What Is Biochar? A Carbon Removal Solution Gaining Ground

Key Takeaways

• The UK's new biomass Contracts for Difference framework will cut industrial wood pellet imports by slightly more than half starting in April 2027. As a result, US producers will be left competing for only 1.6 million GST, an 80% reduction in US-addressable volume, with no successor market locked in.
• US wood pellet producers who move now to upgrade sustainability credentials and build relationships in emerging markets will be best positioned to capture the next generation of demand; those who wait may find the most attractive offtake opportunities already structured around someone else's supply.
• Four domestic markets now present producers with new demand opportunities: cofiring, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), low-carbon steel, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Of these, BECCS for data centers is the strongest structural fit: hyperscalers need clean firm power, pellet mills need offtakers, and the feedstock infrastructure is already in place.

The Demand Cliff Is Real, and the Timeline Is Short

A pellet made in southern Mississippi this morning will be burned in a UK boiler about four weeks later. North America is on pace to ship more than 9 million green short tons (GST) of pellets to the UK each year—making the UK the world's largest consumer of wood pellets since 2018. The US Southeast is at the center of that supply chain: 28 large mills, 13.5 million GST of production capacity, rail spurs, export terminals, and bulk carriers, built almost entirely around UK demand.

However, the UK's new low-carbon Contracts for Difference (CfD) framework caps biomass power generators at a 27% annual capacity factor starting April 2027, down from roughly 64% today. When run hours fall by half, pellet demand follows. Existing subsidies expire in the first quarter of 2027, and the new CfD runs only to March 2031 with no commitment beyond that. Plant closures in Arkansas and Washington state, along with reduced output in Canada, are already early signals of supply chain contraction.

The Math of Who Gets Squeezed

The math is stark. By the second quarter of 2027, total annual UK pellet demand drops to 4.9 million GST. Of that:

• Approximately 2.3 million GST goes to captive, integrated UK supply chains.
• Approximately 1.0 million GST goes to Baltic suppliers, whose shipping times of one week or less become a decisive advantage as UK plants shift from baseload to dispatchable operation.

That leaves US producers competing for only 1.6 million GST. If Baltic suppliers capture more, US wood pellet exports to the UK could be effectively eliminated by 2031.

Sustainability qualification is also tightening. The new CfD cuts the supply-chain emissions ceiling from 55.6 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule (gCO₂e/MJ) to 36.6 gCO₂e/MJ. The framework assesses compliance mill by mill, not on a portfolio average. A cleaner mill cannot carry a dirtier sibling through the door.

The producers who understand this math now have roughly 18 months to position themselves for what comes next.

From Stranded Supply to New Markets

The US Southeast's wood basket is robust: abundant inventory, strong growth-to-removal ratios, and more available residues than ever. The infrastructure is in place. The question is whether the next generation of markets can be developed quickly enough to redeploy this supply before the infrastructure sits idle.

Four pathways stand out as the strongest options for redeploying US pellet supply: BECCS for data centers, low-carbon steel, SAF, and domestic cofiring. We have rigorously assessed the logistics economics, sustainability cases, and project development for each.

BECCS for Data Centers: The Strongest Structural Fit

BECCS as a power source for data centers is the most compelling match for the situation pellet producers now face. The timing, feedstock requirements, and buyer characteristics align closely in a way that few other emerging markets can match.

Hyperscalers, the large data center operators driving an unprecedented surge in electricity demand, are signing deals for nuclear, geothermal, and small modular reactors alongside natural gas and renewables. They are doing this because annual Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) are no longer sufficient to compensate for their scope 2 emissions, and they need clean, firm generation that can be matched to load on an hourly basis.

BECCS delivers exactly that. The Louisiana Green Fuels project—advanced by Strategic Biofuels and Relae (formerly Carbon Direct)—illustrates the model: regionally sourced forestry residues and sawmill waste generate 75 megawatts (MW) of firm electricity while sequestering over one million tonnes of CO₂ annually in deep saline formations. An ample supply of wood pellets creates a strategic opportunity for similar projects to move forward with certainty around feedstock processing, logistics, and costs.

The remaining commercial barrier is deal structure, not technology. No data center operator has yet signed an agreement to purchase both the electricity and carbon removal credits from a single BECCS plant. As scope 2 accounting tightens and domestic pellet supply becomes more readily available post-2027, the conditions for structuring the first such deal are improving fast.

"Pellet mills and data center developers have complementary problems: mills need offtakers, and data centers need local, dispatchable, clean power they can match to load on an hour-by-hour basis. BECCS is one of the few technologies that could solve both at once, and hyperscalers have shown they are willing to back early-stage clean firm power when the asset makes sense."

—Douglas Bryan, Senior Power and Energy Systems Modeler

Low-Carbon Steel: Certification Frameworks Are Arriving

Wood-derived biocarbon has a long-established niche in steelmaking. Brazil produces roughly 10% of its steel and 30% of its pig iron using charcoal from managed eucalyptus plantations—a proof of concept for biomass as a metallurgical input, if not a direct template for US producers. The plantations measurably lowered groundwater in producer regions of Minas Gerais, and charcoal's mechanical weakness relative to fossil coke has limited the model's reach beyond Brazil.

Current pilot projects use biomass in two roles. As a fuel, industrial trials have demonstrated 10% bio-coal co-injection without operational disruption, with reviews estimating that full replacement could cut blast-furnace CO₂ by around 27% per tonne of hot metal. As a reductant, biocoke is already being demonstrated at Outokumpu's pelletizing plant in Tornio, Finland. ArcelorMittal in Belgium and Tata Steel in India are running biomass pilots at tens of thousands of tonnes per year.

What makes this market worth serious attention now is the certification landscape. The Low Emission Steel Standard issued its first certifications in September 2025. The Global Steel Climate Council's Steel Climate Standard is under stakeholder review. In May 2025, Relae and Microsoft published Criteria for High-Quality Environmental Attribute Certificates in the Concrete and Steel Sectors. These frameworks allow producers to internalize carbon price and environmental attribute certificate (EAC) values, closing the cost gap against fossil coke that has historically constrained biocarbon demand.

Relae worked with Eramet, a global metals company pursuing biogenic materials as a substitute for fossil coke at its Norwegian smelters, to assess high-quality carbon dioxide removal methodologies and chart a path to generating and selling carbon credits from their decarbonization projects. Producers who align their sustainability credentials to these emerging standards now will be better positioned for offtake as commercial-scale demand grows.

