Turning Challenge into Opportunity 2025

The proliferation of reporting systems and certification schemes often brings high administrative costs, particularly for smaller suppliers who lack dedicated compliance teams. Many must prepare multiple sets of documentation for different buyers, jurisdictions and purposes – from environmental product declarations for cement/concrete to managing a portfolio of carbon credits for a removals project – adding both direct and indirect costs. This friction ultimately delays market entry for new technologies and sows uncertainty that can discourage both buyers and investors. Suppliers interviewed for this report indicated that without a globally recognized standard for verification, the environmental integrity of these claims is also undermined, making it harder for leaders in decarbonization to differentiate themselves. Financing: demand risk is the dominant blocker Financing constraints, especially related to demand risk, are seen by suppliers as the most pivotal barrier across all sectors. Decarbonizing major industrial processes or establishing new CDR facilities requires enormous upfront investment and long payoff horizons, which are only feasible when there is reliable, multi-year demand for the resulting lower-carbon products or services. However, as highlighted above, the combination of changing policy signals, lack of standardized offtake agreements and inconsistencies in product certification all compound the sense of risk for lenders and investors. In practice, this means many such projects must rely on limited public grants, philanthropic capital or equity investment – resources that are often neither large enough nor reliable enough to deliver a genuine scale-up. Multiple suppliers in steel, cement/concrete and CDR described an urgent need for new financial structures that blend public and private capital and share risk more evenly. Some proposed contracts-for-difference, insurance instruments or pooled buyer syndicates to guarantee revenues or underwrite early offtake. Others stressed the necessity of harmonized finance terms and the creation of standardized, investable contract templates for all buyers and suppliers in the value chain. Until investors have confidence that the products can be sold, at scale, with a clear premium or stable offtake, transformative capital will likely remain on the sidelines and most projects will remain at early-stage scale. Conclusion: foundation for unified progress Many suppliers in aluminium, CDR, cement/ concrete and steel interviewed for this report were aligned in their call for greater policy clarity, robust and reliable market signals, common standards and accessible financing models that shift risk-sharing and rewards towards first movers. Overcoming historic fragmentation demands collaboration across governments, buyers and financiers as well as industry actors. By focusing on these shared challenges, stakeholders can unlock new scale and speed for decarbonization – and help move heavy industries beyond pilot projects towards system-wide transformation. Turning Challenge into Opportunity: Supplier Voices from Heavy-Emitting Sectors 48