Durable CDR Market Recap: April 2026 — Key Deals & Trends

We are back with another edition of the CDR Monthly Recap, a monthly round-up of some of the top news, developments, and market updates from the world of durable carbon removal.

April saw around 1.14 million tonnes contracted, led by deals that saw participation from market actors such as North Star Carbon Solutions, Microsoft, Engrow, Altitude, Graphyte and JPMorgan Chase.

New projects, partnerships, and large funding opportunities, as well as announcements, continue to drive momentum for the industry ahead, alongside various events in the field.

Read on to learn more below!

Earlier last week, we published the results of our second Durable CDR Pricing Survey, conducted in partnership with OPIS, A Dow Jones Company. The free abridged report is available for download via the blog post.

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Deals and Partnerships

[Image source: North Star Carbon Solutions/Svante]

Deals

North Star Carbon Solutions, a partnership between Meadow Lake Tribal Council and Svante, signed an offtake agreement with Microsoft for 626,000 tonnes of CDR. The tonnes will be delivered over 15 years from the North Star BECCS Project.

JPMorganChase signed a 10-year offtake agreement with Graphyte for 60,000 tonnes of CDR. The credits will be generated from Graphyte's existing facility in Arkansas and a planned new facility in Arizona, enabled by the deal.

Exomad Green and Supercritical signed a three-year agreement for up to 500,000 tonnes of biochar CDR, exhausting Exomad's remaining inventory of credits for 2026 along with allocations for 2027 and 2028.

Boeing procured 20,000 carbon removal credits from six suppliers across Brazil, Bolivia, Namibia, and India, spanning biochar and enhanced weathering through Supercritical.

Climeworks and NTT Data Group announced a partnership for carbon removal credit procurement. Climeworks will supply a diversified, high-quality CDR portfolio to NTT Data to help address its residual emissions as part of its 2040 Net Zero goal.

Partnerships

CUR8 and Isometric launched a curated multi-pathway CDR portfolio for corporate buyers, spanning five durable CDR methods across six projects, certified by Isometric and risk-assessed by CUR8.

Swiss smart sensor manufacturer Sensirion partnered with ClimeFi to procure a portfolio of durable CDR credits. The portfolio spans across DAC, BiCRS, and mineralization, with supply secured through 2028.

Dutch telecom company VodafoneZiggo partnered with Klimate to procure carbon removal credits across reforestation and biochar projects, as part of its commitment to reach net zero by 2050.

Cowboy Clean Fuels and Absolute Climate partnered to certify Cowboy Clean Fuel's projects under the Absolute Carbon Standard, issuing credits through Evident's C-Capsule registry for high-integrity carbon removal.

Exomad Green and Chinese biochar technology provider Beston Group entered a new strategic partnership phase to scale biochar production that will enable Exomad to sequester 1 million tonnes of CO₂ a year by 2027.

Coralia signed a strategic MOU with A Healthier Earth to advance biochar applications on and around the Great Barrier Reef, combining carbon removal with reef restoration and improved marine ecosystem outcomes in Australia.

Novocarbo and German municipal utility Stadtwerke Dessau signed a 15‑year heat offtake agreement, enabling renewable heat supply and biochar production at the planned Carbon Removal Park Dessau.

Carbon insurer Kita and global broker Gallagher announced an intelligence consulting service for CDR projects, combining Kita's underwriting analytics with Gallagher's advisory capabilities to support corporate buyers and investors.

Rete Italiana Rimozione Carbonio (RIRC), Italy's first dedicated carbon removal network, launched in April, with an aim to connect researchers, startups, and policymakers around CDR development in Italy.

Cowboy Clean Fuels was selected to join Climate Vault Solutions' premium CDR supplier portfolio, expanding the platform's offering with Cowboy's BiCRS and RNG pathway certified under the Absolute Carbon Standard.

Canadian CDR company Deep Sky and energy major ENGIE announced a strategic partnership covering carbon credit procurement of up to 15,000 credits from Deep Sky's facilities, alongside joint research on DAC energy integration and systems optimization.

Carbon Direct and Arca announced a collaboration to co-develop Industrial Mineralization CDR projects, with Carbon Direct serving as co-developer on future projects converting mine waste into durable carbon removal credits.

Verde Resources and Isometric announced a strategic collaboration to certify engineered biochar embedded in Verde's BioAsphalt™ road infrastructure, opening a new category of durable CDR credits tied directly to road construction at scale.

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Projects

[Image source: Frontier]

Frontier and Carbon Removal Canada launched a surficial mineralization hub in Thetford Mines, Quebec, using the region's abundant serpentinite rock deposits to test whether surficial mineralization can deliver low-cost CDR at gigatonne scale.

Sustaera announced that it has achieved over 90% energy efficiency using its nano-structured sorbent technology, unlocking a pathway to direct air capture at 3-5x lower capital cost than conventional thermal technologies.

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Financing

[Image source: Mangrove Systems/Grain Ecosystem]

Mangrove Systems acquired select operating assets from Grain Ecosystem, bringing the North American biochar platform's customer base onto Mangrove's digital MRV platform and deepening its position in the biochar CDR sector.

Vancouver-based startup Carbonyx raised CAD $1.2 million in pre-seed funding to develop technology that converts mining and industrial waste into materials such as carbonates and silica while accelerating the rocks' natural carbon removal properties.

Capture6 secured non-recourse project-level financing from Regenerative Social Finance with support from California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank to advance Phase 2 of its Project Monarch facility.