"Steelmaker pilots and the first low-carbon steel certifications are opening green-steel offtake to wood pellets, though commercial-scale demand remains limited. The producers that thrive in this market will be those that reliably deliver pellets aligned with high-quality sustainability standards."

—Louisa Brotherson, Hybrid Decarbonization Scientist

Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Mandates Create a Durable Demand Signal

Wood-based SAF is technically feasible via gasification to syngas, followed by Fischer-Tropsch upgrading, a proven chemistry for converting syngas to liquid hydrocarbons. Yet, the commercial challenges are substantial: the International Civil Aviation Organization estimates capital costs exceeding US$1 billion for large facilities, and production costs of US$11–48 per gallon to distillate. 

The cautionary case is Fulcrum Bioenergy near Reno, Nevada, which attempted a Fischer-Tropsch process using municipal solid waste and appears to have failed due to a lack of rigorous pre-implementation testing and unrealistic timelines, a reminder that feedstock homogeneity matters enormously, and one area where pellets have a relative advantage.

Two structural dynamics make SAF worth serious attention despite those barriers. First, the European Union's (EU) SAF mandate, starting at 2% of jet fuel supply and ramping to 70% by 2050, carves out cellulosic biomass as the only qualifying feedstock once cooking oil supply is exhausted. The penalty structure in both the EU and UK creates strong demand regardless of SAF price: EU non-compliance penalties run roughly three times the price of SAF, and UK penalties can reach 13 times the cost of the fuel itself. Second, the alcohol-to-jet pathway offers a lower-capital entry point than Fischer-Tropsch, as demonstrated by Project Speedbird, a British Airways and LanzaJet collaboration targeting UK woody residues.

The near-term question is which routes have bankable offtake. Very few do yet, but the mandate structure suggests that window will shift rapidly.

"So far, facilities haven't scaled to the levels required to meet timeline demand. But the EU and UK mandate structures mean buyers are greatly incentivized to purchase SAF even at high prices, rather than pay non-compliance penalties."

—John Dees, Director, Fuels and Industrial Commodities

Domestic Cofiring: Achievable, but Not a Long-Term Anchor

Cofiring biomass with coal to produce electricity or heat is the most immediately achievable option. Most US coal-fired power plants could displace up to 10% of their input energy with raw or torrefied pellets, though plants would likely need fuel handling upgrades. Some state policies, such as Pennsylvania's Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act of 2004, support cofiring to meet renewable energy goals. However, there are no federal policies in the US that incentivize cofiring.

The case for cofiring as a long-term market is weak. The US coal fleet has contracted steadily for economic reasons—over 100 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired capacity retired between 2015 and 2025—and biomass cofiring is unlikely to make a coal plant more cost-competitive. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol's scope 2 guidance does not permit buyers to procure a "strip" of electricity representing the biomass-fired fraction of output from a cofired plant; instead, buyers must accept the average total emissions from the plant in their scope 2 inventory, which limits the value proposition for corporate buyers seeking to demonstrate clean energy procurement.

The more interesting version of this pathway combines cofiring with carbon capture and storage (CCS), a combination that creates a deeper-abatement value proposition and the kind of firm, dispatchable power that corporate buyers increasingly need.

"Cofiring is a proven step toward modest emissions reductions from coal-fired electricity, but it's hard to make the economic case for it when compared to applications that command price premiums for deeper climate abatement."

—A.J. Simon, Director of Industrial Decarbonization

Sustainability Is Now the Qualification Gate

Each of these markets is more discerning about sustainable biomass sourcing than the UK power sector was a decade ago. That shift will not reverse.

US Southeast wood has real potential for high-integrity sustainability credentials, particularly in softwood residues. But it also carries downside risks when sourcing from natural stands. Through work with producers, buyers, and project developers across these markets, we have found that four questions now drive every serious procurement conversation:

1. Does the supply chain have verifiable governance and chain-of-custody transparency?
2. Does sourcing respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities?
3. Is the wood coming from regions where forest carbon stocks are stable or growing, and not from protected areas or primary forest?
4. Is sourced biomass a by-product of non-energy uses, and not the primary silviculture driver?

Producers who can answer yes to all four, and support those answers with data, are more likely to access these emerging markets. Those who cannot will find it harder to compete for offtake.

For a detailed framework on how these principles translate into contract language and certification requirements, see the 2025 Sustainable Forest Biomass Sourcing for CDR: A Buyer's Guide.

The Window Is Open, but Not Indefinitely

The US Southeast wood basket is well-positioned for the markets described here. The infrastructure is in place. What producers still need to build is the market positioning, sustainability documentation, and offtake relationships to go with it.

The producers who move now will have a meaningful head start. Those who wait for certainty may find that the most attractive offtake opportunities have already been structured around someone else's supply.

Learn more about Relae's work on SAF mandates, steel decarbonization, and sustainable biomass sourcing. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens to US wood pellet exports when the UK's new biomass rules take effect?

Starting April 2027, the UK's signed Contracts for Difference agreement caps subsidized biomass generation at a 27% capacity factor, roughly half of today's levels. That's expected to cut total UK pellet demand to about 4.9 million GST a year, leaving only around 1.6 million GST available to US exporters.

Is BECCS for data centers a proven market, or still emerging?

The underlying technology is credible, and the Louisiana Green Fuels project already demonstrates it at commercial scale. However, the deal structure isn't yet proven. No hyperscaler has signed a single contract for both electricity and carbon removal credits from one BECCS plant, so this market is emerging rather than established.

How does low-carbon steel demand compare to sustainable aviation fuel as a market for pellet producers?

Steel offers nearer-term certification frameworks (the Low Emission Steel Standard began issuing certifications in 2025) but limited commercial-scale volume so far. SAF has a stronger long-run demand signal thanks to EU and UK blending mandates and steep non-compliance penalties, but requires far higher capital investment to enter.

What should a wood pellet producer look for when evaluating a new market?

The four sourcing questions that now gate access across all these markets are: verifiable chain-of-custody, respect for Indigenous and local community rights, sourcing from stable or growing forest carbon stocks (not primary forest), and biomass that's a by-product of non-energy uses rather than the primary driver of harvest.

Key Takeaways

• The Nasdaq Carbon Issuance Calendar, a new data platform, provides carbon removal buyers and suppliers with standardized information on future offtake availability, indicative pricing, and project maturity. The platform was developed in collaboration with Relae, formerly Carbon Direct.
• The Carbon Issuance Calendar addresses the fragmentation and transparency problems of the voluntary carbon market by centralizing standardized project data and embedding our scientific diligence framework, built over 900 project reviews, giving buyers delivery-risk insight that no registry or marketplace offers today.
• The Carbon Issuance Calendar is an important early step, not the whole journey: it shows buyers what durable tonnes exist and allows them to compare projects with apples-to-apples data. 
• Buyers can move from the Carbon Issuance Calendar into technical diligence, contracting, and project assurance with Relae’s advisory team. Suppliers can register to connect with buyers who are ready to engage.

