2025 Q2 Durable CDR Market Update - Biggest Quarter Ever

Highlights

Record Quarter: more tonnes (15.48 million) were contracted in Q2 2025 than all prior quarters combined (13.6 million).
Megatonne Microsoft: Microsoft contracted five separate megatonne-scale offtake agreements, totalling over 14.5 megatonnes, or 93.8% of the quarter’s total.
Growing Market: 902 thousand tonnes were contracted by all other purchasers, making it the second-highest volume quarter on record after Q4 2024. Four of the top ten purchasers were first-time purchasers, accounting for 174500 tonnes.
BECCS Contracts, BCR Delivers: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BECCS) was the method of choice for five of the six largest deals by contracted volume, totalling 13.95 million tonnes (89.6%). Biochar Carbon Removal (BCR) continued as the delivery leader, with 89.4% of the total 116.8 thousand tonnes delivered in Q2, with BiCRS cousins Biomass Direct Storage and Biomass Geological Sequestration accounting for another 6.6%.
Investment slows: 8 CDR companies raised over $122 million in private investments, down from 24 companies ($137 million) last quarter.

Analysis

After a pause to start the year in Q1, Q2 came in with a bang: the largest deal ever announced, between Microsoft and CO280 for 3.68 million tonnes, only to have it be surpassed mere days later by an even larger record-setter between AtmosClear and - once again - Microsoft, for 6.75 million tonnes. In total, CDR.fyi issued 15 deal alerts for large deals in Q2. The total contracted volume of 15.5 million tonnes not only made Q2 2025 the largest quarter to date, but it also exceeded the sum of all historical contracted volumes.

Total durable CDR market growth has often been a reflection of Microsoft purchases, primarily in BECCS. Q2 continued that trend: Microsoft contracted a total of 14.6 million tonnes of CDR - 94% of the publicly announced Q2 purchase volume - 13.29 million tonnes of which came from BECCS projects. This brings Microsoft’s cumulative total tonnes contracted to 24.96 million tonnes, or 79.5% of total market volume since their first order in December 2020. Microsoft’s Q2 purchases were consistent with its stated carbon removal strategy of “anchoring scale” by making long-term investments into projects with high-certainty deliveries.

Over 90% of Microsoft’s historical purchases have been from BECCS projects, and Q2 was no exception: Microsoft purchased 13.29 million of the 13.95 million tonnes of contracted BECCS in this quarter. BECCS alone accounted for 86% of the quarter’s record purchase volume, coming from five purchasers and five suppliers across eight announced deals. With most of these facilities yet to be commissioned, delivery timeline falls between the 2028 - 2039 window.

Why is BECCS so popular, particularly in Scandinavia? First, the technology itself has a Technology Readiness Level of 7 to 9, higher in comparison to many other durable CDR methods on offer today. This means that large scale commercial facilities are ‘shovel ready’ for construction provided that the financing and customers for both future credit offtake and energy offtake are in place. Furthermore, Nordic countries’ readily available forestry feedstocks ease the start of these projects.

Regarding energy offtake, the Nordic countries are particularly well positioned to move on BECCS facilities, as high energy prices mean that BECCS facilities can slot in well to the existing energy markets in those countries, more so than in other regions of the world.

Governments in these countries are particularly interested in subsidizing BECCS facilities, especially Sweden which is implementing a competitive bidding process for projects to compete for assistance. Finally, the region’s storage facilities for the CO2 gas - Norway’s Project Longship and Northern Lights projects, and Denmark’s Inherit Carbon Solutions - are now starting to come online and are able to accept deliveries for long term sequestration. Read more how the Nordics have used Winning Durable CDR Policy to take advantage of their positioning for BECCS.

Market Dynamics

Transaction Volume

2025 Q2 Results

Total tonnes contracted in Q2 2025 were up 2725% compared to Q1 2025. In addition to Microsoft’s 14.6 million tonnes, over 60 companies purchased a total of 902 thousand tonnes in Q2 2025, making it the second highest quarter recorded (when excluding Microsoft’s purchases).

Over the last three years, Q2 has become the dominant quarter in terms of annual volumes. There are several potential drivers of such activity, including Earth Day in April, Carbon Unbound East Coast, which takes place in May, and the publication of Microsoft’s Sustainability Report at the end of May. As more purchasers engage and increase their volumes, we expect to see the volume spread more evenly throughout the year.