Carbonaires launched a global request for proposals for offtake-backed financing of CDR projects, targeting projects with a minimum offtake contract value of $3 million to unlock structured financing against existing agreements.

The 2026 Durable CDR Pricing Survey results are out!
Explore insights from the Durable CDR Pricing Survey, conducted in partnership with OPIS, to help market participants better understand pricing expectations for durable CDR credits.

Policy

[Image source: U.S. Department of Energy]

In an official announcement, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) indicated that Project Cypress and the South Texas DAC Hub have passed its Biden-era grants review.

The Maryland General Assembly passed new legislation, establishing regulations for biochar and wood vault carbon removal projects, marking the first state-level law governing biomass burial technologies in the US.

The Swiss government reported industrial carbon removal in its official 2024 greenhouse gas inventory, becoming among the first countries to formally account for industrial CDR within national climate reporting frameworks

Research and Reports

[Image source: sus.lab | ETH]

sus.lab | ETH launched a survey mapping the Sub-Saharan Africa’s carbon removal ecosystem, identifying opportunities, gaps, and integration pathways to advance sustainable development and global collaboration.

Gold Standard launched its first biochar carbon removal methodology for public consultation, featuring a tiered design covering artisanal and industrial producers with strict durability thresholds.

Isometric certified Version 2.0 of the Isometric Standard following public consultation, expanding coverage to superpollutant reductions, refining the buffer pool framework, and extending default crediting periods.

Rainbow opened a public consultation of its Biogenic carbon capture and storage methodology , inviting feedback from project developers, buyers, and market participants ahead of finalising the revised framework.

Carbon180 launched the CORE Carbon Removal Framework, establishing community engagement, carbon accounting, and environmental safeguard requirements for CDR projects, policies, and funding programmes.

Carboniferous received approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its Orca Basin Research Permit, allowing the company to proceed with ocean-based carbon removal research under federal supervision.

The Carbon to Sea Initiative opened applications for a workshop to develop biogeochemical model skill assessment guidelines for alkalinity enhancement MRV, targeting researchers and private sector practitioners.

Isometric released a draft module for mobile and distributed small-scale biochar production, expanding the range of eligible project configurations under its Biochar Production and Storage Protocol.

Mombak generated its First Enhanced weathering credits from Project Cajueiro in Brazil. Following Isometric’s Enhanced Weathering protocol, the project has generated 46 credits and has been verified by 350Solutions.

Carbon Gap and B3 Carbon published a roadmap showing Italy can reach net zero by 2050 by scaling its CDR sector, identifying deployment pathways across biochar, enhanced weathering, BECCS, and DAC across Italian regions.

The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with ClimeFi and Oliver Wyman, published a whitepaper analysing CDR technology maturity, financing profiles, offtake contracting trends, and key structural barriers to market growth.

Climeworks published a guide examining why high-quality biochar credits command a price premium, covering the differences between industrial and artisanal projects and what determines high-integrity biochar CDR.

Klimate published a practical readiness checklist to help companies prepare for SBTi Net-Zero Standard Version 2.0, guiding corporate buyers through key decisions required to begin CDR procurement aligned with the updated framework.

Carbon Gap and Deloitte North and South Europe published a report identifying wastewater management, concrete recycling, and mining waste as largely overlooked opportunities for embedding CDR into existing European industrial processes at scale.

XPRIZE published its Carbon Removal Post-Prize Impact Report, finding that the $100M competition has catalysed 1,334 teams from 88 countries, unlocked over $3.3 billion in capital, and advanced pilots across six continents.

Leaderboard Updates - April 2026

Around 1.14 million tonnes of durable CDR were contracted in April following March that saw around 1.51 million tonnes contracted.

Listed below are the March leaderboards for top suppliers and purchasers:

Supplier Leaderboard

Purchaser Leaderboard

CDR.fyi Updates and Research - April 2026

Durable CDR: Reality vs Expectations: How are CDR methods performing relative to expectations?

In April, we published an assessment comparing 2021 expectations for durable CDR methods against 2025 reality, across different areas such as permanence, scale, MRV and cost.

Across nearly every method, costs came in higher than expected and MRV has emerged as the binding constraint for several methods. Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS)-based methods, particularly biochar, has broadly delivered.

We’re also excited to announce that we are hosting a session to walk through the guide’s main components and discuss how organizations can approach carbon removal procurement.

To be clear, this is a subjective exercise. The analysis interprets expectations from early 2021 through the end of 2025 and provides our expectations for the next five years, 2026-2030. It is not the final truth. It is not an endorsement for any one method or category of methods, nor an indictment of others.

Durable CDR Demand Structure Snapshot: Microsoft, Frontier, and the Rest of the Market

In April, we published a market brief examining how demand for durable CDR is distributed while highlighting how the ex-Microsoft/Frontier market has grown every year since 2022, reaching 3.2 million tonnes in 2025.

While the data points that Microsoft has contracted volume at 78.5% of the total market, the picture looks very different when you look at what has actually been delivered and retired - buyers outside Microsoft and Frontier account for 90% of delivered and 94% of retired tonnes to date.

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Disclosure

CDR.fyi is a public benefit corporation operating globally. The company has numerous contributors, some of whom are affiliated with companies in the industry, including Milkywire, CDRJobs, DVNE, and ETH. Data and content published by CDR.fyi, including This Week in CDR, this Monthly Update, and our Quarterly Market Updates, are vetted and reviewed by CDR.fyi representatives with no conflict of interest.

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