Carbon Removal Project Data Has a Visibility Problem

If you're sourcing durable carbon removal credits, you may run into a familiar wall: project data scattered across dozens of developer websites, presented in inconsistent formats, with no easy way to compare one project against another. If you're a project developer, you face the mirror image of that problem: fielding individual requests for proposals, with no central place to showcase your available tonnes.

Get this wrong, and buyers may end up counting on carbon removal that never shows up - the delivery risk bugbear.

Between 2022 and 2024, high-durability engineered carbon removal made up just 2 percent of all carbon credit issuances. They remain in short supply, particularly the high-quality supply corporate buyers need. The gap is set to widen: our 2026 State of the Voluntary Carbon Market report found that more than 80% of the 2030 high-durability carbon removal projects are at risk of stalling and failing without additional offtake and financing commitments.

The Nasdaq Carbon Issuance Calendar, developed by Nasdaq in collaboration with Relae, offers an important first step toward addressing this information gap.

What Is the Nasdaq Carbon Issuance Calendar?

The Carbon Issuance Calendar is a centralized, accessible dashboard where carbon removal buyers and suppliers view standardized project data: future credit availability, indicative pricing, and project delivery status, all in one place. 

The Nasdaq Carbon Issuance Calendar combines structured, developer-provided project data with project maturity assessment informed by Relae’s assessment framework and technical diligence. This helps users understand future CDR availability, indicative pricing, and potential project delivery risk through a single platform.

This expertise didn't appear overnight. It comes from sitting across the table with developers, stress-testing their science, mapping their delivery timelines against reality, and helping them show up to buyers as credible partners. The result is a track record that gives the framework embedded in the Carbon Issuance Calendar its depth. It's a starting point, built for buyers and suppliers to find each other on the basis of consistent, comparable information, using international class financial and information infrastructure.

How Buyers Should Use the Nasdaq Carbon Issuance Calendar

Today, if you're trying to procure durable carbon removal credits, you have no single place to start. You have to visit individual developer sites, request information through scattered channels, and compare projects that present data in entirely different formats before diligence has even begun. In many cases, you are comparing apples to oranges - different kinds of CDR projects with different durabilities, risks, and overall quality. 

The Carbon Issuance Calendar provides a central starting point. You can view future credit availability, compare indicative pricing across projects, and begin assessing options without contacting each supplier one by one.

More importantly, the Carbon Issuance Calendar frames the data. Our scientists developed a delivery-oriented lens, built from reviewing over 900 carbon removal projects, drawing on the same rigor behind our Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal, which we develop annually with Microsoft.

How Suppliers Reach Buyers Through the Carbon Issuance Calendar

If you're a project developer, the Nasdaq Carbon Issuance Calendar tackles visibility, one of the most persistent barriers to market access. You can list available tonnes, display indicative pricing, and reach a global audience of corporate and financial buyers at no cost.

The timing matters. Many first-of-a-kind engineered carbon removal projects are preparing to break ground and need bankable offtake agreements to secure financing before they can do so (a key aspect of CDR 2.0). Our analysis of approximately 140 high-durability carbon removal project developers found scale-up plans for 30 million tonnes of supply per year. Reaching that potential will take real demand: committed forward offtake, increased project equity investment, and access to lending. 

Register now: you'll be positioned to connect to buyers actively looking to engage.

How Does the Carbon Issuance Calendar Differ From a Carbon Credit Registry or Carbon Removal Marketplace?

The Carbon Issuance Calendar solves a distinct, early-stage problem. It gives buyers and suppliers a centralized place to find each other and compare options against standardized information, something neither a registry nor a marketplace is built to do.

For a closer look at how registries differ and what you should weigh when navigating them, read our Navigating Carbon Credit Registries report.

Scientific Diligence Turns Visibility Into Confidence

Standardized data tells you what exists. Scientific diligence tells you what's worth pursuing. 

Relae’s scientists do that work every day. Our experts apply rigorous pathway-specific criteria to live projects, evaluating delivery risk and status, and identifying where questions remain is the core of what we bring to the carbon removal market.

The Carbon Issuance Calendar puts an accessible version of that expertise at the top of the procurement funnel. It’s for everyone in the market - you don't need to be a carbon removal scientist to use it. This snapshot allows you to compare projects against each other, giving you a meaningful starting point before deeper diligence begins. 

Want to go deeper on a specific project? Relae’s technical diligence team picks up right where the Carbon Issuance Calendar leaves off.

What Carbon Removal Projects Are on the Carbon Issuance Calendar Today?

The Carbon Issuance Calendar currently features engineered and hybrid carbon removal projects: direct air capture, biochar, enhanced rock weathering, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. These high-durability pathways offer permanence on the order of hundreds to thousands of years.

Many of these projects are at an inflection point: they’re ready to scale but dependent on committed offtake to unlock financing. The Calendar serves their needs, and the buyer’s needs, together.

Nature-based carbon removals have their own criteria and market dynamics. They may appear in a separate segment of the Carbon Issuance Calendar down the line.

From the Carbon Issuance Calendar to Completed Carbon Removal Procurement

If you're building or refining a carbon removal procurement strategy, the Carbon Issuance Calendar is the right place to start. 

From there, you can choose to work with the Relae advisory team to support every later stage: technical diligence on specific projects, contracting and negotiation support, ongoing project assurance, and access to curated carbon credit sourcing. The Carbon Issuance Calendar surfaces the market; we help you navigate it, connecting you with the right developers, on the right terms, with the scientific confidence to move forward.

Moving from commitment to delivery takes structural change across the market, too—our CDR 2.0 white paper lays out the five pillars we see as essential to getting engineered and hybrid carbon removal projects built and delivering.

Key Takeaways

• Emissions cuts alone are not happening fast enough to meet global climate goals. Direct air capture (DAC) removes carbon dioxide (CO₂) that is already in the atmosphere. It has become one of the fastest-growing carbon removal approaches even as it stays capital-intensive.
• DAC's core advantage is flexibility. Because the atmosphere fully mixes within about two weeks, a DAC facility can be sited almost anywhere with clean power and CO₂ storage and still deliver the same climate benefit.
• DAC investment has grown to roughly US$2.2 billion across 37 specialized companies since 2021. Per-tonne costs (currently US$500–1,000 or more) remain the technology's central barrier to scale.
• US federal support for DAC is still unsettled. The US Department of Energy cut its regional DAC hub program from a planned US$3.5 billion to roughly US$1.2 billion between October 2025 and April 2026. This is a signal that deployment funding, not the underlying science, is DAC's biggest near-term risk.

