Reflecting on Progress: Key Milestones in Carbon Dioxide Removal - 2023 Edition
This annual summary encapsulates the significant developments that shaped the carbon removal field throughout 2023.
Throughout 2023, the Carbon Removal industry experienced noteworthy expansion, driven by significant corporate acquisitions, government funding initiatives, noteworthy fundraising efforts by emerging startups and high-profile announcements.
The number of carbon removal credits sold leaped 650% in 2023. According to CDR.fyi, 2023 saw a 6.5 times increase of credit sales from 800 thousand tonnes at the end of 2022, to more than 5.2 million tonnes at the end of 2023. The year ended with over $2.1 billion in carbon credit purchases.
Here's a yearly roundup of key developments in Carbon Removal field:
GOVERNMENT FUNDING INITIATIVES
U.S. awarded $1.2 billion for developing Direct Air Capture hubs in Texas & Louisiana. These projects will remove more than 2M metric tons of CO2 emissions per year & create 4,800 good-paying jobs.
Senator Schatz and Rep. Tonko introduced $12 Billion Carbon Removal R&D Act in US.
NETL allocated $444 million for large-scale, commercial carbon storage projects with capacities to store 50M+ metric tons of CO2. This investment is crucial to responsibly deploying & scaling CDR & critical to achieving net zero emissions in US by 2050.
The US Department of Agriculture invested $300 million to improve the measurement & reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration by the country’s agriculture & forestry sectors.
USGSA announced $2B for over 150 federal projects emphasizing the use of lower carbon building materials. This allocation includes $767 million specifically designated for low carbon concrete across 39 states.
U.S. offered $150M grants for small forest owners (who manage 2,500 acres or less) to generate carbon credits.
The U.S. Department of Energy allocated $36 million to fund 11 projects in 8 states, aimed at expediting the advancement of technologies for capturing and storing marine carbon dioxide removal.
DOE announced $35 million to accelerate Carbon Dioxide Removal.
NOAA and IRA funded 17 new projects on marine CO2 removal worth $24.3M. Ten of these are on Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement.
US Department of Energy selected four National Lab-led projects to accelerate the commercialization of Carbon Dioxide Removal technologies through improved measurement, reporting & verification with $15M in funding.
Emission Reduction Alberta (ERA) funded $2M to ZS2 Technologies, which will develop new processes & chemistry for a low-carbon Made-in-Alberta cement, as well as carbon capture & sequestration technology, in collaboration with Baymag & Lithium Bank.
US DOE allocated $1.3 million for 13 DAC innovations. Selected firms were Activate Airminers Greentown Labs, Gener8tor, Newlab, Columbia U Energy, Black &Veatch, Ceantech Open, Expanding Frontiers, Oxicool, Tech Parks Arizona, TerraDAC Project, LabStart innovations.
EXCITING STARTUP FUNDING VENTURES AND SIGNIFICANT HIGH-PROFILE ANNOUNCEMENTS
Four major tech companies (Google, Facebook, Stripe, and Shopify) partnered to form Frontier, a $925 million fund to pay companies to pull carbon from the sky.
After that, Autodesk, H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase, and Workday committed to purchase a combined $100M of permanent carbon removal by 2030, bringing Frontier’s total advance market commitment to over $1B.
Frontier CDR Fund made another $7M from a dozen startups: Airhive, Alkali Earth, Banyu Carbon, Carbon Atlantis, Carbon Blue, CarbonRun, EDAC Labs, Holocene, Mati, Planetary Tech, Spiritus, VaultedDeep.
Frontier buyers also signed a $57.1 million purchase agreement with ERW startup, LithosCarbon to remove 154,240 tons of atmospheric CO₂ between 2024 and 2028. “This is the largest enhanced weathering agreement to date!”
Microsoft & Orsted inked one of the world's largest carbon removal deals as Microsoft buys 2.76 million tonnes of Carbon Removal from Ørsted using BECCS. To be delivered over 11 years.
Warren Buffett-backed Occidental bought Canadian startup Carbon Engineering firm for $1.1 billion as the oil producer expands its position as a leader in removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
HSBC committed $1 billion to finance climate technologies including Carbon Dioxide Removal globally, helping startups grow & scale their clean solutions.
