related interventions could stabilize the climate.

Our take (Context): The CDR-in-2015 comparison is the frame to watch - it implies stabilization research could normalize the same way, which is a bet rather than a given. The reflectivity numbers stand up and matter for CDR too, since masked warming changes how much removal is needed.

The 32-51 Gt the Merfort preprint gives novel CDR plus geological storage by 2050 is a ceiling, not a forecast. The model is optimistic by design and never has to clear the EPA sequestration-well backlog or marine CDR's efficiency losses. Plan from the low end.

Daily digest: Sirona's €9.1M DAC grant is 0.27% of the €3.4B European net-zero round it came from. Today's three stories share that shape: carbon removal riding as a small passenger inside much larger systems that were not built for it.

What to watch: whether Skytree's Kenyan deal gets a CO2 volume and start date (until then it works like a letter of intent), and whether DAC's share of the next European net-zero round stays near 0.3% while the models assume gigatonnes by mid-century.

Daily digest: Sirona's €9.1M DAC grant is 0.27% of the €3.4B European net-zero round it came from. Today's three stories share that shape: carbon removal riding as a small passenger inside much larger systems that were not built for it.

Skytree will supply captured CO2 to a Kenyan e-fuels project with Galetech and Mwahera. A DAC deal, not a removal deal: CO2 that goes into fuel comes back out when it burns. Useful work that builds capture hardware, but zero tonnes removed. No volume, price or timeline disclosed.

Daily digest: Sirona's €9.1M DAC grant is 0.27% of the €3.4B European net-zero round it came from. Today's three stories share that shape: carbon removal riding as a small passenger inside much larger systems that were not built for it.

Skytree, Galetech, And Mwahera Partner On Direct Air Capture For E-Fuel Production In Kenya Skytree is teaming up with Galetech Energy Developments and Mwahera Green Hydrogen to supply direct air capture CO2 for e-fuel production in Kenya.

Our take (Heads-up): This reads as a memorandum-level partnership, not a financed plant, so treat it as intent rather than supply. Key gaps are the DAC tonnage, hydrogen cost, and power source, which decide whether Kenyan e-fuel is competitive.

A capital grant buys concrete, not tonnes. Sirona's Furu direct air capture project won up to €9.1M from the EU Innovation Fund, which covers none of the electricity, sorbent or storage costs and names no buyer for the output. The plant still has to sell every tonne.

AI entered CDR in three roles this week: measuring rock-weathering tonnes (a preprint tested on 264 fields), buying biochar (Microsoft's offtake behind Citi's $72M note), and competing for land and clean power. Critics hit only role three. Nobody asked about the error bar.

Daily digest: Landing at 1.5°C after a 1.7°C peak means pulling 440 to 660 billion tonnes of CO2 back out of the air, and that is a floor since the oceans give some back. Three supply stories today, and they disagree on how to pick what gets built.

What settles both debates is a common standard. A BioCCS tonne in Sweden, a tailings tonne in Ontario and a DAC tonne in Alberta must count the same way, or buyers pay for the cheapest paperwork, not the cheapest carbon. Watch EU certification rules and Canadian winter DAC data.

Daily digest: Landing at 1.5°C after a 1.7°C peak means pulling 440 to 660 billion tonnes of CO2 back out of the air, and that is a floor since the oceans give some back. Three supply stories today, and they disagree on how to pick what gets built.

Voss vs Collier in Europe: BioCCS bolts capture onto existing pulp mills and biomass plants, so tonnes arrive this decade. Tech-neutral procurement avoids locking in biomass demand. The actual gap is MRV: no EU standard yet makes a biogenic tonne and a geological tonne equal.

Daily digest: Landing at 1.5°C after a 1.7°C peak means pulling 440 to 660 billion tonnes of CO2 back out of the air, and that is a floor since the oceans give some back. Three supply stories today, and they disagree on how to pick what gets built.

The 2035 emissions gap in UNEP's new report got smaller. Not because emissions fell. The benchmark moved: the lowest-overshoot pathway now peaks at 1.7-1.8°C, not 1.6°C. A smaller gap against a worse target is not progress. For CDR the missing number is the tonnage.

Sirona’s Furu Is Now The First DACCS Project Backed By The EU Innovation Fund The EU Innovation Fund has selected Sirona Technologies' Furu project for a grant of up to EUR 9.1 million, making it the first direct air capture and storage project to receive the fund's backing.

Our take (Heads-up): The grant is a meaningful policy signal, since the Innovation Fund has historically favoured point-source capture and hydrogen over DAC. What the headline does not resolve is capture scale, the storage site, cost per tonne, or whether the money is milestone-gated.

Biochar delivers most of the durable CDR credit market. This week's news shows what sits behind a tonne: first credits from crop residue, a 14,000-tonne offtake, a $72M Citi note on a Texas plant, and a draft rule for continuous kiln monitoring. The kiln is now the easy part.

Daily digest: three numbers landed on the same day. 3% of contracted durable CDR has been delivered, 19% of biochar pure-plays look dead, and Sweden put SEK 9.3bn into one BECCS award. Capital is concentrating in a few state-backed projects while the long tail thins out.

Watch the delivered-to-contracted ratio, not contract volume. If it moves from 3% toward 10% while the biochar dead count holds, the market is maturing. If contracts grow and deliveries stall, 46 dead biochar firms are an early warning, not an outlier.

Daily digest: three numbers landed on the same day. 3% of contracted durable CDR has been delivered, 19% of biochar pure-plays look dead, and Sweden put SEK 9.3bn into one BECCS award. Capital is concentrating in a few state-backed projects while the long tail thins out.

Of 246 biochar pure-play companies tracked, 46 look dead: dormant sites, lapsed registrations, silence. One in five, in the cheapest proven durable method. The chemistry is settled. What fails is scale: a few hundred tonnes a year cannot absorb a late payment or a failed audit.

Daily digest: three numbers landed on the same day. 3% of contracted durable CDR has been delivered, 19% of biochar pure-plays look dead, and Sweden put SEK 9.3bn into one BECCS award. Capital is concentrating in a few state-backed projects while the long tail thins out.