Interview: the skeptic's view on Carbon removal procurement & offtakes — what would change their mind

Corporate carbon dioxide removal (CDR) procurement has surged from approximately $200 million in cumulative advance commitments in 2021 to over $2.5 billion by early 2025, representing a twelve-fold increase in just four years. Yet despite this remarkable growth trajectory, significant skepticism persists among seasoned climate finance professionals regarding the fundamental economics, delivery reliability, and verification integrity of CDR offtake agreements. This synthesized expert perspective draws from conversations with procurement officers, carbon market analysts, and climate investment strategists to present the most pressing skeptical viewpoints—and what concrete developments would shift their calculus.

Why It Matters

The voluntary carbon market reached approximately $1.9 billion in 2023, with CDR credits commanding premium pricing but representing only a fraction of total transaction volume. Frontier Climate, the advance market commitment (AMC) coalition founded by Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey, has committed over $1 billion to CDR purchases through 2030, anchoring the most ambitious corporate procurement programme in this sector. Microsoft's climate innovation fund has deployed significant capital toward CDR technologies, with offtake commitments exceeding $200 million across direct air capture (DAC), enhanced weathering, and biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) pathways.

Between 2024 and 2025, corporate CDR purchases accelerated substantially. The Frontier coalition announced new purchases totalling $57 million from eleven CDR suppliers in late 2024, bringing their cumulative contracted tonnes to nearly 350,000. Stripe Climate, which pioneered the corporate CDR procurement model in 2020, has directed over $45 million toward removing carbon from the atmosphere, supporting approximately 30 CDR projects at various technology readiness levels. These statistics underscore both the genuine momentum in CDR procurement and the persistent gap between pledged commitments and delivered removals—a gap that fuels skeptical perspectives.

The stakes extend beyond corporate sustainability claims. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios limiting warming to 1.5°C require between 5 and 16 gigatonnes of CDR annually by 2050. Current global CDR capacity remains below 0.01 gigatonnes annually for novel approaches (excluding conventional afforestation), revealing an orders-of-magnitude gap that procurement-led market development attempts to address. Skeptics question whether voluntary corporate purchasing can plausibly bridge this chasm—or whether procurement strategies merely provide greenwashing cover for continued emissions.

Key Concepts

Advance Market Commitments (AMCs) represent binding purchase agreements made before CDR capacity exists at scale, designed to de-risk supplier investment by guaranteeing demand. The Frontier model exemplifies this approach, with member companies committing to purchase CDR at specified prices and volumes over multi-year horizons. AMCs aim to replicate the success of vaccine procurement mechanisms that accelerated pharmaceutical manufacturing scale-up.

Offtake Agreements constitute contractual arrangements between CDR suppliers and corporate buyers, specifying volumes, pricing, delivery schedules, and verification requirements. These agreements typically span 5-15 years for capital-intensive approaches like direct air capture, reflecting the long payback periods required for infrastructure investments. Skeptics highlight that offtake agreement terms often favour buyers through pricing renegotiation clauses and delivery flexibility provisions that transfer risk to suppliers.

Price Discovery describes the process through which market transactions establish CDR pricing benchmarks. Current pricing varies enormously: nature-based removals command $15-50 per tonne, biochar ranges from $100-400 per tonne, enhanced weathering from $150-300 per tonne, and direct air capture from $400-1,200 per tonne. Skeptics argue that thin market liquidity and bilateral negotiation structures impede genuine price discovery, creating information asymmetries that disadvantage newer market participants.

Permanence Verification addresses the critical question of how long removed carbon remains sequestered. Different CDR pathways offer varying permanence guarantees: geological storage provides effective permanence exceeding 10,000 years, biochar offers 100-1,000 year durability, enhanced weathering provides mineral permanence, while forest-based approaches face reversal risks from fire, disease, and land-use change. Measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) protocols attempt to standardise permanence claims, though skeptics note the absence of regulatory oversight and inconsistent methodology application.

Portfolio Approach refers to procurement strategies that allocate capital across multiple CDR pathways at varying technology readiness levels. This diversification hedges against technology-specific failures while supporting earlier-stage innovations. Microsoft exemplifies this approach, with investments spanning DAC (Climeworks, Heirloom), ocean-based CDR (Running Tide), enhanced weathering (Lithos Carbon), and BiCRS (Charm Industrial).

