Turning Challenge into Opportunity 2025

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – creating a market structure to commercialize proven technologies2.4 Introduction Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has increasingly become a key pathway for many global companies’ net-zero strategies. While mitigation and avoidance remain core aspects of addressing emissions, durable carbon removal is a critical pathway. This chapter presents insights from suppliers working across three principal CDR pathways – biochar, direct air capture (DAC) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Their experiences highlight an industry driven by public policy, yet constrained by regional variations in those policies, inconsistent demand and limited access to finance. Early corporate buyers, emerging compliance signals and government investment are bringing carbon removal from the small pilot scale projects towards the mainstream. Still, suppliers describe a market in need of a coherent market structure. They face inconsistent pricing in voluntary markets, shifting standards and uncertain incentives. Beneath these operational issues lies a deeper challenge: maintaining societal and investor confidence in the value of removal itself. We are fighting against apathy as much as we are fighting against carbon. Josiah Hunt, Pacific Biochar Sector landscape and maturity curve Three distinct pathways dominate the CDR sector today, outlined below. Biochar Biochar producers convert agricultural residues and organic waste into a stable, carbon-rich material that can lock away carbon for centuries while improving soil fertility. Recognition of biochar in many leading carbon-credit frameworks has transformed what had been a small agricultural input business into a climate-solution industry. Yet credit prices fluctuate, methodologies are evolving and the cost of verification remains high. Long-term confidence depends on stable credit valuation and sustained buyer demand for high- durability removal. Direct air capture (DAC) DAC systems use chemical and mineral processes to capture CO2 directly from ambient air. The technology has proven viable; however, the economics remain a key challenge. Capital expenditure and energy intensity remain formidable barriers. DAC solutions like Heirloom’s are ready to scale — the real challenge is deploying them fast enough with affordable power and permitted carbon storage. Max Scholten, Head of Commercialization, Heirloom Turning Challenge into Opportunity: Supplier Voices from Heavy-Emitting Sectors 44