As direct emissions reductions prove insufficient on their own to meet global climate targets, carbon removal — actively pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, rather than simply avoiding new emissions — is moving from a fringe research interest to a necessary pillar of most credible net-zero pathways. The distinction matters: an avoidance credit prevents a tonne of CO2 from being emitted, while a removal credit takes a tonne that’s already in the atmosphere back out of it.
The removal landscape
Nature-based removal — afforestation, reforestation, soil carbon sequestration — remains the largest and cheapest category today, but faces the same permanence and measurement challenges that affect avoidance-based forestry projects, and the physical capacity of land available for this at scale is finite.
Engineered removal is where most of the recent capital and attention has concentrated. Direct air capture (DAC) uses chemical processes to pull CO2 directly from ambient air, storing it underground or in long-lived materials; it currently costs substantially more per tonne than nature-based options but offers a more durable, more easily measured form of removal. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) combines biomass energy generation with captured emissions storage. Enhanced weathering accelerates the natural rock-weathering process that absorbs atmospheric CO2 over geological timescales, compressing it into a commercially relevant window.
Why durability is becoming the deciding factor
As the removal market matures, buyers are increasingly differentiating credits not just by price but by storage durability — how long the removed carbon is likely to stay out of the atmosphere. A tree that might burn in a wildfire within decades sits at one end of that spectrum; CO2 mineralised into rock or stored in deep geological formations sits at the other, with storage measured in centuries to millennia.
This durability premium is reshaping portfolio strategy for corporate buyers pursuing credible net-zero claims: a blended approach — cheaper, lower-durability nature-based removal today, scaling toward higher-durability engineered removal as costs fall — is emerging as the more defensible strategy than relying on either category alone.
The market signal to watch
Engineered removal costs remain the binding constraint on how quickly this market can scale to the volumes climate models assume will be needed by mid-century. Falling costs — driven by early corporate offtake agreements, policy support such as tax credits for captured carbon, and manufacturing learning curves — will determine how much of the “removals gap” implied by current net-zero commitments can realistically be closed with engineered solutions, versus how much pressure that puts back on faster near-term emissions cuts.