CDR Monthly Recap - June 2024

CDR Monthly Recap - June 2024

We are back with another edition of the CDR Monthly Recap, a monthly round-up of some of the top news, developments, and market updates from the world of durable carbon removal. June saw huge developments in the carbon removal market, from a CDR deal worth $48.6 million to the confirmation of the world’s largest Direct Air Capture (DAC) manufacturing facility. We also continue to see new methodologies, protocols, and reports published, as well as announcements of new broad-ranging partnerships and agreements.

Read on to learn more about them below.

Agreements

[Image source: Frontier]

Frontier Buyers signed an offtake agreement worth $48.6 million with Stockholm Exergi, in a deal supporting the first commercial-scale carbon removal retrofit on a biomass-fueled district heating facility. Stockholm Exergi’s CDR retrofit will remove 800,000 tonnes of CO2 per year starting in 2028.

CDR marketplace Carbonfuture signed a 7-year agreement with insurance group Swiss Re to supply 70,000 tonnes of Biochar Carbon Removal (BCR) from leading BCR supplier Exomad Green’s new Riberalta facility in Bolivia.

The Danish government issued its first permits for investigating carbon storage in underground sites. 3 groups - Wintershall Dea and INEOS; Carboncuts; Equinor and Ørtsed, have been granted rights to explore the feasibility of commercial CO₂ storage in the Danish subsoil.

Isometric announced partnerships with 12 leading climate companies to provide their end customers access to Isometric's carbon credits. Terraset will also join to enable customers to fund CDR through tax-deductible donations.

Berlin-based climate tech startup SQUAKE, which provides carbon calculations for travel and logistics emissions, announced a new partnership with Carbonfuture. The partnership will allow SQUAKE to add durable CDR projects to its portfolio using Carbonfuture’s data-powered MRV system.

BluSky Carbon announced $1.94 million in sales and signed a 2-year $1.25 million off-take agreement with SQUAKE, with an option to expand to $1.6 million.

DAC company RepAir and EnEarth, which specializes in carbon storage and environmental services, announced a new partnership to capture and store CO₂ using RepAir's DAC technology in Greece. The project is expected to capture 3 million tonnes of CO2 annually in 2028.

Leading industrial biochar producer NetZero and social impact investor Oikocredit announced a partnership for a first-of-a-kind project finance scheme involving mid-size biochar production factories in rural areas of developing countries.

Kenya-based DAC company Octavia Carbon announced a new partnership with CEEZER to offer CO2 credits on the latter’s carbon marketplace platform.

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (OLCV), a subsidiary of Occidental, partnered with TAE Technologies to explore using TAE’s fusion technology for emissions-free power and heat in DAC facilities.

Capture6 and Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions announced a global collaboration agreement to deploy carbon dioxide removal facilities with integrated water management systems to address climate change.

NEG8 Carbon, Ireland’s first DAC company, partnered with the Walton Institute, an Ireland-based information and communications technologies research institute, to optimize its DAC technology using AI and machine learning.

Projects

[Image source: Equatic]

American energy technology and service provider Babcock & Wilcox announced plans to convert a former coal-fired plant in Michigan to a BECCS facility with the capacity to capture and store 550,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.

Equatic has partnered with Deep Sky to build North America's first commercial-scale ocean-based CDR plant. It will remove 109,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually and produce 3,600 tonnes of green hydrogen.

At its annual Carbon Removal Summit in Zurich, Climeworks highlighted its new technology's success in doubling CO2 capture capacity per module, halving energy use, extending material lifetime, and reducing costs by 50%.

Heirloom announced an investment in northwestern Louisiana to build two DAC facilities to remove nearly 320,000 tonnes of CO2 annually and create around 1,000 new clean energy jobs.

CarbonCapture Inc secured a lease to build the world’s largest DAC manufacturing facility while announcing its new Leo Series modular DAC system, designed for mass production. Each module can capture over 500 tonnes of CO2 annually, with the first modules to be deployed in 2025.

After passing a site audit, biochar developer Planboo announced that its project in Namibia has become the largest one in Africa to be certified by Puro.

Financing

[Image source: Pexels, Markus Winkler]

The Danish government recently announced that it will set aside $1.44 billion for a biochar carbon removal subsidy, while also becoming the first country in the world to introduce a carbon tax on livestock emissions.

Salesforce has committed to invest $25 million in CDR technology through Frontier. The funds will support carbon removal startups to accelerate the industry. This commitment is part of Salesforce's larger pledge to purchase $100 million of CDR credits by 2030.

Swiss carbon removal provider Neustark raised $69 million in a growth equity round led by Decarbonization Partners, a BlackRock and Temasek partnership, with participation from Blume Equity, to reinforce its mission to remove 1 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030.

DAC startup Sirona Technologies raised $6.4 million in its seed round, to scale up its DAC technology and deploy its first plant in Kenya. The investment round was co-led by LocalGlobe and XAnge.

Berlin-based climate tech company EcoLocked secured €4M in seed funding co-led by Matterwave Ventures and Climentum Capital, with participation from existing investors Counteract, SFO, Sabanci Building Solutions, and Voyagers.

The British Columbia Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE) announced an investment of $2 million in ocean-based CDR projects, most notably in Planetary Technologies and Coastal Carbon, to assess effectiveness and impact on coastal communities and marine environments.

Black & Veatch selected six startups for its CDR IgniteX CDR Accelerator. The six CDR startups that have been selected include Aeon Blue, Ebb Carbon, Elysia, Heimdal, Holocene, and Parallel Carbon.

DAC company Carbominer was named one of nine startups selected by Google for the Startups Ukraine Support Fund (SUSF). SUSF funds and mentors startups in Ukraine, laying the groundwork for post-war recovery.