What Is Direct Air Capture?

Direct air capture (DAC) works by sucking in air, filtering it to remove CO₂ that has built up over time and still sits in the atmosphere. To be effective, DAC must draw a lot of air into separating equipment like filter banks or cooling towers. This is similar to the small-scale systems that have scrubbed CO₂ from air in spacecraft and submarines for decades. From there, CO₂ filtering typically involves a chemical process that binds the CO₂ for release later. While the most commonly used chemical compounds in this process are liquid solvents or solid sorbents, other chemical, electrical, and physical processes could also work.

After the filtering process, the captured CO₂ is usually stored in one of two ways. The most important is geological storage, which keeps CO₂ out of the air and oceans indefinitely in deep geological formations (typically a mile down or more) and offers the clearest climate benefits. The second is storing the CO₂ in products like concrete, which offers clearer commercial benefits. A new generation of mineralization projects is expanding this second pathway, turning captured CO₂ into building materials rather than only storing it underground. In addition, CO₂ can be recycled into fuels and chemicals, which prevents net-new CO₂ from being released but does not count as a carbon removal solution since these materials are eventually used, releasing the captured CO₂ back to the atmosphere.

The Advantages of Direct Air Capture

DAC has many advantages as a CO₂ removal approach. First and foremost, it's scalable. In effect, there are no practical limits to our ability to scrub CO₂ from the sky or store it in deep geological formations around the world. This means scaling can be fast and removals profound.

It's straightforward. The devices remove CO₂ from the air, a meter measures it, and operators store and monitor that CO₂. It's clearly additional (meaning it only happens with financial and human intervention), easily verified, and durable (stored for many hundreds of years or more), meeting the bar set by our own Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal.

It has a small physical footprint. Typical DACe systems do the carbon removal work of trees with 1,000–2,000 times less space. This leaves more room for conservation, agriculture, rewilding, and other important work.

It can be done anywhere with low-carbon energy and CO₂ storage options. Globally, our atmosphere mixes fully every two weeks, meaning that CO₂ released in China or Australia arrives over the US (and vice versa) in this amount of time. Because of this, DAC facilities can be sited anywhere and still have a climate benefit—as long as there is sufficient clean energy available and options for CO₂ storage or use are nearby. This reduces competition for land and provides opportunities for economic development in regions with the right resources.

Finally, and most critically, DAC is a backstop technology. While reducing emissions remains the top priority, there are certain types of emissions that are either very hard or very expensive to abate. The last fraction of hard-to-abate emissions can be managed through DAC, effectively capping global costs to reach net-zero emissions. In fact, the more rapidly DAC scales and deploys, the less total energy and cost are needed to achieve key climate goals.

Challenges and Concerns of Direct Air Capture

Like all climate mitigation approaches, DAC has challenges. The primary challenge today is cost. Today's large-scale systems cost roughly US$500–1,000 or more per tonne of CO₂ removed, depending on the technology and site, though several developers are targeting US$100–150 per tonne over the next 10 years. Although the costs will come down over time through deployment and wider adoption, today's high costs are a barrier to investment and deployment.

Another challenge is around the energy requirements associated with DAC. Pulling one million tonnes per year of CO₂ out of the air requires roughly 200–300 megawatts of zero-carbon energy (a combination of heat and electricity). Given the limited supply of zero-carbon energy available today, there is a valid question about whether this is the best use of that resource today.

Finally, there is the question of environmental risks and community burdens of DAC. Experience to date suggests that the total environmental burdens and consequences of this pathway are among the lowest of any clean energy and climate technology. But since DAC systems involve heavy equipment and chemicals, questions about the full environmental risks and burdens to communities remain, especially given its limited commercial deployment. Although most DAC systems will be sited in remote locations, not near communities, and pose no serious environmental risks, reasonable concerns must be addressed before permitting and building future DAC projects.

Why the Excitement Now?

Although current climate science and added urgency from organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have driven interest in DAC, other important advances have fed broad interest and excitement about its potential. Since 2017, DAC technology has matured greatly, including the deployment and operation of many projects around the world. Costs have dropped, new pathways have opened, and private investment in DAC-specific companies has reached roughly US$2.2 billion across 37 companies since 2021. 

Two large facilities illustrate where deployment stands today. Climeworks' Mammoth plant in Iceland has been operating since May 2024, although not at full capacity. Occidental's Stratos plant in Texas remains delayed past its most recent 2026 second quarter target due to a component issue, with no confirmed new startup date as of this writing. Both facilities carry substantial commercial offtake agreements from aviation, energy, insurance, and tech companies, agreements that continue to hold even as construction timelines have slipped.

In part, interest results from new policy advancements. In the US, the Inflation Reduction Act's 45Q tax credit, maintained under the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, currently provides US$180 per tonne for DAC paired with dedicated geologic storage, with added parity for utilized CO₂. The Department of Energy's Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs program, originally planned at US$3.5 billion, was cut back sharply in an October 2025 review. It was then partially restored in April 2026 when the Department of Energy confirmed its two flagship projects, Project Cypress in Louisiana and the South Texas DAC Hub, would proceed. The program's total is now expected to be near US$1.2 billion. In addition, California has amended its Low-Carbon Fuel Standard to allow DAC as a compliance mechanism, and the US Department of Energy has explored a pilot program to purchase valid, durable carbon dioxide removal, including DAC. Recently, the Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act was introduced to Congress, which would require the Secretary of Energy to remove CO₂ directly from ambient air or seawater.

Other programs around the world reflect this growing interest. In the UK and EU, governments have promised CO₂ removal purchases this decade, which will likely include DAC. Research programs have begun in Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan, and China. Developing nations increasingly see DAC as a potential new industry and hope to take advantage of their natural resources to expand energy access while being paid to remove CO₂ from the air and oceans.

