Economics and Scalability of Durable Carbon Removals

​Latest analysis from the cCarbon team at cKinetics finds capacity build for durable CDR lagging well behind offtake commitments, creating significant delivery risk for existing contracts and threatening to slow new offtake. Roughly 51.1 MtCO2e has been committed, yet cumulative issuances stand at just 1.04 MtCO2e, under 2% of what has been contracted.

​At the same time, buyers and investors, including those once willing to support higher-cost CDR, are moving toward economically priced, high-integrity supply. The demand large enough to make a real dent is likely to occur at lower prices, as they start converging with those implied by emission trading schemes, while the cost curve for high-integrity durable supply appears to be well above them. That is the conundrum for scaling CDR.

​Discussion

​A deep dive into improving the economics and scalability of durable carbon removals:

• ​Economics of biochar, ERW, bio-energy with Capture and infrastructure for carbon transportation and sequestration

• ​Fiscal and non-fiscal measures to enable scale

• ​Demand for the environmental attributes: who will buy, and at what price?

• ​Capital outlook 2027 to 2030: equity and project finance

​Participants and outcomes

​The session convenes key investors, developers, buyers, and policy makers, with the goal of producing a white paper on how multi-stakeholder collaboration can bring down the cost of durable removals while keeping scale in mind.

​It builds on the earlier discussion around scaling durable CDR at ISCIF 2026 (whitepaper) and CRIS 2026 (whitepaper), feeds into the upcoming conversation at CFCM 2026, and helps shape the dialogue continuing at ISCIF 2027 and CRIS 2027.