U.S. tycoon Mark Cuban & dClimateDAO agreed to work with Congo on $1B carbon initiative. This initiative involved compensating the country for the rights to sequester ~100M tons of CO2 over 10yrs, covering ~500,000 hectares of peatlands.
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company unveiled $15 billion investment plan to decarbonize its operations, sequestering 18,000 tonnes/yr CO2 from Fertiglobe's UAE operations for Abu Dhabi's onshore carbonate aquifer injection, once operational.
Lowercarbon raised $550 million for two climate funds. Some of the CDR & management companies supported by the fund are Pachama, Running Tide, Watershed, Noya Carbon, Charm Industrial, Sublime Systems, Living Carbon, UNDO etc.
Investment management company BlackRock invested $500M to support the development of 1PointFive's 500,000 ton/yr STRATOS, an Ector County, Texas-based direct air capture (DAC) plant believed to be the “world’s largest.”
Cement giant, Hanson, planned a £400 million facility at its Padeswood plant in Flintshire, making it the first carbon capture-enabled cement works in the UK. This project aims to pipe 800,000 tonnes of CO2 a year out to sea to fight climate change.
Global pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca expanded global reforestation programme by investing $400 million towards planting 200 million trees worldwide by 2030.
Indigo Ag which sells microbes to farmers to boost yields and sequester carbon got $250 million in funds to scale up carbon capture.
The biggest U.S. bank, JP Morgan made one of the biggest bets ever on carbon removals. It announced its plans to invest more than $200 million to purchase credits from several Carbon Dioxide Removal companies.
Microsoft inked one of the largest CDR deals with DAC startup Heirloom Carbon, involving 315,000 metric tons of C removal valued at $200M.
Apple added $200M extension to Its Carbon Removal “Restore Fund” which they launched back in 2021.
Dalhousie University received historic $154‑million investment to study the ocean’s pivotal role in climate change. The largest research grant in Dalhousie history!
Amazon invested $150 million for the first time in DAC climate technology by agreeing to purchase 250,000 metric tons of CO2 Removal credits over 10 years from 1PointFiveCCUS.
Newlight, a firm that produces a cost-effective, high-performance, carbon negative biomaterial completed $125 million in a new equity round led by GenZero.
PepsiCo has announced 7-year collaboration with Walmart to pursue $120 million worth of investments, aimed to advance Regenerative Agriculture practices on more than 2M acres of farmland & deliver ~4 million metric tons of GHG emission reductions & removals by 2030.
Charm Industrial, which removes carbon from the atmosphere via bio-oil sequestration, raised $100 million in a Series B funding round.
Carbon Removal startup Mombak secured $100 million for Amazon Reforestation Fund. Investors include the Rockefeller Foundation & the Canada Pension Plan. The funds will support planting 3 million trees & creating high-quality carbon credits.
AstraZeneca inked £100 million deal to source biomethane from Lincolnshire BECCS project.
A consortium of Canadian & French companies, including Airex Energy, Groupe Rémabec & SUEZ invested C$80 million to construct North America’s largest biochar production facility that aimed at sequestering 75,000 tonnes of carbon per year.
Amazon & Microsoft-backed CarbonCure, the global leader in Carbon Removal technologies for the concrete industry secured $80 million USD in new equity round led by Blue Earth Capital.
Carbon capture startup Avnos secured $80 million from Shell, Conocophillips & JetBlue. Their Hybrid Direct Air Capture technology will remove 30 tonnes of CO2/yr & will produce 150 tonnes of water when operationalize later this year in California.
DeepSky secured $75 million in Series A funding to support its research and planning for a commercial facility in Canada with Pierre Fitzgibbon & Benoit Charette.
Carbon to Sea Initiative, a new nonprofit group secured over $50 million to back research and development into potentially accelerating carbon dioxide absorption into the world's oceans.
AXA IM Alts invested $49 million in Brazil's Mombak Gestora de Recursos, supporting Carbon Removal through Amazon reforestation.
Frontier buyers signed $46.6 million deals with CarbonCapture & Heirloom.
- Heirloom secured a deal for $26.6 million to remove 26,900 tons of CO₂ for Frontier buyers by 2030.