CDR Procurement KPIs: Benchmarks and Target Ranges

Metric	Current Range	Target for 2030	Skeptic Concern Level
Cost per tonne (DAC)	$400-1,200	<$200	High
Cost per tonne (Enhanced Weathering)	$150-300	<$80	Medium
Delivery rate vs. contracted volumes	15-40%	>85%	Critical
Third-party verified tonnes (%)	45-70%	>95%	High
Permanence duration (years)	100-10,000+	>1,000	Medium
Time from commitment to delivery	3-7 years	<2 years	High
Supplier survival rate (5-year)	60-75%	>90%	Critical
Additionality verification pass rate	55-80%	>95%	High

What's Working

Frontier Coalition Model

The Frontier advance market commitment structure has demonstrably catalysed supplier development in ways that critics initially doubted possible. By aggregating buyer demand across multiple corporations, Frontier reduces transaction costs for suppliers while creating predictable revenue streams that enable project financing. The coalition's technical evaluation process, which assesses CDR approaches across permanence, additionality, scalability, and lifecycle emissions criteria, has established de facto quality standards that other buyers reference. Frontier's willingness to purchase from pre-commercial suppliers—with structured milestone payments tied to technology development—addresses the "valley of death" financing gap that particularly afflicts capital-intensive CDR approaches.

Microsoft's Comprehensive Procurement Strategy

Microsoft's carbon removal programme demonstrates that serious corporate procurement can function as meaningful climate action rather than performative sustainability theatre. Since announcing its carbon negative commitment in 2020, Microsoft has contracted for over 5 million tonnes of CDR capacity across diverse pathways, with particular emphasis on high-permanence geological storage approaches. Microsoft's procurement includes rigorous supplier due diligence, ongoing monitoring requirements, and public disclosure of contracted volumes and pricing—transparency that enables market learning and establishes accountability benchmarks. The company's 2024 environmental sustainability report documented delivery of approximately 18,000 tonnes of verified CDR, acknowledging the gap between contracted and delivered volumes while maintaining procurement momentum.

Stripe Climate's Pioneer Role

Stripe Climate's early entry into CDR procurement—beginning in 2020 with purchases from Climeworks at approximately $775 per tonne—established precedent for corporate buyers willing to pay premium prices for high-quality removals. This price leadership signalled to suppliers that demand existed for expensive but verifiable CDR, encouraging technology development investment. Stripe's public documentation of procurement decisions, including detailed explanations of why specific suppliers were selected or rejected, created educational resources that accelerated buyer sophistication across the market. The Stripe Climate Reversals page, which transparently reports when purchased CDR credits have been invalidated, models accountability practices that skeptics wish were universally adopted.

What's Not Working

Persistent High Pricing

Despite five years of procurement growth, CDR costs have declined more slowly than optimistic projections anticipated. Direct air capture remains economically prohibitive for most organisations, with even the most cost-competitive facilities operating above $400 per tonne. Enhanced weathering costs, while lower, have not achieved the sub-$100 per tonne levels that would enable mass-market adoption. Skeptics argue that technology learning rates have been overstated and that meaningful cost reduction requires policy support (carbon pricing, removal mandates) rather than voluntary procurement alone. The premium that high-quality CDR commands relative to conventional offsets—often 10-50x higher—limits buyer participation to the most committed (or wealthiest) organisations.

Delivery Risk and Supplier Failures

The CDR sector has experienced notable supplier failures that validate skeptical concerns about delivery reliability. Several early-stage companies that secured offtake commitments subsequently failed to reach commercial operations, leaving buyers with unfulfilled contracts and sunk due diligence costs. Even successful suppliers frequently miss delivery timelines, with contracted volumes arriving years later than originally specified. Frontier's 2024 portfolio review acknowledged that several purchased CDR tonnes would not materialise as initially projected, requiring reallocation to alternative suppliers. This delivery uncertainty complicates corporate carbon accounting and undermines confidence in CDR as a reliable decarbonisation strategy component.

Verification and Standards Fragmentation

The CDR verification landscape remains fragmented, with multiple competing registries, methodologies, and certification bodies offering inconsistent quality assurance. Unlike compliance carbon markets with regulatory oversight, voluntary CDR procurement operates without standardised verification requirements. Skeptics point to instances where CDR claims were subsequently revised or withdrawn following methodology updates, creating asset impairment risks for buyers holding affected credits. The absence of universally accepted permanence accounting conventions—particularly for reversible removal approaches—generates ongoing disputes about credit validity and comparable quality assessment.

