Carbon dioxide removal
Cutting emissions is necessary and not sufficient. Meeting climate targets also means removing CO₂ that is already in the atmosphere, and keeping it out. Here is how that is done, how the methods differ, and how a removal becomes a credit you can defend.
Why removal exists
Some emissions are extremely hard to eliminate: cement chemistry, long-haul aviation, parts of heavy industry and agriculture. Even on an aggressive decarbonisation path, a residual remains. And the carbon already released is not withdrawn by cutting future emissions; it stays in the atmosphere, warming, for centuries.
Carbon dioxide removal addresses both. It is the counterweight to residual emissions, and the only mechanism that reduces the existing stock of atmospheric CO₂. This is the distinction that matters and that the market still blurs: an avoidance offset prevents a future emission; a removal takes carbon out of the air. Only one of them can be a net negative.
The methods, compared
They are not interchangeable. Durability, cost and how provable the tonne is vary by an order of magnitude, and those three axes are what a serious buyer trades off.
| Method | How it stores carbon | Durability | Market price / tonne | Verifiability | Scale today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biochar carbon removal | Biomass residue is pyrolysed; carbon is locked in a stable aromatic form and stored in soil or materials. | Several centuries (CORC200+) | €100–200 | High (physical, measurable per batch) | Deployable today |
| Direct air capture (DACCS) | CO₂ is chemically filtered from ambient air and injected into geological storage. | 1,000+ years | €400–1,000+ | High (metered at injection) | Early, energy-hungry |
| BECCS | Biomass is burned for energy and the resulting CO₂ is captured and stored geologically. | 1,000+ years | €100–300 | High (metered at capture) | Limited by biomass supply |
| Afforestation & reforestation | Trees are planted or forests restored; carbon is stored in living biomass and soil. | Decades (reversible) | €5–50 | Moderate (modelled, remote-sensed) | Large, land-constrained |
| Soil carbon sequestration | Farming practices increase organic carbon held in agricultural soils. | Years to decades (reversible) | €10–50 | Low to moderate (high sampling variance) | Very large, hard to prove |
| Enhanced rock weathering | Crushed silicate rock is spread on land; weathering converts CO₂ mostly into dissolved bicarbonate carried to the ocean, and to a lesser extent into solid carbonate. | 10,000+ years | €100–300 | Developing (indirect measurement) | Early |
| Blue carbon | Coastal ecosystems (mangroves, seagrass meadows, salt marshes) are restored or protected; carbon is stored in biomass and waterlogged sediments. | Decades to centuries (reversible) | €15–80 | Low to moderate (modelled, site-variable) | Meaningful, coastline-constrained |
Prices are market reference ranges, not Recarbono's price: indicative figures drawn from public market data and registry methodologies, not quotes. They vary widely by project, volume and delivery date. Durability is likewise indicative, and verifiability reflects how directly the stored carbon can be physically measured.
Compare two
Tap any two methods to set them side by side.
Biomass residue is pyrolysed; carbon is locked in a stable aromatic form and stored in soil or materials.
CO₂ is chemically filtered from ambient air and injected into geological storage.
As described in the comparison table above: indicative ranges, not quotes.
Where biochar wins
Where biochar is not the answer
A serious removal portfolio uses several methods. We would rather tell you where ours fits than pretend it is the whole answer.
How a tonne becomes a credit
01
The removal is quantified from physical measurements (batch mass, carbon fraction, permanence), net of lifecycle emissions.
02
An accredited third party audits the evidence against a published methodology (EBC, C-Sink, Puro.earth; in the EU, the CRCF).
03
The registry issues serialised units, one per certified tonne, recorded so the same tonne cannot be sold twice.
04
The buyer retires the unit against their claim. Retirement is permanent and public: the tonne is spent.
Most of the voluntary market's credibility problems live in step one. If the measurement is modelled rather than physical, everything downstream inherits that uncertainty, which is why we built our own measurement stack, and why we publish exactly how we count a tonne.
Durable, physically measured, and traceable to the batch it came from.