-CarbonCapture signed deal for $20 million to remove 45,500 tons of CO₂ by 2028.
VC Fund Counteract secured $42 million for Carbon Removal.
Andes has raised a total of $38 million from investors including Voyager VC, Yamaha Motor Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, Cavallo Ventures, KdT Ventures, Venturance, Germin8, and Accelr8 to permanently remove CO2 from the air and convert it into minerals.
Carbon Upcycling Technologies, a leader in circular decarbonization solutions for hard-to-abate sectors, including cement, steel, and mining raised US$26 million series A co-led by BDC Capital’s Climate Tech Fund and Climate Investment.
Isometric tapped a $25M seed round & debuted its collaborative Science Platform for the Carbon Dioxide Removal space in July.
Ebbcarbon raised $20 million Series A, the largest investment in ocean-based Carbon Removal technology to date.
A carbon removal startup Carboculture secured $18.3 million in а recent Series A funding round to advance the commercialization & implementation of its CDR technology. This Finnish-American firm aims to scale its projects to remove 20k of CO2 per year.
Carbonauten, a cleantech startup from Baden-Württemberg awarded a $15M contract by Xianning, China, to produce 32,000 tons of biocarbon annually from bamboo grasses in order to permanently avoid 105,600 tons of atmospheric CO2.
Supercritical, a climate business, nabbed $13 million to aid in the funding of Carbon Removal initiatives.
Noya, a DAC startup raised $11 million from USV, Collb Fund.
Yardstick landed $10.6 million Series A to measure soil carbon.
Revalue Nature raised $10 million to streamline nature-based carbon removal.
UNDO raised £9.6 million ($11.93 million) in funding for its Enhanced Rock Weathering technology led by Lower Carbon.
Spiritus raised $11 million funding round led by Khosla Ventures & other investors.
Leeds’ C-Capture firm secured up to £10 million from North Gritstone to capture 100-200 tonnes of carbon dioxide per day.
Climate Vault raised $9.4 million Series A funding and launched “Climate Vault Solutions” for verifiable carbon calculations, reductions, removals & reporting.
Agricarbon secured £9 million Series A funding to unlock global soil carbon removal opportunity.
Advantek spun off new carbon removal Company VaultedDeep ("Vaulted"), with $8M seed investment led by Lowercarbon capital.
US startup Capture6 secured over $8 million grant for its innovative carbon capture technology as they integrates Direct Air Capture with water treatment, offering a dual benefit of additional freshwater & reduced CO2 emissions.
Dutch Direct Air Capture Company Skytree received a €5.5 million investment to market their pioneering technology for the decentralised capture of CO2.
Greenlyte Carbon Technologies, a DAC company raised $3.8 million in pre-seed financing in May, completed pre-seed extension in June, raising $4.9 million, bringing its total funding to $8.7 million.
Arbonics, a Tallinn, Estonia-based provider of a forest carbon removal platform, secured €5.5M in Seed funding from NordicNinja, Plural, and Tilia Impact Ventures.
UK's CUR8 raised £5.3 million ($6.6 million) in its bid to accelerate the carbon removals industry.
Opna, a startup that helps carbon removal projects get funded, raised $6.5 million from leading VCs including Atomico.
Rewind, a BiCRS firm, secured $5 million in seed funding, bolstering its efforts to deploy measurable, sustainable, permanent & scalable CO2 Removal.
Standard Biocarbon secured $5 million from Nexus Development Capital for the production of sustainable biochar.
Nexus Development Capital invested $5 million in Maine-based Standard Biocarbon. The company will commence production of its high-quality biochar in Q1 2024 & is estimated to produce 16,000 cubic yards of biochar & capture 3,000 tons of CO2 per year.
InPlanet secured $4.6 million to accelerate Enhanced Weathering in the tropics.
AI-powered regenerative nature-based services provider Reseed raised $4.6 million led by One Small Planet. The capital raise will enable ReSeed to further expand into the commercial market.
Low Emission Technology Australia (LETA) committed $3.8 million to support a new carbon capture solution for clinker production. The project’s goal is to capture up to 95% of emissions generated during clinker production.
Klimate. co, headquartered in Copenhagen secured ~$3.68 million in seed funding for its carbon removal platform. This platform specializes in crafting customized portfolios of CDR credits aligned with the objectives of its clients.