Key Players

Frontier Climate

The anchor institution for corporate CDR procurement, Frontier coordinates buyer demand across member companies representing over $1 trillion in combined market capitalisation. Frontier's technical team evaluates CDR suppliers against standardised criteria, negotiating portfolio-level offtake agreements that aggregate member purchasing power. As of early 2025, Frontier had contracted with over 25 CDR suppliers spanning direct air capture, enhanced weathering, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and biomass carbon removal pathways.

Microsoft

The technology sector's largest CDR buyer by volume, Microsoft has committed to becoming carbon negative by 2030—removing more carbon than the company emits including historical emissions since founding. Microsoft's procurement encompasses both technology purchases and removal credits, with particular emphasis on high-permanence approaches. The company's carbon removal programme team has published procurement learnings and methodology documentation that informs broader market development.

Stripe Climate

The pioneering corporate CDR buyer, Stripe Climate directs a portion of revenue from participating Stripe customers toward carbon removal purchases. The programme has funded approximately 30 suppliers since 2020, including early support for companies like Climeworks, Charm Industrial, and Heirloom Carbon that subsequently attracted significant venture investment. Stripe's transparent procurement documentation has established informational resources that reduce due diligence costs for subsequent buyers.

Shopify Sustainability Fund

Shopify allocated $5 million annually toward carbon removal beginning in 2019, making it among the earliest significant corporate CDR buyers. The Shopify Sustainability Fund has supported over 15 CDR suppliers, with particular interest in ocean-based and enhanced weathering approaches. Shopify's public portfolio disclosures provide market intelligence on pricing trends and technology development trajectories.

South Pole

As a major carbon project developer and credit intermediary, South Pole facilitates CDR transactions for corporate clients lacking internal procurement expertise. South Pole's portfolio includes both nature-based removals and technology-based approaches, with verification and registry services that reduce buyer administrative burden. Critics note potential conflicts of interest when project developers also provide verification services, though South Pole maintains separation between development and audit functions.

Examples: Real CDR Procurement Deals

1. Climeworks and Microsoft Partnership (2021-ongoing) Microsoft contracted with Swiss direct air capture company Climeworks for 10,000 tonnes of CDR over multiple years, representing one of the largest single-buyer DAC commitments at the time of announcement. The agreement included milestone-based payments tied to Climeworks' Orca and Mammoth facility development in Iceland, where captured CO2 is mineralised in basalt formations for permanent geological storage. This deal established pricing benchmarks around $600 per tonne and demonstrated that technology-focused buyers would commit capital years before delivery.

2. Frontier Coalition Enhanced Weathering Portfolio (2024) Frontier announced purchases totalling approximately $15 million from enhanced weathering suppliers including Lithos Carbon, UNDO, and Mati Carbon in 2024. These agreements contracted for tens of thousands of tonnes of CDR through application of crusite rock dust to agricultural lands, where natural weathering processes convert atmospheric CO2 to stable carbonates. The Frontier procurement validated enhanced weathering as a scalable CDR pathway while establishing quality criteria around rock sourcing, application monitoring, and carbon flux measurement.

3. Charm Industrial and Shopify Agreement (2022-2024) Shopify's Sustainability Fund contracted with Charm Industrial for bio-oil sequestration, a process that converts agricultural waste to bio-oil and injects it into geological formations. The multi-year agreement supported Charm's progression from pilot to commercial-scale operations, with Shopify purchasing over 5,000 tonnes of CDR at pricing between $500-600 per tonne. Charm's subsequent announcement of larger offtake agreements with additional buyers demonstrated how early procurement can validate emerging CDR pathways for subsequent investors.