Top Transactions

There were five megatonne-scale deals in Q2. All of them had Microsoft as the purchaser, and together they accounted for 93.8% of the quarter’s total contracted volume. Microsoft’s 3.7 megatonne deal with CO280 was the largest signed to that point. Merely four days later, that record was eclipsed by its 6.75 megatonne purchase from AtmosClear, now the largest carbon removal deal signed to date. Microsoft also extended its initial 3.33 million tonne purchase with Stockholm Exergi in Q2 2024 by a further 1.75 million tonnes. Microsoft’s 1.24 megatonne deal with Exomad Green, unveiled at Carbon Unbound East Coast, is by a factor of 10x the largest BCR agreement ever signed. On the last day of the quarter, Microsoft closed the last of its five megatonne deals with the purchase of 1.1 megatonnes from Hafslund Celsio, following on from Frontier Climate’s prior purchase of almost 100,000 tonnes from the supplier.

Purchasers

Microsoft led the Purchaser Leaderboard in 2025 Q2 with 14.6 million tonnes contracted across 10 deals with 8 suppliers from 5 methods. Microsoft’s contracts in this quarter alone accounted for more than the cumulative carbon removals contracted up to the end of Q1 2025. In other words, Microsoft alone more than doubled the durable CDR market from Q1 to Q2.

Excluding Microsoft, Q2 was still an impressive quarter, totalling 902,000 tonnes purchased, second only to the record-high 1.43 million tonnes in Q4 2024. In Q2 2025, JPMorgan Chase’s purchases of 450 thousand tonnes of BECCS and 50 thousand tonnes of DACCS accounted for ~63% of the ex-Microsoft volume. Swedish real estate company, Wihlborgs, and municipal housing company, Helsingborgshem, contracted 120 thousand tonnes of BECCS from the regional Waste-to-Energy BECCS project, Öresundskraft. Frontier Buyers also contracted almost 100 thousand tonnes of BECCS from Norway’s Hafslund Celsio.

First-time purchaser, Capgemini, entered the market with 29.5 thousand tonnes of offtakes in Bio-Oil Sequestration and DACCS. Mitsui O.S.K Lines, one of the Top Purchases in Q1, again entered the top 10 with a 13 thousand tonne DACCS agreement and a 10 thousand tonne Enhanced Weathering agreement. SAP and Wild Assets rounded out the Top 10 with SAP’s purchase of 18 thousand tonnes of DACCS and Wild Assets’s 14 thousand tonne purchases of DACCS from Canadian project developer Deep Sky and enhanced weathering project developer Tambora.

Suppliers

Top Sellers

Five of the top six suppliers in 2025 Q2 are building large-scale BECCS projects. Together, they accounted for ~14 million tonnes of CDR (~90%) contracted this quarter.

AtmosClear, a subsidiary of Fidelis, has signed the largest CDR offtake agreement to date with Microsoft for 6.75 million tonnes of CDR to be delivered from its $800 million, 680-ktpa project in the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S., with construction set to begin in 2026.

CO280, a developer of pulp-and-paper-mill CCS-retrofit projects, also signed agreements totalling 4.13 million tonnes with Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase to be delivered across multiple projects in the coming years. Stockholm Exergi signed a contract with Microsoft extending its prior ten-year agreement of 3.33 million tonnes by 1.75 million tonnes (totalling 5.08 million tonnes) to be delivered from the city’s 500-ktpa district-heating bio-CCS project at Värtan, Stockholm. Hafslund Celsio, Norway’s largest district heating and waste incineration operator, signed offtake agreements with Frontier and Microsoft totalling 1.2 million tonnes to be delivered from its 175-ktpa waste-to-energy (WtE) CCS project in Oslo starting 2029. Öresundskraft, a municipal energy company from Helsingborg, Sweden, signed two offtake agreements, one with Wihlborg and one with Helsingborgshem to deliver a total of 120 thousand tonnes from its WtE CCS project coming online in 2028.

Exomad Green’s ten-year 1.24 million-tonne BCR agreement with Microsoft takes the total tonnes sold from the leading BCR supplier from Bolivia to over 1.7 million tonnes. This is also Exomad’s 5th consecutive quarter in the quarterly supplier leaderboard. U.S.-based Carba signed its first-ever CDR agreement for 40 thousand tonnes of direct biomass storage projects to be delivered over the next 5 years to Microsoft.

DACCS suppliers, 1PointFive and Climeworks, sold over 94 thousand tonnes; while Brazilian BCR supplier, Aperam BioEnergia rounded out the top 10 with ~18 thousand tonnes. This is also Aperam’s third consecutive quarter in the top 10 of the Supplier Leaderboard.