Policy and Research

[Image source: Drax, Stockholm Exergi]

A new methodology jointly developed by renewable energy companies Drax and Stockholm Exergi was validated by DNV, the independent energy expert and assurance provider for the certification of net CDR delivered using bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

Isometric became the first carbon registry to publish a protocol for carbon removal through Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE), with Planetary Technologies as the first project developer to sign up.

CDR marketplace Supercritical launched live pricing and availability for global biochar projects on its platform, covering 80% of high-quality biochar solutions and promoting transparency in the carbon removal industry.

The U.S. DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory signed a 4-year MoU with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, to advance the underlying measurement science for DAC systems and research.

Carbon Standards launched a new Global Biochar C-Sink standard, which recognizes the stable part of the biochar as a geological carbon sink and uses the part degraded in the first centuries as a temporary sink to compensate for methane emissions.

Enhanced Weathering startup InPlanet published a new paper titled “A review of measurement for quantification of carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering in soil.” The paper aims to become a useful resource for those interested in Enhanced Weathering, diving into how carbon removal is measured.

The International Biochar Initiative and Hamerkop published a manual on Biochar Carbon Removal. This manual provides a roadmap for biochar producers, investors, and stakeholders on carbon removal certification, offering practical insights and comparisons to support project decisions.

Reports

[Image source: Drax, Stockholm Exergi]

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published a report titled “Boosting Demand for Carbon Dioxide Removal” which estimates that 6-10 Gt of residual CO₂ emissions will remain unabated and highlights the critical role of durable CDR in achieving net zero CO₂ emissions by 2050.

BCG and the German Association for Negative Emissions (DVNE) published a report exploring the economic potential of CDR for Europe and Germany. Findings estimate that the European CDR industry could grow to €220 Billion annually by 2050, creating up to 670,000 jobs.

The second edition of The State of Carbon Removal report was released. It offers a comprehensive overview of the carbon removal industry, with input from experts across several disciplines. The team has also developed an open-access data portal to track development in the field.

Carbonx Climate released a new report on CDR financing, titled “Bridging the CDR Financing Gap”. The report offers practical insights for CDR suppliers and financing partners to promote collaboration and innovation in scaling CDR deployment.

Carbon180 published a report titled “The Procurement Toolbox: Building Blocks for Carbon Removal Policy” outlining a strategic framework for the federal government to lead in carbon removal procurement, setting high standards and creating market certainty.

Leaderboard Updates

143,809 tonnes were sold by suppliers in June, marking a stark drop from May’s record-breaking total of 4,542,483 tonnes sold.

Ocean carbon removal company Running Tide announced the closure of its operations and has exited the market, citing a lack of demand for its carbon credits in the voluntary carbon markets. The company sold 27,830 tonnes of CDR and delivered 21,778 tonnes between 2020 and 2024.

Listed below is the June leaderboard for top suppliers:

Supplier Leaderboard

Purchaser Leaderboard

Events round-up - June 2024

[Image source: Patch]

Patch hosted a webinar to discuss the process behind the Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize and how buyers can use it as a blueprint to accelerate high-integrity carbon removal. The panel featured leaders from the D.O.E., Bain & Company, and Charm Industrial.

Climeworks hosted this year’s Carbon Removal Summit, its flagship event in Zurich. Business leaders, innovators, and advocates convened to explore the frontiers of carbon removal technology and the journey to reach gigaton scale.

The 3rd International Conference on Negative CO2 Emissions, hosted by the CO2RE Hub, took place in Oxford, bringing together researchers from around the world who are working on greenhouse gas removal (GGR). Read the X mega-thread on the conference by our co-founder Robert Höglund.

The Negative Emissions Summit 2024 was organized and hosted by the Negative Emissions Platform in Brussels, Belgium. The event aimed to educate policymakers, investors, media, and civil society on the critical importance of highly durable and permanent carbon removals.

OpenAir Collective convened a webinar featuring a diverse panel of ocean economy experts and practitioners to discuss factors that could position Florida as a major hub for carbon removal research and business in the coming years.

Check out the CDR Events Calendar to stay updated with upcoming CDR events in June and beyond.

CDR.fyi Updates and Research

New CDR.fyi Portal and Map Features: CDR Supplier Projects and Facilities:

Our biggest update this month, June, was the launch of a new feature that extends our data coverage to include CDR projects and facilities worldwide. In this article, we discuss the key benefits and use cases of the feature along with instructions on adding projects and facilities to our CDR map using the CDR.fyi Portal.

New Methods Classification at CDR.fyi:
This month, we rolled out a new classification system for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods, in our continued commitment to bring greater transparency to the ecosystem. The new classification reflects the latest in CDR technologies and methodologies and introduces a new "Storage Method" classification to improve data granularity and precision.
Introducing a New Category of Carbon Removal Contracts - Delivery Agreements:
In order to bring more transparency to carbon removal contracts, we introduced delivery agreements - a new category of CDR contracts. As a result, we have reclassified 1,122,450 tonnes of credit sales into delivery agreements, and our leaderboards will only display Credit Sales, providing a clearer market view of actual credit sales.
What the State of CDR Report Tells us about the Removal Market: In this article on the 2nd State of CDR Report , we have shared 4 key findings relating to the durable CDR market from the report. CDR.fyi co-founder Robert Höglund and collaborating writer Nadine Walsh were co-authors of Chapter 4 on the voluntary carbon markets (VCM).

CDR Trivia

Welcome to the CDR Market Trivia - a new section of this month's recap! Even if you have read the recap until here, this might be a good opportunity to test your knowledge of what transpired in the durable CDR market in June. Delve into some captivating facts and insights you may have missed, even if you’re the most ardent follower of all things CDR. Click here to get started with the CDR Market Trivia!

Stay connected

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