Introducing OSCAR: The Open Standard Carbon Removal Agreement

Trust as a Foundation to Accelerate CDR

At CDR.fyi, our mission is to accelerate durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

Today, most durable CDR purchasing is concentrated among a few leaders: Microsoft, Frontier, and a handful of others. More buyers are needed for the market to scale. That means making it easier, faster, and less risky for new entrants to participate.

Contracts are a major friction point. Negotiating legal terms from scratch slows adoption, raises costs, and discourages new buyers. Mature industries solve this challenge through open, standardized frameworks that build trust and reduce complexity.

That’s what OSCAR sets out to do for carbon removal.

Introducing OSCAR

The Open Standard Carbon Removal Agreement (OSCAR) is a shared, open, and freely available contracting framework designed to simplify durable carbon removal transactions.

Created over the past year by industry veterans Glenn Morley, Jason Grillo, and Elena Pérez Celis, with Peter Mayer providing pro bono legal advice, OSCAR provides a balanced, fair starting point for buyers and suppliers — one that reflects the realities of this nascent industry while keeping flexibility for differing methods and unique project terms.

CDR.fyi is pleased to endorse this effort by hosting OSCAR and its companion guidebook, ensuring that both remain open, accessible, and continuously improved by the community.

Why the Market Needs This Now

There is inherent uncertainty and risk with many early-stage CDR methods and providers. Most forward-thinking buyers seek to establish long-term relationships, trading off the early-stage risk for preferential access to future delivery. However, risk, including legal uncertainty, is one of the top reasons new buyers hesitate to proceed. As such, sustainability and procurement teams struggle with the question: What is a fair and equitable contract that optimizes for long-term partnerships in a nascent carbon removal industry with acceptable risk mitigation?

CDR contracts introduce new concepts unfamiliar to most in-house legal teams, such as long-term delivery, verification, and permanence. Without a precedent, every new transaction starts from a blank page.

The result: slow cycles, high legal costs, and inconsistent risk treatment. In some cases, two nearly identical deals can take weeks or months longer simply because the parties start from different templates or have different levels of experience in CDR transactions.

OSCAR aims to change that. It establishes a fair and equitable common baseline for buyers and suppliers, enabling all parties to focus on the few issues that truly matter.

We acknowledge the efforts of other templates that attempted to bring some level of standardization and education to the market, most notably the Frontier offtake agreement template and the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) templates.

OSCAR builds on these and aims to strike a balance, incorporating necessary buyer protections without imposing an undue burden on suppliers. It is easy to explain to first-time buyers and suppliers, adaptable across different pathways, and designed to be market-ready without triggering significant legal costs. And, as with any contract template, OSCAR can be easily amended to address deal-specific requirements.

A Foundation for a Trusted Market

OSCAR’s design separates standard procurement language from CDR-specific provisions, accompanied by plain-language commentary explaining each clause and its purpose.

It strikes a balance between commercial practicality and legal rigor:

• Gives buyers confidence on integrity (MRV, validation, audit)
• Avoids excessive control or disproportionate obligations on early-stage suppliers
• Provides lawyers and intermediaries with a structured, balanced starting point

OSCAR is open-source and educational by design. Although it is drafted from a U.S. legal perspective, an experienced lawyer can readily adapt it to other jurisdictions, making the template effectively jurisdiction-agnostic. It is readable by non-lawyers and designed to evolve as the market matures. It is also tested and proven, having been used to purchase hundreds of thousands of credits across various pathways, with millions more in the pipeline.

The initial development of OSCAR was supported by Peter Mayer from Stairs Dillenbeck Finley Mayer PLLC, whose voluntary contribution provided the legal backbone for this collective effort. With CDR.fyi hosting, we open the doors and invite feedback from law firms, corporate buyers, suppliers, intermediaries, and financial institutions to continue improving OSCAR for the global CDR community.

The Broader Vision

OSCAR is intended to be more than a contract; it’s meant to be a building block of the market infrastructure that will enable durable carbon removal to scale.

It’s also a key contribution to the upcoming CDR.fyi Resource Library, an open repository of tools and templates to help develop a shared understanding and standardize key parts of the CDR value chain.

This living, community-centric library will grow through contributions from practitioners across the ecosystem, creating shared language, trust, and momentum.

Who It’s For

For Buyers: OSCAR is a foundational framework that legal and procurement teams can start from immediately, thereby lowering internal barriers and building comfort around durable removals.

For Suppliers: OSCAR enables suppliers to present a familiar, structured contract that reduces buyers' risk and speeds up sales cycles.

For Intermediaries: OSCAR creates consistency across the portfolio and increases transparency in how deals are structured.

For Lawyers: The guidebook provides a primer on the CDR market, risk allocation, and contracting norms, enabling legal teams new to the field to get up to speed fast.

How to Engage

1. Download the OSCAR template and guidebook — both are free and open to anyone, in pdf, Word doc, and Google Docs formats. (See links to pdf, Word, and Google Docs formats below.)
2. Use it as is or adapt it for your transactions.
3. Provide feedback, suggestions, or questions to help continually improve OSCAR for all market participants at team@cdr.fyi.

The more the market converges around a common foundation, the faster we can channel capital and action into real, durable carbon removal.

• OSCAR Contract
  • pdf
    • Terms
    • Boilerplate
    • Definitions
  • Word
    • Terms
    • Boilerplate
    • Definitions
  • Google Docs
    • Terms
    • Boilerplate
    • Definitions
• OSCAR Guidebook
  • OSCAR Guidebook (pdf)

Acknowledgements

OSCAR is an excellent example of mission-driven collaborators coming together to solve a shared challenge.

We are grateful to Glenn Morley, Jason Grillo, and Elena Pérez Celis for their commitment and efforts in leading this initiative, to Peter Mayer’s pro bono legal support, and to all of the market actors named in the Guidebook who contributed to its refinement.

About CDR.fyi

CDR.fyi is a Public Benefit Corporation with a mission to accelerate durable carbon removal by bringing transparency and trust to the market. Its community-driven platform provides data, insights, and analytics on carbon removal orders, projects, and financings for suppliers, purchasers, investors, NGOs, policymakers, and media. By making reliable information openly accessible, CDR.fyi builds confidence and drives progress across the carbon removal sector.

We’d love your input on what OSCAR‑related webinars you’d be most interested in attending next. Please share your ideas HERE.