As the United States pulls back, momentum for carbon dioxide removal is building elsewhere, propelled by government policies and frameworks that extend beyond voluntary markets
Photo credit: Annie Spratt – Unsplash+
In less than a decade, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has grown from an idea to an emerging industry that is widely accepted as a critical complement to deep emissions cuts in the efforts to curb climate change.
But in the last year, the industry landscape changed significantly. The United States, which historically led a handful of governments to build the sector, has pulled back, taking steps to halt or reverse almost all federal climate action. This includes delays on the CDR Purchase Pilot Prize, a Department of Energy program aimed at scaling up CDR technologies, and terminating several direct air capture hubs, while placing others on hold.
At the same time, Microsoft, the single largest demand driver in developing the voluntary carbon removal market, has slowed its purchasing pace.
Despite these shifts, CDR purchases are continuing, in large part because many other governments across the world are demonstrating that momentum is building beyond the U.S. and voluntary market.
Now, governments have strong opportunities to continue to scale CDR by implementing policies and frameworks that can reduce reliance on voluntary carbon markets and encourage more supply and demand. Here, we look at how those policies and frameworks can further propel the industry’s growth.
Why Is Carbon Dioxide Removal Necessary?
Today, it is clearer than ever that meeting global climate goals will require both rapid emissions reductions and substantial scale-up of CDR approaches. While slashing greenhouse gas emissions remains the highest priority to limit the most severe impacts of climate change, CDR will be needed to reach net zero by counterbalancing the residual emissions that are too difficult or prohibitively expensive to eliminate.
Looking beyond net zero, carbon removal will also be essential to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and lower global temperatures to limit the most severe impacts of climate change.
The world will almost certainly temporarily exceed the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal, which means the only way to bring temperatures back below its target before the end of this century will be to reach net-negative emissions (removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than are emitted annually).
The scale of carbon removal that will be required to do that is enormous. Indeed, modelling that is consistent with achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals suggests that, alongside steep emissions reductions, the world will need to remove between 2.7 billion and 4.1 billion metric tons per year of carbon dioxide by 2035 and 6.5 billion to 13.3 billion metric tons per year by 2050. For comparison, global greenhouse gas emissions were 60.6 billion metric tons in 2025 according to Climate Trace.
Deployment remains far from these levels today, with the vast majority of delivered removals to date coming from nature-based approaches like planting new forests or replacing those that have been lost. Novel CDR methods, like biochar soil amendment, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and direct air carbon capture and carbon storage are growing, with removals from these approaches quadrupling since 2017.
But, while investment in and development of CDR projects around the world have accelerated in recent years, driven by both public and private action, growth must increase substantially. As these approaches scale, it will be paramount to ensure responsible deployment that does not undermine the land, food and water systems communities depend on.
Continue reading here.
Featured WRI Experts:
Dan Lashof – Senior Fellow
Danielle Riedl – Research Associate I, WRI U.S.
Clea Schumer – Research Associate II, Raising National Ambition
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WRI - World Resources Institute
WRI - World Resources Institute
