2025 Q3 Durable CDR Market Update - Tacking into the Wind

Highlights

Record Q3: Largest Q3 in durable CDR history and second-highest quarter ever, with a total of 8.5 million tonnes of contracted CDR, accounting for 54% of Q2 volume while also eclipsing the total volume in 2024.
Megatonne Microsoft: There were two megatonne-scale deals in Q3, totalling 7.9M tonnes, both involving Microsoft. They made up 93% of the quarter’s total contracted volume, while 604K tonnes were contracted by all other companies.
DIversified Participation: Aside from Microsoft, 67 unique purchasers contracted a total of 604K tonnes in Q3, fifth highest in history. Of which 22 were first-time purchasers.
Biomass FTW: Biomass-based carbon removal companies accounted for 8 of the top 10 suppliers, with 4 based in the Global South. BECCS and other BiCRS made up 5 of the top 6 deals. Together, they accounted for 8.2 million tonnes, or 96%, of contracted CDR in Q3.
Deliveries Keeping Pace: 83.61K tonnes were delivered in Q3 - the 3rd highest for a quarter. The top 9 deliverers were biomass-based suppliers, while 60% of the deliveries in Q3 came from Global South suppliers. Over 26K tonnes were retired in the quarter, which also saw the first batch of CDR tonnes retired via coastal alkalinity enhancement.

Analysis

The Durable Carbon Removal market presented another strong quarter following the record-setting second quarter of 2025. Q3 was the second-highest quarter ever, with total contracted volume repeating Q2’s feat of surpassing 2024’s total contracted volume. Although the quarter was once again led by Microsoft’s megatonne deals, other buyers have continued purchasing. Volume outside of Microsoft also held steady. Both the number of CDR deals and the number of unique (and publicly disclosed) purchasers have decreased quarter over quarter since Q4 of 2024, albeit with new entries of big-name purchasers.

Market participants have raised the question as to whether greenhushing is a possible explanation for the decrease in the number of purchasers reported to CDR.fyi. Of those in the “Not Disclosed” category, some purchasers’ identities have been disclosed to CDR.fyi in confidence and are not to be published externally. These have been low-volume market entrants, and while they lend some credence to the notion that the number of purchasers is not declining and may even be increasing slightly, both the volume story and the need for more large buyers remain true. It is, of course, possible that some larger orders have not been reported at all; however, we have not seen substantive signs of this behaviour. (Read more about CDR.fyi Data Coverage at the bottom.) We commit to working with our market partners in the coming quarter to shed more light on these figures.

Put simply, CDR sales for the past few quarters have remained steady and the ecosystem as a whole is advancing. But excluding Microsoft, tonnes sold and purchaser growth are weak; private investments into CDR startups and job growth at CDR companies have also been flat to negative, signalling that the CDR market may be treading water and facing more headwinds. And this may well be the case for the foreseeable future until more favourable policies and market incentives kick in to power up the sector.

So what now? For the CDR market as a whole, we believe expectations will need to be adjusted. For suppliers and supply-side market actors, this means the focus should be on:

Incremental progress: extending runway, increasing the pace of learning and bringing down costs, scaling up based on bankable sales rather than projections; and
Expanding the buyer pool: continuing to focus on high-margin to emissions sectors, namely software, finance, and consulting, as well as industries with near-term net-zero targets, as well as those with a large share of residual emissions in energy, shipping, and aviation.

For purchasers, the recommendation is to engage with the CDR market now rather than waiting for a perfect strategy. By making a few small purchases first, purchasers can start learning about the market as preparation for engagement in future compliance mechanisms.

For all CDR market actors, collective efforts must be made to establish CDR as a valid mitigation solution in its own right, capable of being massively scaled up as soon as decision-makers change the rules.

Market Dynamics

Transaction Volume

2025 Q3 Results

At 8.5 million tonnes, Q3 2025’s total contracted numbers were 54% of Q2’s record-setting numbers, but still enough to exceed 2024’s annual total of 8.3 million tonnes. In addition to Microsoft’s 7.9 million tonnes purchased, over 60 companies purchased 604 thousand tonnes in Q3 2025, making it the second-highest quarter ever recorded in the market.

Top Transactions

There were two megatonne-scale deals in Q3, both involving Microsoft, which accounted for 92.8% of the quarter’s total contracted volume. Microsoft’s 2.95 megatonne deal from Gaia ProjectCo stood as the largest purchase of the quarter for a short time until it was surpassed by Microsoft’s 2nd largest purchase ever, a 4.9 megatonne deal with Vaulted Deep announced only two weeks later. Frontier Buyers also signed two large offtakes: with Arbor for 116 thousand tonnes and Planetary for 88 thousand tonnes. Rounding out the top six, Altitude purchased 50 thousand tonnes from BCR developer Greenglow, and Google signed an offtake agreement with Vaulted Deep for the same volume.

