Posts

Captain's CDR Log #308: A ProPublica and Drilled probe asks how carbon storage earned its standing

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. The durable tier of CDR sells one thing above all: carbon that goes into rock and stays there, measured and verified. A new investigation argues that the scientific standing of that storage was settled, in part, by a closed vote inside a UN assessment rather than by open evidence. The target is carbon capture and storage (CCS, catching CO2 at a smokestack and injecting it underground). But every removal pathway that ends in a well inherits the same provenance. ...

CDR Daily Digest — 2026-11-03

Forty-six of the 76 CDR companies I now flag as likely dead are biochar firms. That is 61%, from a pathway that gets a small fraction of the money. The other two stories from today point the same direction: a mine remediation pilot in Wyoming is live but has published almost nothing, and the week’s free trackers can tell you how many tonnes were sold but not what anyone paid. So today’s pattern is a visibility gap. We can see the activity. We cannot see the economics. ...

Biochar accounts for 46 of 76 likely-dead CDR firms

This violin plot sorts every pure-play CDR company in the Directory by its pathway (columns) and its headcount (vertical axis, log scale from 1 to 100+). Each dot is one company, coloured by its current liveliness tier — Active, Moderate, Suspect, or Likely Dead. The grey shape behind each column is the size distribution: where it bulges, that’s where most companies in that pathway sit. The value here is comparative. A raw company list tells you who exists; this view tells you where the weight sits. Pathways with most dots stacked at the bottom are dominated by sub-10-employee firms — many small entrants, few that have grown. Pathways with dots reaching up the column have produced operators that scaled past the founder-and-a-few-engineers phase. Colour (not vertical position) is what tells you the health story: red dots high up the column mean a sizeable operator went quiet; red dots on the floor are the long tail churning as it always has. ...

Aquarry's First Mine Remediation Pilot Is Live in Wyoming, but Details Are Thin

Carbon Herald just published Aquarry Launches Its First Mine Remediation Pilot Site In Wyoming. Carbon Herald reports that Aquarry, a Colorado-based deep tech climate startup, has launched its first mine remediation pilot in Wyoming. The company is developing a technology aimed at treating legacy mine sites, and this pilot marks the move from lab and bench work to a real field location. Aquarry has positioned its approach at the intersection of mine cleanup and carbon management, arguing that remediation of mine water and waste can be paired with durable carbon storage. The announcement frames the Wyoming site as a proving ground for operational performance ahead of any larger deployment. Carbon Herald does not provide detailed figures on site scale, tonnage, or timeline in the summary available to us. ...

Captain's CDR Log #307: The week's free trackers count CDR tonnes while most deals keep price private

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. The CDR market got new public plumbing this month, and it counts tonnes far better than it counts cleared prices. Of the deals I looked at, only one, Frontier Climate’s purchase from 44.01, published a firm dollar figure and a firm tonnage in the same breath. The new tools show supply, maturity and indicative price, not what buyers actually paid Nasdaq and Relae launched a Carbon Issuance Calendar that Puro.earth describes as a centralised view of upcoming durable CDR offtake, bringing together delivery timelines, indicative pricing and project maturity assessments in one place. That is more than a volume list. But indicative pricing is a seller’s forward signal, not a record of what a buyer agreed to pay, and the gap between the two is exactly the number developers and lenders need. ...

Google-Backed Frontier Buys $11.7M of 44.01 Removals as EU Tightens Claims

ESG News just published ESG News Week In Review: 11-31 October 2026 - ESG News. ESG News’ review of 11-31 October 2026 opens with the EU’s ban on unsubstantiated environmental claims, now backed by penalties above 4% of turnover, and sets it against a three-year delay to methane import rules and a Franco-German push to ease the 2035 car target. The outlet also tracks capital moving toward electricity for data centres, including Blackstone’s $8.7 billion energy transition fund, a $4 billion AEP fuel cell plant serving Google, and TPG’s $10.4 billion climate close. On the removal side, it reports Frontier buyers led by Google committing $11.7 million to 44.01 for 20,932 tons of in-situ mineralisation, to be delivered between 2028 and 2031. California’s first SB 253 reporting deadline on 10 November closes the list. ...

Captain's CDR Log #306: Stefan Rahmstorf's 10,000-year storage bar returns to the CCS argument

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. 10,000 years is the minimum storage guarantee Stefan Rahmstorf says carbon sequestration must meet before it counts as acceptable climate mitigation, and he does not think anyone can give it. The number is not new. Rahmstorf (@rahmstorf.bsky.social on Bluesky) pulled it this week from a 2006 German government advisory report he co-authored and quoted it word for word: “Therefore, sequestration can only be regarded as an acceptable climate mitigation technology if long-term CO2 storage for at least 10,000 years can be guaranteed.” His gloss was five words long: “I.e., it is not a realistic option.” The reference point it displaces is the one the carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry actually works to, where monitoring horizons run in decades and permits in years. Twenty years on, the co-author still treats his own threshold as disqualifying. ...

CDR Daily Digest — 2026-11-01

Durable carbon removal in 2026 is a seller’s market, and the day’s four stories are all about what that does to buyers. Supercritical, the UK carbon removal marketplace, had already sold 81% of its 2026 biochar supply before it signed Jain for a further 19,000 tonnes. Nasdaq and Relae launched a calendar so buyers can see when credits will actually reach the market. Germany’s BIK industrial decarbonisation programme opened its call to DAC and biogenic CO2 capture, with outlines due 6 December 2026. And on the science side, two enhanced rock weathering studies found that the soil carbon term, the number everyone had been treating as background, moves when you add organic matter alongside the rock. The market is building scheduling and procurement tools for a product whose measurement is still being argued over. That is the day’s tension. ...

The carbon footprint was BP's campaign. Carbon removal should not inherit it

Germany emitted about 649 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent in 2025, according to the Umweltbundesamt. In the same period the whole world removed about 2 million tonnes with novel, durable methods (direct air capture, biochar, enhanced weathering, BECCS), per the third edition of The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal. One country emits roughly 320 times the planet’s entire novel removal output. No amount of individual tonne-buying closes a gap of that size, and the idea that it should comes from a frame the oil industry made popular. ...

Germany's BIK Call Opens to DAC and Biogenic CO2; Outlines Due 6 Dec 2026

DVNE just published : BIK: Funding for Carbon Removal. DVNE reports that the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy published its third funding call under the BIK industrial climate programme on 19 October 2026. The call covers Module 2, Submodule 2 and targets research, development and innovation projects for CO2 capture, utilisation and storage in sectors such as lime and cement, thermal waste treatment, basic chemicals, glass and ceramics. Direct Air Capture is listed as its own funding category, and research on exploring and monitoring geological storage sites is also eligible. DVNE stresses that capture alone does not equal removal - only atmospheric or biogenic CO2 that is permanently stored with a net climate benefit counts as negative emissions. Managing Director Stefan Schlosser welcomes the call but argues it leaves out other suitable CDR pathways. Companies have until 6 December 2026 to submit outlines. ...