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This chart is a stacked bar count of every company in the CDR Directory, grouped along the x-axis by removal pathway (direct air capture, enhanced weathering, biochar, ocean alkalinity, and so on), with each bar segmented by business focus: pure-play producers, brokers and marketplaces, and firms where CDR is a side business bolted onto a different core model. The total height tells you which pathways are crowded with company formation. The segment mix tells you something a raw count hides: whether a pathway’s apparent size is built on operators actually delivering tonnes, on intermediaries reselling them, or on incumbents whose CDR line is a minor adjunct. Two pathways with identical totals can have very different underlying economies once you see the split. ...

This chart takes the same founding-year history view and splits each yearly bar by CDR pathway, so you can see not just how many companies were founded in a given year but which kinds of companies. The x-axis is the founding year; bar height is the count of companies started that year; the stacked colors in each bar are the pathways, keyed in the legend. The reason this split matters is that the field did not grow as one thing. Direct air capture has an older cohort, with companies appearing well before the recent funding wave. Biochar, enhanced weathering, and marine pathways cluster much later, riding the 2020-2023 surge. A raw founding-year total hides that staggering; the stacked view makes the sequencing legible. ...

Carbon Herald just published Mitsubishi Electric And VTT Reach Milestone In Electrochemical DOC Project. Carbon Herald reports that Mitsubishi Electric and Finland’s VTT Technical Research Centre have hit a development milestone in their joint direct ocean capture (DOC) project, which uses an electrochemical process to remove CO2 dissolved in seawater. The partnership, announced previously, pairs Mitsubishi Electric’s engineering capacity with VTT’s research work on electrochemical separation. The piece frames the progress as a step toward a scalable DOC system, though specifics on capture rates, energy use, and timeline to pilot deployment are limited in the coverage. Direct ocean capture is positioned as a complement to direct air capture given the higher concentration of CO2 in seawater. ...

Carbon Herald just published Summit Carbon Solutions Faces $15M Lawsuit As Pipeline Delays Continue. Carbon Herald reports that Summit Carbon Solutions is set to face trial in a $15 million lawsuit filed by pipe manufacturer Welspun. The dispute centers on contractual obligations tied to pipe purchases for Summit’s planned multi-state CO2 pipeline, which has been hit by repeated permitting and construction delays. The case adds to a growing list of legal and regulatory hurdles for the project, which would gather CO2 from ethanol plants across the Midwest and transport it for underground storage. The outlet notes the litigation comes as Summit continues to push back its in-service timeline. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. Why does one industrial CO2 project on the North Atlantic rim get a $2.6 billion sovereign check while another, on the opposite shore, gets sued by its pipe supplier? Same capture chemistry. Same decade. Same broad climate logic. Different geography, and the geography is doing almost all the work. ...

The day’s signal: CDR is being financed, sized, and priced like a real industry now Today’s four stories share one through-line. Carbon removal is moving from “interesting science” to “financeable infrastructure,” and the people doing the financing, the headcount math, and the price-discovery work are starting to sound like grownups. We got a banker’s rent-versus-buy framework, a headcount reality check, a structured debt-plus-offtake deal from a major bank, and a grounded look at village-scale biochar. Different corners of the field, same maturation curve. ...

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. ...

Carbon Herald just published JPMorganChase Deepens Charm Industrial Partnership With A New CDR Deal And Debt Financing. Carbon Herald reports that JPMorganChase has broadened its existing relationship with Charm Industrial via a fresh carbon dioxide removal agreement paired with debt financing. The deal builds on prior offtake activity between the bank and the bio-oil sequestration company, signaling continued institutional backing for Charm’s approach of converting biomass into bio-oil and injecting it underground. The arrangement combines a CDR purchase commitment with credit support, a structure that pairs voluntary market demand with project-level capital. Specific tonnage, pricing, and loan terms are detailed in the original article. ...

Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all. On Wednesday, Zeke Hausfather posted a thread that quietly reframed the most expensive argument in carbon removal procurement. “We have a new paper out on the value of reversible carbon storage in a zero-emissions world,” he wrote. “We try and answer the question of when it makes sense to ‘rent’ vs ‘buy’ CDR” (@hausfath on Bluesky). ...

Three different checkbooks, three different bets The pattern across today’s stories is that CDR financing has split into distinct lanes, and each lane is picking a different kind of winner. Venture debt is backing hardware that already has revenue. Offtake contracts are pulling early-stage removal projects through their first commercial deployments. Strategic equity from industrial buyers is locking in supply before it exists. Same industry, three checkbooks, three theories of what scales. ...