Purchasers

Top Purchasers

Microsoft led the Purchaser Leaderboard in 2025 Q3 with 7.9 million tonnes contracted across 5 deals with 3 suppliers from 2 methods. Including its Q2 purchases, Microsoft has purchased 22.5 megatonnes of CDR over the last 6 months. In other words, Microsoft has single-handedly increased the overall size of the durable CDR market by 2.5 times since the start of Q2 to approximately 38 megatonnes at the end of Q3 2025.

Excluding Microsoft, Q3 was still an impressive quarter, totalling 605 thousand tonnes purchased, the fifth largest quarter to date by non-Microsoft purchasers. In Q3 2025 Frontier Buyers purchased over 210 thousand tonnes over 6 deals, composed of 57% BiCRS, 42%, mCDR and 1% Mineralization. Google also purchased from those same three methodologies, with over 108,000 tonnes over 8 deals, of which 75% in BiCRS, 25% in mCDR and 1% in Mineralization.

Altitude launched a CDR Financing Fund in February 2025. By the end of Q3, the fund had committed to purchasing 50,000 tonnes from Greenglow’s biochar facilities in Southeast Asia and had expanded its Ascent 1 CDR facility from 50,000 tonnes to 250,000 tonnes in September. Schneider Electric announced its first purchase of CDR credits from Climeworks Solutions to deliver 31,000 tonnes of CDR by 2039 through DACCS, BECCS, and EW. This was also Climeworks’ second-largest portfolio agreement to date. SAP, following its 37,000-tonne agreement to purchase from a portfolio of CDR provided by Climeworks Solutions, contracted an additional 25,000 tonnes of BCR in Q3. Rubicon Carbon, a CDR Marketplace with portfolio offerings of both nature-based and durable carbon removals, contracted 15,000 tonnes of BCR from Kenya-based Bio-Logical. Palo Alto Networks, a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm and a first-time CDR purchaser, entered into an agreement with 1PointFive to purchase 10,000 tonnes of DACCS CDR from the STRATOS project. Nasdaq purchased and retired 8,500 tonnes of BECCS credits from GEVO. Lastly, British multinational banking group, Barclays, also became a first-time purchaser of CDR, signing a 6,538 tonne offtake agreement with British-based UNDO, citing that the agreement complements its' core net zero operations strategy.

Suppliers

Top Sellers

In Q3 2025, biomass-based carbon removal continued the recent trend of outselling other CDR methods, taking 8 of the top 10 suppliers spots.

Vaulted Deep signed the second-largest offtake agreement to date: 4.915 million tonnes, to be delivered to Microsoft over 12 years from 2026. Vaulted Deep also secured an additional contract of 50 thousand tonnes from Google. These sales elevated Vaulted Deep to become only the 3rd CDR supplier to sell over 5 million tonnes of durable CDR.

Gaia ProjectCo, a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Vestforbrænding, signed a long-term agreement with Microsoft for 2.95 million tonnes of CDR from its BECCS project in Denmark. The agreement marks one of the first long-term multi-year offtakes signed for a retrofit carbon capture storage at a waste-to-energy facility and is Gaia’s first recorded CDR deal to date.

Arbor signed a deal with Frontier Buyers for 116 thousand tonnes (for $41 million) and another deal with Google for 30.1 thousand tonnes. These offtakes will enable the launch of Arbor’s first commercial facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and test the viability of a new, highly efficient BECCS approach for generating clean electricity and removing CO₂.

Greenglow, a Southeast Asian biochar developer, secured 50 thousand tonnes from Altitude, a Switzerland-based carbon removal financier. This marks Greenglow’s first contract to date.

Exomad, the 7th largest supplier in durable CDR sales and the largest biochar supplier, contracted 76 thousand tonnes this quarter, over 14 deals. Kenya-based Bio-Logical also announced sales of 15 thousand tonnes of BCR to Rubicon Carbon. DACCS supplier, Climeworks, secured a 25 thousand-tonne DAC agreement from Schneider Electric through its commercialization arm, Climeworks Solutions. And most notably, Planetary, a Canada-based alkalinity enhancement company, signed an offtake agreement with Frontier Buyers for 115 thousand tonnes in a deal valued at $31.3 million, with pricing of the deal that stands at $217.67/tonne. This deal alone accounts for 15% of all mCDR tonnes contracted in the durable CDR market to date.

Top Deliverers

At 83.6 thousand tonnes, Q3 2025’s delivery volume was down 26% compared to Q2 2025’s record numbers, but still the third-highest volume in a quarter of all time. Deliveries were led by the Global South at 60%, most notably from the top two deliverers, Bolivia-based Exomad and India-based Varaha, with the Global North - and the United States and Netherlands in particular - accounting for the remaining 40%. Exomad and Varaha are also the top leaders in cumulative delivery, with over 200 thousand and 100 thousand tonnes respectively. Consistent with past quarters, all of the top 10 deliveries in Q3 were biomass-based.