The Future of Direct Air Capture

I'm pleased to have played a small role in DAC's new prominence. I've had the good fortune of being at DAC project groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings, led the first-ever government grants program for DAC, worked with scientists to develop new DAC technologies, published analysis over a decade ago on the need for DAC, and testified before the US Congress on the benefits and needs of DAC on three separate occasions. Based on my experience in DAC over the last 16 years, I believe that smart investment, policy, deployment, and community engagement will convert the promise of DAC into thousands of projects. These projects will help avoid the worst outcomes of climate change and restore some natural balance to the world. With federal support now concentrated on fewer, better-resourced flagship projects, rather than spread across two dozen early-stage hubs, the DAC field is being pushed toward fewer high-profile delays and more repeatable, bankable deployments.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does direct air capture differ from capturing carbon at an industrial site? 

Industrial, or point-source, capture removes CO₂ at a smokestack, where concentrations are high. Direct air capture removes CO₂ that is already spread throughout the open atmosphere. DAC facilities can operate almost anywhere with available clean power and storage, not only next to a specific emitter.

Is direct air capture actually operating today, or is it still experimental? 

Direct air capture is operating today; it is not just experimental. Climeworks' Mammoth plant in Iceland has been running since May 2024, and dozens of smaller facilities are active worldwide. However, the largest US projects, including Occidental's Stratos plant in Texas, are still working through startup delays. Once it begins operating, DAC will be fully commercial, although limited in deployment.

How much does it cost to remove one tonne of CO₂ with direct air capture? 

Current large-scale direct air capture systems cost roughly US$500–1,000 or more per tonne of CO₂ removed, depending on the technology and facility site. Several developers are targeting costs of US$100–150 per tonne later this decade, though that has not yet been demonstrated at commercial scale and is likely to take 10 years or more to achieve

Does using direct air capture reduce the need to cut emissions? 

No. Direct air capture is a backstop for emissions that are difficult or costly to eliminate outright, not a substitute for cutting emissions in the first place. Reducing emissions remains a priority; DAC addresses both what is left over (residual emissions) and what’s already in the air and oceans.

Key Takeaways

• High-quality carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects require robust project management and oversight to deliver credits on time and at the promised volume; delivery risk is a distinct concern that quality standards alone don't catch.
• The sixth edition of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal is the first to provide an approach to evaluating both credit quality and delivery risk, adding a new delivery risk appendix built around the TECOP framework: technical, economic, commercial, organizational, and political risk.
• The 2026 Criteria provides a framework for developers, investors, and buyers to evaluate both project quality and delivery risk.
• This year's update draws on 170 new diligence reports from 2025 and the input of more than 60 subject matter experts, building on a foundation of six years of lessons from professional diligence across hundreds of real-world CDR projects.

The Criteria Create a Shared Standard for Credit Quality

Relae (formerly Carbon Direct) first launched the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal (the Criteria) in collaboration with Microsoft in 2021 to help rapidly and justly scale the development of high-quality carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credits. The market didn't yet have a shared definition of what "high-quality" meant, so we laid out transparent, science-based benchmarks that gave developers, investors, and buyers a common foundation to work from. Every year since, we have gone back and sharpened those benchmarks so that they keep pace with the quickly evolving industry.

But a shared definition of quality doesn't guarantee the delivery of credits as planned. The 2026 edition is the first to tackle that gap directly, pairing the Criteria's quality benchmarks with a new framework for evaluating delivery risk.

The Six Principles of High-Quality Carbon Removal

The Criteria defines six science-based principles that apply across engineered, hybrid, and nature-based CDR approaches:

• Social harms, benefits, and environmental justice: The extent to which the project prevents new social harms to people and communities, reduces existing harms, and provides meaningful benefits distribution.
• Environmental harms and benefits: The extent to which the project minimizes and mitigates environmental harms, as well as provides environmental benefits.
• Additionality and baselines: The evidence that the project’s carbon removal would not have occurred without carbon finance.
• Measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV): The ability to accurately quantify carbon removal in a repeatable and verifiable way, and to develop a plan for long-term monitoring of the project.
• Durability: The likelihood that removed carbon remains stored over time, with mechanisms in place to mitigate reversal risk.
• Leakage: The extent to which project activities cause increased emissions elsewhere.

These principles provide a consistent foundation for carbon removal procurement, evaluation, and project benchmarking.

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Supporting the Delivery of High-Quality CDR Credits

"Projects must work better operationally and be more commercial. Quality and delivery risk shape a project's risk profile at every point in its life, and this edition of the Criteria is the first to give buyers a way to judge both at once." Dr. Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist, Relae

Designing projects to meet high-quality CDR criteria is only part of the challenge. Effective project planning, management, and execution are also essential to ensure that high-quality CDR tonnes successfully reach the market as planned. As discussed in CDR 2.0: Five Pillars of Successful Project Deployment and Delivery, managing delivery risk requires developers, investors, and buyers to understand the risks that can affect project success and align on how these risks are assessed and mitigated.

To support this alignment, the 2026 Criteria introduced a new Delivery Risk Appendix, which establishes a common framework and language for identifying and evaluating key delivery risks for the first time. Drawing on our broader observations of the carbon removal market and established approaches to project risk management, the appendix highlights common delivery risks across two broad CDR project types: open systems and closed systems. It organizes these risks into five categories: technical, economic, commercial, organizational, and political factors, also known as the TECOP framework. 

The TECOP Framework for CDR Delivery Risk

• Technical delivery risks are associated with the technical feasibility of the project design, implementation, and long-term operation of the project
• Economic delivery risks are associated with the project’s financing structure, financial modeling assumptions, and expenditure profile
• Commercial delivery risk reflects the extent to which a project's purchase agreements, supply arrangements, and key contractual relationships are secured or well-advanced. 
• Organizational delivery risks center on the project developer's capacity and capability to successfully plan, execute, and manage a project of the appropriate size and complexity.  
• Political delivery risks are associated with governance, policies, and potential changes in regulatory environments, as well as the local communities’ perception of and willingness to participate in projects.

New Additions to the 2026 Criteria

Since publishing the 2025 Criteria, Relae has conducted an additional 170 diligence reports across established and emerging CDR pathways, ranging from reforestation and enhanced rock weathering (ERW) to direct air capture (DAC). To date, less than 10% of all 900+ projects the team has reviewed have met the bar for high-quality. These diligence efforts, together with insights from market analysis and ongoing synthesis of the latest scientific and technical literature, have deepened our understanding of how CDR project quality has evolved over the past year. 

The 2026 Criteria leverage these insights and the expertise of more than 60 subject matter experts to reflect advances across the CDR industry and address key weaknesses that remain in the market across all pathways. 