Action Checklist

• Conduct internal carbon footprint assessment to establish removal volumes required for net-zero or carbon-negative positioning, distinguishing between reduction and removal pathways
• Evaluate existing carbon credit portfolios for CDR quality, permanence claims, and verification standards, identifying exposure to lower-integrity offsets that may face reputational risk
• Engage with established CDR procurement intermediaries (Frontier, South Pole, Patch) to understand available supply, pricing trajectories, and minimum commitment thresholds
• Develop internal CDR procurement criteria covering permanence requirements, additionality standards, supplier financial viability, and delivery risk tolerance
• Allocate procurement budget across CDR pathways reflecting risk appetite, with higher allocations to proven approaches and smaller experimental positions in emerging technologies
• Establish monitoring and reporting protocols for contracted CDR, including verification requirements, delivery tracking, and disclosure frameworks
• Consider multi-year offtake agreements that provide suppliers with revenue predictability while securing price protection against cost increases

FAQ

Q: What is the minimum viable CDR procurement commitment for a mid-sized company? A: Entry-level CDR procurement typically begins around $50,000-100,000 annually, sufficient to contract for 50-200 tonnes depending on pathway selection. Frontier and similar aggregators accept smaller buyer participation, enabling companies lacking internal procurement expertise to access CDR markets. Stripe Climate offers even lower entry points, with businesses able to direct a percentage of revenue toward CDR purchases through automated mechanisms. Meaningful corporate CDR positioning generally requires annual procurement exceeding $250,000, ensuring contracted volumes are material relative to organisational emissions.

Q: How should buyers assess CDR supplier viability given high failure rates? A: Supplier due diligence should examine technology readiness level, secured project financing, existing offtake agreements, team experience, and pathway-specific risks. Buyers should request audited financial statements, reference customer interviews, and independent technical assessments. Diversifying procurement across multiple suppliers and pathways hedges against individual failures. Milestone-based payment structures that release capital as suppliers achieve development benchmarks reduce buyer exposure to pre-commercial failure risk. Established intermediaries like Frontier conduct supplier vetting that smaller buyers can leverage rather than duplicating.

Q: What verification standards should CDR procurement require? A: High-integrity CDR procurement should require third-party verification by recognised bodies (Puro.earth, Isometric, independent auditors) using transparent methodologies. Buyers should specify lifecycle emissions accounting, ensuring that CDR projects are net-negative after accounting for energy inputs, transportation, and infrastructure emissions. Permanence requirements should align with buyer time horizons, with geological storage approaches appropriate for organisations seeking multi-century claims. Registry issuance through established platforms (Puro.earth Registry, Isometric) provides credit tracking and retirement documentation.

Q: How do CDR procurement costs compare to conventional carbon offsets? A: High-quality CDR commands significant premiums relative to conventional offsets, with DAC-based removal costing 20-100x more than avoided deforestation or renewable energy credits. Enhanced weathering and biochar approaches offer intermediate pricing at 5-15x conventional offset costs. These premiums reflect genuine carbon removal rather than avoided emissions, higher verification rigour, and supply scarcity relative to demand. As CDR supply scales and costs decline, premium differentials are expected to narrow, though high-permanence approaches will likely maintain pricing advantages reflecting their durability.

Q: What would convince skeptics that CDR procurement represents genuine climate action? A: Skeptics identify several developments that would increase their confidence: delivered CDR volumes reaching contracted amounts with greater than 80% fulfilment rates; independent verification showing net-negative lifecycle emissions across major pathways; cost trajectories demonstrating genuine learning curves toward sub-$200 per tonne for engineered approaches; supplier survival rates exceeding 85% over five-year horizons; and integration of CDR requirements into compliance frameworks that create regulatory certainty. Additionally, corporate buyers reducing gross emissions before purchasing CDR—rather than using removals to offset continued high emissions—would address concerns about procurement functioning as mitigation deterrence.

Sources

• Frontier Climate. (2024). "2024 Purchases Announcement: Scaling Carbon Removal." Frontier Climate Portfolio Updates.
• Microsoft. (2024). "2024 Environmental Sustainability Report." Microsoft Corporation.
• State of Carbon Dioxide Removal Report. (2024). "The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal - 2nd Edition." CDR.fyi and partners.
• Stripe Climate. (2024). "Carbon Removal Purchases and Climate Commitments." Stripe Climate Programme Documentation.
• Smith, P., et al. (2023). "Carbon Dioxide Removal." In: Climate Change 2023: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.
• Ecosystem Marketplace. (2024). "State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2024." Forest Trends Association.
• CDR.fyi. (2025). "Carbon Dioxide Removal Market Tracking Database." CDR.fyi Analytics Platform.