Top Retirements

Nasdaq led the Retirement Leaderboard in Q3 2025 with one retirement of 8,500 tonnes from GEVO’s BECCS project. Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) retired another 2,761 tonnes of BCR purchased through the NextGen CDR facility, following their retirement of 2,000 tonnes in Q2. BlackRock also retired 1,500 tonnes.

Methods

Contracted Volumes

Consistent with recent quarters, BiCRS methods led among durable CDR categories. Amongst BiCRS methods, it was not the usual suspects of BECCS (37%) and BCR (2.4%) leading the way; rather, Biomass Geologic Sequestration (59%) vaulted into the top spot by virtue of Microsoft’s offtake agreement with Vaulted Deep Another unusual development in Q3 was mCDR coming in with the second-highest volume of removals contracted, at 117 thousand tonnes.

Delivery Volumes

BiCRS projects, and BCR in particular, continued to dominate delivery volume over all other CDR methods. BCR led with 79% of total delivery volumes, while BECCS, and Other BiCRS (Biomass Direct Storage, and Biomass Geological Sequestration) raised the total another 18% to bring BiCRS to 97% of total deliveries, or 91 thousand tonnes. Other methods that made up 3% of total deliveries included Mineralization, mCDR, EW, and DACCS.

Retirement Volumes

Retirements this quarter were led by BCR credits, accounting for 14 thousand tonnes (53%) of total tonnes retired, followed by BECCS at 8500 tonnes (32%). Most notably, the 8500 tonnes of BECCS retired by Nasdaq Inc. were to offset their 2024 Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 GHG emissions. Also, Canada-based Planetary represented the first batch of CDR tonnes retired via the Coastal Alkalinity Enhancement submethod (under the Alkalinity Enhancement method and mCDR category).

Market Intermediaries

Direct bilateral agreements, such as those from Microsoft and Frontier, accounted for 98% of contracted volumes. Tonnes contracted through intermediaries were 189 thousand across 20 reporting intermediaries, for 230 orders to 68 unique purchasers. It is worth noting that while the volumes may be low in comparison to direct purchases, the intermediaries serve an important role in educating the market, and form natural partners to both small to medium-sized companies seeking to enter the market, and larger enterprises who want to “start small” rather than engage high-touch advisors.

Notable mentions:

Supercritical and CUR8 led the pack in the number of unique purchasers.
Carbonfuture facilitated a total of ~51 thousand tonnes, making it the top reporting intermediary in tonnes transacted, followed by Supercritical and Climeworks Solutions. Carbonfuture was also the most active facilitator this quarter with 23 separate deals.

Other intermediaries reporting over 1,000 tonnes transacted included Rubicon Carbon, ClimeFi, Patch, Klimate, Ceezer, SQUAKE, CAWA, Senken, and South Pole.

Investment

In Q3 2025, 6 CDR companies and two CDR ecosystem service providers, raised over $199 million in private equity, compared to 8 companies with over $137 million in the previous quarter. Direct Air Capture companies again accounted for the majority: Climeworks raised a late-stage round of $162 million, while DACLab and Brineworks raised seed rounds of $3M and $5.4M respectively.

U.S. startups led the investment charts this quarter, with mCDR company Equatic, BCR company Terraton, and DACLab raising over $21 million in total; Danish EW company, Rock Flour Company also raised $6.6 million in seed funding.

Ecosystem services provider, Puro, raised an $11.8 million in Series B financing, led by Nasdaq, while CUR8, raised an undisclosed amount for its seed round.

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 data@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 Q3 Market Update Report reflects the new method definition. Contact us at team@cdr.fyi if you have any questions about CDR.fyi’s method classifications.
How complete is CDR.fyi’s coverage of the durable CDR market? We estimate that we are tracking 97+% of the volume of publicly disclosed durable CDR contracts. We do not hear from market actors that we are missing significant volumes. Known omissions include:
- Disclosed but confidential purchasers. We record these internally but they are displayed as “Confidential.”
- Announced without volume. We flag these as “Placeholder” orders until the tonnage is confirmed.
- Later-disclosed deals are backfilled as soon as they are announced, with the lag typically varying from weeks to a few months. Examples include an order being closed in December but only being announced in January, or closed in August but being revealed at NYC Climate Week in September.
- Unknown-unknowns exist, but we believe incentives (investor updates, sustainability and ESG reports, PR) keep this segment modest.

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 Q3 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 Q3 Durable CDR Market Update was provided by Soren Vines, Roden Sherpa, and Robert Höglund. Review and editing by Alexander Rink.

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