A few of the most significant updates to the Criteria include:

Addition of Direct Counterparty Considerations: Direct counterparties are the organizations that developers partner with, and are structurally dependent on, to generate credits. This can include: 

• Primary feedstock providers (e.g., mines, biomass providers, tree nurseries)
• Major implementing partners (e.g., local implementation partners, base facilities, transportation and storage providers, major product offtakers)
• Land owners that make up a significant proportion of project land 

To reflect the key role that direct counterparties play in high-quality credit generation, developers must conduct diligence and disclose on their direct counterparties to demonstrate that they are not causing social or environmental harm.

Increased Rigor for Enhanced Rock Weathering Projects: Over the past year, ERW’s presence in the CDR market has grown substantially, and so too has the market’s understanding of the corresponding scientific and technical rigor required to deliver high-quality tonnes. The 2026 Criteria raised the bar for how ERW projects:

• Measure and prove their carbon removal claims
• Mitigate risks related to potentially toxic elements (PTEs)
• Incorporate more sophisticated farmer protections and benefits 

Projects now have to back up their numbers with multiple physical field measurements, not just computer models; and they must now track and account for every significant loss pathway, from plants taking up minerals to carbon escaping from rivers and oceans.

Use of Dynamic Baselines for ARR Projects: ARR projects are increasingly using dynamic baselines to provide a more accurate reflection of the counterfactual scenario (e.g., what would have happened in the absence of the project). This is reflected in the 2026 Criteria with a requirement that ARR projects, with the exception of agroforestry projects, use dynamic baselines with statistically matched controls.

What’s Next?

The 2026 Criteria create a clear, science-driven framework for both designing and delivering measurable, just, and durable carbon removal. However, the Criteria cannot ensure high-quality tonnes reach the market on its own; good criteria do not replace robust diligence. To put these criteria into practice, we encourage developers, standard-setting bodies, buyers, investors, and policymakers to consider how the Criteria can be used to inform their role in enabling the carbon market to deliver high-quality tonnes and to engage in deep diligence and ongoing monitoring over the life of a project.

This edition of the Criteria reflects what we have learned over the past year, but our work is not done. We will continue to update it so that it remains a living document that evolves with the science and the market. To do so effectively, it must be a collaborative effort; we welcome input from carbon market actors, academia, and communities.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who publishes the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal, and how often is it updated?

Relae (formerly Carbon Direct) first published the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal with Microsoft in 2021 and have updated it every year since. The 2026 edition reflects six years of lessons from real-world project diligence and advances in climate science.

What are the six principles of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal?

The Criteria define six science-based principles that apply across all CDR pathways: social harms, benefits, and environmental justice; environmental harms and benefits; additionality and baselines; measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV); durability; and leakage.

What CDR pathways does the Criteria cover?

The Criteria include pathway-specific criteria across nine CDR pathways: afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation (ARR); mangrove forestation; improved forest management (IFM); soil carbon; enhanced rock weathering (ERW) in croplands; biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS); abiotic marine CDR; carbon mineralization; and direct air capture (DAC).

What is delivery risk in carbon removal?

Delivery risk is the likelihood that a project generates credits on the timeline and at the quantity committed to buyers. It's a distinct concern from credit quality: even a high-quality project can fail to deliver as planned because of technical, economic, commercial, organizational, or political risk, the five categories the Criteria's TECOP framework evaluates. The 2026 Criteria's new Delivery Risk Appendix gives developers, investors, and buyers a shared benchmark for identifying and managing these risks before they derail a project.

What's the relationship between carbon removal credit quality and delivery risk?

Credit quality and delivery risk are distinct but interrelated. A project that fails to deliver credits as planned reduces the availability of high-quality CDR tonnes in the market, and weaknesses in credit quality can themselves increase delivery risk by creating buyer uncertainty or limiting access to project financing. The 2026 Criteria provides a framework for evaluating both quality and delivery risk.

Key Takeaways

• Trust in carbon credits remains low. In part, this is because many mistakenly treat every credit type as interchangeable.
• Reduction, removal, and avoidance credits are verified against fundamentally different baselines, so credit quality must be judged based on type and project specifics, never with one blanket standard.
• The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market's Core Carbon Principles now give buyers an independent bar to check against, including 44 methodologies approved across 13 eligible crediting programs, as of August 2026.
• Removal credits still make up only 5–6% of the market, even as compliance-driven demand accelerates, per our 2026 State of the Voluntary Carbon Market report.

Three Types of Carbon Credits: Reduction, Removal, and Avoidance

A carbon credit is a mechanism that allows one party to compensate another for their carbon mitigation activities. Based on their net emissions impact, there are three types of carbon credits: reduction, removal, and avoidance. 

1. Reduction credits reflect activities that decrease greenhouse gas emissions, compared to prior practices. 
2. Removal credits reflect activities that remove carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere and oceans and lock it away for decades, centuries, or millennia.
3. Avoidance credits reflect activities that prevent greenhouse gases from being emitted in the first place. For all three types, credits are assessed and issued by measuring or estimating how much carbon is reduced, removed, or avoided as a result of a credit purchase and its associated activities.

While credits are assessed in different ways depending on the type, one of the most important indicators of quality is a project's baseline - the emissions that would be present in a business-as-usual scenario, without action being taken to reduce, remove, or avoid them. Project developers use baselines as a means of comparison to assess the net emissions impact of a project. 

• Baselines must be accurately set and data-driven. 
• Emissions impacts of a project must be correctly calculated against its baseline. 

Reduction, removal, and avoidance projects involve very different activities and, for some types of projects, it may be more challenging to establish an accurate baseline. However, without accurate baselines, climate impacts cannot be reliably determined.

Across the voluntary carbon market, Reduction credits represent roughly 20% of the purchases. Removal credits represent roughly 5% of the purchases. The remainder, roughly 75%, are avoidance credits.

Carbon Reduction Credits

Carbon reduction must drive the majority of our push to net zero, but translating carbon reduction activities into carbon credits that can be purchased is challenging. Examples of activities represented by carbon reduction credits include reducing fossil fuel use by improving fuel efficiency, or programs that reduce the methane that is generated from farms or municipal waste processing. 

Reduction credits are measured and quantified against the baseline emissions of an existing technology or process. Some reduction credits are easy to track and measure, such as efficiency investments or destruction of fugitive methane. Other projects are more complex. For example, low-emission cookstove projects in developing regions rely on tracking patterns of cookstove use and quantifying emission factors for various fuel and stove combinations, both of which are hard to do. The result, as studies have shown, sometimes leads to overcrediting in reduction projects. 

