CDR Monthly Recap - March 2024

CDR Monthly Recap - March 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. From a biochar boom in the Global South to a new strategy to scale carbon removal in Europe, along with big partnerships and fundraises coming together - March was indeed a big month for CDR.

Read on to learn more about them below.

Partnerships and Agreements

Mexico-based The Next 150 and Microsoft announced a purchase agreement of 95,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal, making it the largest deal in biochar to date. This is Microsoft’s second purchase recently from Latin American CDR suppliers.

Continuing on the theme of Latin American biochar, Exomad Green and Senken announced a multi-year deal for 81,600 tons of CDR. This is the 2nd largest biochar carbon removal deal ever and the largest ever durable CDR deal to come out of South America.

The Next 150 entered into a 5-year agreement with Shell Environmental Products to supply 22,500 tons from its large-scale biochar production facility in Mexico. The deal also led to a key topic of discussion on the Carbon Removal Newsroom podcast.

Google announced its plans to commit at least $35 million worth of carbon removal credits in the year ahead. This comes as a pledge to match the US DOE’s initiative to invest $35 million to advance CDR technologies through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.

In a deal worth $2.4 million, direct air capture company (DAC) Climeworks and the LEGO Group announced that they have entered into a 9-year agreement to permanently remove CO2 from the air on its behalf. KIRKBI, the family-owned holding and investment company of the LEGO® brand, has also signed a $405,000 long-term agreement with Climeworks.

AT&T announced it will purchase carbon dioxide removal credits from 1PointFive's Direct Air Capture facility, STRATOS, in Texas. The facility, the largest of its kind, is designed to annually capture up to 500,000 metric tons of CO2.

Carbonx facilitated a purchase deal for 3,000 tons of CDR between consulting major Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Exomad Green, the world’s largest supplier of biochar.

Carbonfuture and Octavia Carbon have entered a partnership to design the world's first digital MRV system in DAC, representing a significant advancement in the carbon removal industry.

California-based DAC company Avnos has partnered with Deep Sky to construct and set up a Hybrid DAC Air Handling Unit (AHU) at Deep Sky Labs, Canada, the world’s first carbon removal innovation center. The unit will have the capacity to eliminate 450 tons of CO2 annually. This marks Avnos' first project outside of the United States.

Financing

Image source: CarbonCapture Inc.

CarbonCapture Inc., a US-based DAC company, raised $80 million in a Series A round, with investment from Prime Movers Lab, Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, Aramco Ventures, and Siemens Financial Services.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) announced an award of more than $50 million as part of its Regional Direct Air Capture (DAC) Hubs program to Project Cypress (Climeworks, Battelle, and Heirloom). Once completed, the hub will have the capacity to remove 1 million tons of CO2 per year.

German climate-tech company Novocarbo secured $27 million in growth funding to establish a pan-European infrastructure network of its net-zero solution. The investment round was led by SWEN Capital Partners.

Direct air capture company Mission Zero Technologies announced the closing of £21.8 million in Series A funding. The investment round saw participation from 2150, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, World Fund, Fortescue, and Siemens Financial Services.

Greenlyte, a leading European DAC start-up, closed a $11.5 million pre-series A round. The investment round saw participation from Earlybird Venture Capital, Green Generation Fund, and Carbon Removal Partners, amongst others.

Berkeley-based DAC startup AirMyne raised $6.9 million in seed funding. Some of the investors included Y Combinator, Alumni Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Impact Science Ventures, Another Brain, Wayfinder, Emles Advisors, and Soma Capital.

Policy and Research

Image source: International Biochar Initiative (IBI) and US Biochar Initiative (USBI)

The United States Department of Energy (U.S. DOE) released a Notice of Intent for a Voluntary CDR Purchasing Challenge, calling for organizations to purchase high-quality CDR credits. They aim to scale CDR purchases and promote transparency through a public leaderboard of purchases.

The 2023 Global Biochar Market Report, a first-of-its-kind report, was released by the International Biochar Initiative (IBI) and US Biochar Initiative (USBI). The report presents key findings from 1,000 respondents, highlighting the biochar industry's growth, priorities, challenges, and insights.

DAC Coalition and AlliedOffsets released the Global DAC Deployment Map - an interactive map that features locations of DAC facilities worldwide, up-to-date information in the field of DAC, and detailed insights into facilities. The two organizations and CDR.fyi have agreed to share all information on DAC facilities for their respective maps to promote transparency (for reference: the CDR.fyi Carbon Removal Map).

Carbon Gap released its CDR Strategy for Europe, offering 18 actionable policy recommendations for how the EU could support carbon removal over the next thirty years as part of an EU carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy.

The Enhanced Weathering Alliance (EWA) - a new alliance of enhanced weathering companies, was launched to advance EW for CDR. EWA members include InPlanet, Eion, Silica, Carbonaught, Carbony, The Rock Flour Company, Carbonfuture, Lithos, and Flux. EWA is launched with support from Cascade Climate and Carbon Drawdown Initiative, with the Carbon Business Council serving as the Secretariat.

Leaderboard Updates

Over 417,000 tons of CDR were sold by suppliers in March. Listed below is the March leaderboard for top suppliers:

Events round-up - March 2024

Image source: Carbon Gap

March was a big month for CDR events:

March began with a webinar discussing the recently Revised Oxford Offsetting Principles, hosted by CUR8 along with panelists from Oxford Net Zero, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and Arup. The recording of the webinar can be accessed on demand here.

The European Biochar Industry Consortium (EBI) conducted a webinar to launch the European Biochar Market Report 2023/2024. The webinar gleaned various insights and trends in biochar production in Europe and outlined ways in which governments can leverage biochar to achieve net-zero goals.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) hosted a series of webinars, where its Beyond Value Chain Mitigation (BVCM) lead, Scarlett Benson, provided an overview of their two new reports.

Carbon Gap held an event for the launch of its Carbon Removal Strategy for Europe, which had panel discussions from members across policy, research, corporate and governments. The recorded sessions can be viewed here.

The OpenAir Collective’s Episode 98 of This Is CDR featured Dr. David Hughes of Penn State University, who presented his work with PlantVillage and discussed how we could advance biochar carbon removal to gigatonne scale.

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

CDR.fyi Updates and Research

The Global South Takes the Lead in Biochar Carbon Credits

Our latest piece The Global South Takes the Lead in Biochar Carbon Credits highlights the growing prominence of the Global South in Biochar Carbon Removal (BCR) credits. 6 of the top 10 BCR suppliers since 2023, based out of countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, India, Kenya and Mexico, have already confirmed large deals with companies such as Microsoft and Shell.

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