Top Deliverers

Q2 2025 saw the second-highest tonnes delivered in a quarter, totalling 113.7 thousand tonnes; up 39% compared to Q1 2025. Deliveries were led by projects in the Global South. Most notably, Bolivia-based Exomad, India-based Varaha, and Brazil-based Aperam BioEnergia collectively accounted for ⅔ of total tonnes delivered (89,890 tonnes). U.S.-based Vaulted Deep, Graphyte, Oregon Biochar Solutions, and Charm Industrial also made it in the Top 10 Leaderboard, delivering a total of 10,000 tonnes (7.4%). O.C.O Technology was the only Mineralization company to make it in the top 10, delivering 3,200 tonnes (2.37%).

Methods

Contracted Volumes

BECCS led the way amongst durable CDR methods, with 90% of contracted volume. Biochar continued to be a popular choice with purchasers at 9%, with all others accounting for 1.3% of contracted volume in Q2.

Delivery Volumes

BiCRS projects continued to dominate delivery volume over all other CDR methods. BCR, Biomass Direct Storage, and Biomass Geological Sequestration accounted for 97% of total deliveries, totalling 110 thousand tonnes. Other methods made up the 3% of total deliveries, with contributions from Mineralization (O.C.O Technology), Enhanced Weathering (Mati), and Alkalinity Enhancement (CREW and Limenet).

Market Intermediaries

Although the vast majority of tonnes volume-wise are purchased directly, intermediaries, such as marketplaces and exchanges, continue to play a major role in bringing purchasers to the durable CDR market. In Q2, 21 intermediaries reported a total of 51,000 tonnes transacted. In total, 104 deals from 29 unique purchasers and 27 unique suppliers were transacted through intermediaries across 6 different durable CDR types, 98.7% of which were in BCR.

Notable mentions:

Carbonplace facilitated a total of 24,000+ tonnes, making it the top reporting intermediary in tonnes transacted, followed by CEEZER and Supercritical.
Ceezer was the most diverse in terms of CDR methods. Their Q2 transactions included a total of 8900+ tonnes of BCR, Enhanced Weathering, and Mineralization carbon removals.
Supercritical serviced 14 purchasers in 30 separate deals totalling 3,803 tonnes, making it not only the most active facilitator, but also the one with the highest share of clients.
Other intermediaries reporting over 1,000 tonnes transacted included Klimate, Patch, Climate Impact Partners, ClimeFi, and GECA Environment.
Carbonfuture was selected by Exomad Green as the dMRV partner for its 1.24 megatonne BCR deal with Microsoft.

Investment

In Q2 2025, 8 CDR companies raised over $122 million in private investments, down from 24 companies ($137 million) last quarter. Direct air capture companies accounted for the majority, with RepAir and Aircapture raising series A rounds of $15M and $50M respectively.

Canadian startups led the investments charts this quarter, with Exterra, Carbon Upcycling, and SkyRenu raising over $32 million; Japanese biochar producer, TOWING, and Indian EW company, AltCarbon, also raised $25 million seed and series-A rounds.

Notably, U.S.-based direct air capture startup, Holocene, was acquired within two years of founding by Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, thus making it the second direct air capture company under the energy giant after Carbon Engineering.

Notes on the Data

Data Sources: All of the data used in preparing this report is based on reported transactions, including public announcements, direct submissions by suppliers and purchasers through the CDR.fyi Portal, and integrations with ecosystem service providers. See Methodology for additional details on our approach. To provide feedback on the CDR.fyi data model, reach out to us at partners@cdr.fyi.
New CDR.fyi Method Definitions: We recently updated our method definitions to increase clarity for novice buyers, while maintaining higher levels of granularity for suppliers and experienced purchasers. The Q2 Market Update Report reflects the new method definition. Contact us at team@cdr.fyi if you have any questions about the new method classifications.

CDR.fyi tracks carbon removal purchases & deliveries with a permanence of hundreds to thousands of years. For any corrections or questions, contact team@cdr.fyi. For data licensing & partnership inquiries, contact partnerships@cdr.fyi.

Acknowledgments

Thank you for exploring the CDR.fyi 2025 Q2 Durable CDR Market Update report.

This blog post is an abridged version of the comprehensive edition exclusive to our Data Partners and Platform Subscribers. For access to the full report or further information, kindly contact us at partners@cdr.fyi.

Data, analysis, and content for the CDR.fyi 2025 Q2 Durable CDR Market Update was provided by Tank Chen, Katya Larina, Jason Grillo, Puneet Jethani, Ifeoluwa Daranijo, Alex Rink, Robert Höglund, and Roden Sherpa.

Cover graphic: Third Way

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