Superpollutant Credits

One class of reduction credit, superpollutant credits, has garnered recent attention. These credits involve the reduction of non-CO2 greenhouse gases with very strong radiative forcing, such as methane, nitrous oxides, or fluorinated gases like chlorofluorocarbons. These are not a substitute for CO2 removal, but can provide rapid and profound reductions at modest cost. Many different kinds of superpollutants exist in today’s market, worth roughly $60M today. Recent purchases by tech companies and others have highlighted the potential of these reduction credits.

Another class of reduction credit, transition credits, involves the deliberate early closure of emitting assets like coal-fired power plants or heavy manufacturing facilities. Early efforts by governments, banks, and companies around the world under the Just Energy Transition Partnership agreement jump-started transition credits as a concept at COP26. The Kinetic Coalition, in partnership with many groups including Relae, has launched work to bring transition credits to market with several pilot efforts, including closing a coal plant in the Philippines 10 years early. 

Carbon Removal Credits

Projects that remove carbon come from a diverse set of solutions, from nature-based solutions like reforestation, to hybrid solutions like biochar, to engineered solutions such as direct air capture and storage. Roughly 5–6% of credits on the voluntary carbon market today are classified as removals, up from roughly 3% a few years ago.

Carbon removal baselines are determined differently depending on whether a project uses an engineered, hybrid, or nature-based solution. For engineered removals, the baseline is zero, because no carbon removal was occurring in the absence of the project. The credited removal will be the difference between the quantity of carbon removed and any emissions that occur to facilitate the removal (determined through a carbon credit life cycle assessment). Baselines for hybrid and nature-based removals can be more challenging. In natural systems, changes in carbon stocks created by removals must be measured and approximated over time, and creditable removals represent the additional carbon removed by the intervention relative to the baseline (e.g., fallow land versus a reforestation project).

Another important consideration for carbon removal credits is project durability, a measure of the likely duration of carbon storage. Stored carbon can re-enter the atmosphere either through deliberate actions (e.g., deforestation) or accidental ones (e.g., wildfires). Nature-based removals are especially vulnerable to being re-released and are usually considered less durable (i.e., stored for less than 50 years). In contrast, engineered solutions offer high durability (i.e., stored for hundreds to thousands of years), and hybrid removals also offer durability periods that are typically longer than those of nature-based removals.

While less durable, nature-based solutions are effective, cost-effective, and widely available today. They made up over 95% of all carbon removal credits issued in 2025. Engineered and hybrid solutions are more expensive and scarce but offer longer durability. Prices of engineered carbon removal are likely to fall with innovation and increased market participation, but are currently much higher than most nature-based credits. With SBTi's finalized Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0, this balance is likely to shift. Large companies must now purchase removal credits covering 1–100% of scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 emissions between 2035 and their net-zero year, with an explicit focus on more durable CO2 removal credits.

Carbon Avoidance Credits

Examples of carbon avoidance include avoiding deforestation that would result in the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or clean energy projects that avoid the release of emissions from burning fossil fuels in possible facilities. This can be confusing, since many avoided credits are called reduction credits, as is the case with projects under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) framework. Avoidance credits make up roughly 75% of certified credits on the voluntary carbon market today - an overwhelming majority - in part due to high availability and low price. 

Avoiding emissions is an important goal with numerous environmental, climate, community, and other benefits. Relae works with clients and customers across industries on developing and implementing strategies to avoid emissions within their value chain. However, there are significant challenges with the way that many carbon avoidance credits are created.

• Carbon avoidance credits are based on an estimate of the emissions that might have existed had a project not been funded. Because it is impossible to observe what might have happened in the absence of a project, carbon avoidance estimates are determined by considering historic data and contextual information. Statistical models can be used to create a presumed baseline that represents what would have happened in the absence of the project.

• Because the baseline is not observed in an avoided emissions project, there is uncertainty in calculating the number of carbon credits it produces. If the baseline is not set accurately, a project can overcredit. While the lack of a directly observed and measured baseline means avoidance credits will always have some degree of uncertainty, high-quality avoidance projects present compelling evidence to support their baselines, greatly reducing uncertainty. 

New datasets, statistical techniques, and methodologies are providing opportunities for developing avoidance credits with more certainty. Three REDD+ methodologies have now cleared the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) assessment for its Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), a concrete sign that credit quality standards for avoidance projects are maturing.

Defining and Standardizing Quality in the Voluntary Carbon Market

Carbon credits are intended to reduce, remove, or avoid emissions. They pay for an environmental service that must be delivered. Companies working to generate climate benefits through credit purchases must grapple with the differences and uncertainties of credit quality to ensure that the intended benefits are realized. 

While high-quality credits exist for all types of projects, a rich understanding of the differences in methodologies, geographies, physics, and ecology is required to identify high-quality projects and understand varied certainty, durability, and risk terms. Identifying high-quality carbon projects demands extensive and project-specific diligence beyond carbon market certification.

Our own diligence work reveals that high-quality projects can be hard to find. Fewer than 10% of the carbon removal projects we assessed for our 2026 State of the Voluntary Carbon Market report met our quality criteria. This diligence work now has an additional, independent backstop. As of August 2026, the ICVCM has approved 44 methodologies across 13 programs, as eligible for its CCP label, including ACR, Gold Standard, and VCS. For buyers, considering projects that are CCP-eligible should be used as a first filter—not a substitute for project-level diligence, but representing a legitimate floor.

While realized emissions impacts may be difficult to prove in some cases, it is important to remember that some projects provide additional co-benefits. REDD+ projects, for example, may have a positive impact on conservation and biodiversity, and cookstove projects may offer clear human health and social welfare benefits. However, these benefits should be assessed separately from carbon reduction, removal, or avoidance benefits.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between a carbon credit and a carbon offset? 

A carbon credit represents one verified tonne of emissions reduced, removed, or avoided. A  carbon offset describes how a buyer uses that credit, typically to counterbalance emissions it has not yet accounted for. The credit itself does not change type based on how it's claimed.

Which type of carbon credit—reduction, removal, or avoidance—is highest quality? 

No single type is inherently highest quality. Each project, regardless of type, is verified against a defined baseline. Quality depends on how rigorously that specific baseline was set and how well the project meets other quality criteria. Removal credits from engineered sources have the most straightforward baseline (zero), and avoidance credits carry the most baseline uncertainty by design, but these are only one determinant of credit quality.

Do carbon removal credits automatically meet the ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles? 

No. The ICVCM assesses methodologies and programs, not individual projects. If a project uses a methodology that is eligible for the CCP label, this can be a useful floor but is not a guarantee of high quality.

How does SBTi's near-term removal mandate change which credits I should buy now?

SBTi's finalized Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 doesn't require removal purchases until 2035, but it sets the ramp now (i.e., 1% of scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 emissions in 2035, scaling to 100% by the net-zero year). This means the highest-durability removal supply that is scarcest and most in demand today is the same supply that many companies will need later. The SBTi guidelines are still changing, so buyers and project developers must track them closely.

Key Takeaways

• Relae (formerly Carbon Direct) has conducted over 900 comprehensive, rigorous reviews of carbon removal (CDR) projects around the world. But fewer than 10% meet our standard for high-quality. In today’s market, scientifically-credible CDR supply is scarce.
• To identify high-quality projects, buyers and investors previously had to commission numerous deep diligences, which often made it a lengthy and complex process, not well-suited to most market participants. 
• The Diligence Collection changes that paradigm by giving you direct access to existing comprehensive analysis on a curated set of high-quality CDR projects. The hard work of identifying high-quality projects is already done, allowing you to move faster, spend less, and procure with more confidence.

Relae Sets the Bar for High-Quality CDR

Since 2020, every year Relae has released an updated version of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal in collaboration with Microsoft. The Criteria set the standard for scientific rigor across nine CDR pathways and across six technical dimensions. Using this standard, the Relae team has conducted diligence on over 900 CDR projects across 63 countries. Our diligence has been used for over 50% of all tonnes contracted through announced CDR offtake agreements worldwide, including diligence for the majority  of tonnes from Microsoft’s announced offtakes. This gives Relae a uniquely deep understanding of the CDR market; and importantly, it has highlighted that high-quality projects in the voluntary carbon market are scarce. 

Quality Is the Central Challenge in CDR Procurement 

Only 10% of the projects that Relae has assessed meet our high-quality criteria. This means that without rigorous, scientific assessment, buyers and investors run real risk of exposing themselves to delivery shortfalls, financial loss, and reputational damage. 

This presents a series of challenges to buyers and investors interested in procuring or investing in CDR. Conducting diligence on CDR projects is time-intensive, complex, and requires deep expertise. Building the internal capacity to rigorously evaluate a wide variety of CDR projects isn’t practical for most actors. But conducting the in-depth diligence required to procure or invest confidently requires real commitment, especially when a significant proportion of the projects diligenced may not be high-quality. Finding the needle in the CDR haystack isn’t easy.

The Case for Curated CDR 

The Diligence Collection directly addresses these challenges by providing self-serve access to diligence on a curated set of high-quality CDR projects vetted by Relae. Every project has already been evaluated against the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal, the science-based benchmark jointly established by Relae in collaboration with Microsoft. The Collection includes projects reviewed on behalf of Microsoft and other major buyers, and more broadly reflects our diligence work across the market.

With the Diligence Collection, you're not starting from scratch. Instead, you're starting from a shortlist of some of the highest-quality CDR opportunities available, with robust scientific diligence to back them up. The bottleneck that's slowed procurement for so many organizations is no longer a concern.

The Collection offers two levels of diligence, matched to the level of scrutiny your commitment warrants:

1. Desk review: An executive-level assessment using available project documentation, enough to make an informed shortlisting decision or purchase.
2. Deep diligence: A comprehensive technical evaluation covering project design, operational risk, technology assessment, policy landscape, and community impacts, reflecting the same methodology that's informed the procurement programs of Microsoft and other major buyers.

Both tiers include the option to commission an updated evaluation as your needs evolve.

What Rigorous CDR Diligence Involves 

The depth of Relae’s diligence sets the Diligence Collection apart. Our desk review process involves conducting detailed assessments to evaluate projects against 6 quality principles: social harms, benefits, and environmental justice; environmental harms and benefits; additionality and baselines; measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification; durability; and leakage. The result is a comprehensive report that assesses projects against these criteria, highlighting the project's overall quality, strengths, and weaknesses in a clear, succinct way that supports decision-making. 

Many of our reports dig even deeper. Our deep diligences assess both a project’s quality and its delivery risk. To evaluate delivery risk, we assess projects across 5 elements: technologic, economic, commercial, operational, and political. Deep diligence is conducted over 3-4 months, which includes weekly back-and-forth with the supplier and a site visit to understand all of the nuances of the project and validate developer claims on the ground. The resulting report not only documents a project's strengths and weaknesses, but also outlines risk mitigation measures and recommends improvements over time. 

Broader Access, Stronger Market 

Forward offtake demand in the CDR market has historically concentrated among a handful of large buyers, and as our 2026 State of the Voluntary Carbon Market report notes, diversifying that pool is essential to enabling the next generation of CDR supply. The Diligence Collection is built to support exactly that. By making the scientific rigor behind the world's largest CDR transactions available through a self-service platform, it opens credible procurement to organizations at any stage of purchasing. More buyers accessing high-quality, de-risked projects means more capital flowing to suppliers, more projects able to scale, and a more resilient market that doesn't depend on a small number of actors to function.

High-quality CDR supply is scarce, and the best projects are in high demand. The Diligence Collection gives you the foundation to act efficiently and with confidence, without starting from zero.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who Can Access the Relae Diligence Collection?

The Diligence Collection is available to approved subscribers, including CDR buyers and investors seeking to more efficiently evaluate carbon removal projects. To preserve the independence and integrity of the Collection and protect proprietary diligence insights, access is not available to project developers or rating agencies.

How Is the Relae Diligence Collection Different From a Rating Agency or Market Intelligence Platform?

Most rating platforms optimize for quantity; we optimize for quality. Our process includes pathway-specific risk assessments and, in many cases, site visits from our in-house scientists, engineers, and technical experts—the same multidisciplinary team and judgment behind our own portfolio decisions and the procurement programs we support directly. The Collection also includes projects diligenced before they've received external ratings, giving you visibility into promising opportunities at the pre-commercialization stage.

Does Inclusion in the Relae Diligence Collection Mean Relae Endorses a Project?

Inclusion means a project was evaluated through our scientific diligence process and, at the time of review, met our Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal. It reflects a positive diligence outcome based on the information available during the review and the project's stage of development at that time. As projects and market conditions evolve, we recommend considering whether updated diligence or additional evaluation is appropriate for your specific procurement or investment objectives.

Can I Request Diligence on a Project That Isn't Already in the Collection?

Yes. You can commission us to diligence a specific project based on your procurement or investment priorities. Whether it's later added to the Diligence Collection depends on a few factors beyond just meeting our quality bar, including consent from you as the commissioning buyer and approval from the project developer.