Living Ink secured $3.5 million in funding to expand the production of their carbon-negative black pigments, Algae Black.
DAC startup Avnos, Inc. & SocCalGas launched a $3.2 million pilot project in Bakersfield, CA. With ~$650,000 from SoCalGas, Avnos will employ a unique Hybrid DAC method to capture ~30 tons of CO2 & produce 150 tons of H2O yearly from this facility.
NeoCarbon, a cleantech startup headquartered in Berlin, raised €3.2 million seed funding round. The company specializes in retrofitting industrial sites to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Kateri, a San Francisco-based startup, secured $3.05 million in seed funding to unleash the carbon-sequestering potential of worldwide grasslands.
EDAC Labs secured $3 million seed funding for Carbon Removal via Acid-Base Electrochemistry.
B.C. Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy earmarked $2.82 million in funding for the development of innovative solutions originating from British Columbia, focused on facilitating the measurement, monitoring & verification (MMV) of carbon emission reduction, removal & avoidance.
Adaptavate secured a $2.5 million investment to scale carbon-negative building materials.
CarbonFarm Technology (a regenerative agriculture firm) raised a €2.5 million ($2.6 million) seed round to help decarbonize rice farming through satellite monitoring for issuing carbon credits.
Klarna, a global payments network, invested $2.35M to support over 20 carbon removal organizations.
CarpeCarbon, Italy's inaugural climate tech startup utilizing DAC technology, secured €1.7 million ($1.9 million) in funding to propel its mission of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere for repurposing in diverse industrial applications.
Exterra Carbon Solutions closed its 2nd round of financing of CAD 2.1M ($1.54M) earlier this summer & is preparing to launch its next round of funding to realize durable C sequestration through engineered mineral carbonation of mine tailings.
Ukrainian direct air capture startup Carbominer was selected for blended funding (€1.5M) by the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator to apply its technology in indoor agriculture.
A British Columbia startup, Arcaclimate, which has developed processes to speed up carbon sequestration at mine sites using mine waste has been awarded to $1.25 million grant to conduct a pilot project in Australia.
Mote secured $1.2 million in grant funding from the US Forest Service, the California Department of Conservation & the California Dpt of Forestry to fuel the establishment of the BECCS project in Northern California in partnership with the SMUD.
CO2 Lock Corp. raised $1.1 million in its latest funding round, using SAFE to conduct fieldwork and sample collection at its Sam project site for ex-situ Carbon Dioxide Removal or in-situ CO2 storage and sequestration.
Backed by Tesla & SpaceX engineers, Belgium's first climate tech startup using Direct Air Capture technology, Sirona Technologies raised $1M in pre-seed funding to build direct air capture machines.
Sustaera, a Direct Air Capture tech raised $750,000 from one investor; now aims for another $500k.
Indian climate action startup Alt Carbon raised $550,000 in a pre-seed round to build a team for a pilot project in early 2024, focusing on the creation of durable & high-quality CDR credits for the voluntary carbon offset market.
UNDO inked a contract with Microsoft to remove 5000 tonnes of atmospheric CO2 by spreading crushed basalt rock on agricultural land, accelerating rock weathering. With this UNDO became Microsoft's first Enhanced Rock Weathering supplier.
NextGen CDR Facility - a South Pole/Mitsubishi Corporation joint venture - purchased 193,125 metric tonnes of advanced CO2 removals from first-rate 3 different CDR projects. This is one of the largest purchases of CDR to date.
Equatic launched breakthrough ocean CDR technology & secured pre-purchase deal with Boeing for 62,000 tonnes of carbon credits & 2,100 tonnes of carbon-negative hydrogen that’s likely worth at least $50 million.
Boston Consulting Group announced a purchase agreement with DAC Company Carbon Capture for 40,000 tonnes of CDR credits over 5 years. This deal is considered one of the largest professional services industry contracts ever disclosed globally.
Air carrier FlyANA inked Carbon Removal credit (30,000 tons) offtake with Texas Direct Air Capture project.
1PointFive, which is developing the STRATOS DAC plant planned to sell 27,500 metric tons of Direct Air Capture carbon removal credits to TD Bank Group over 4 years.
Heirloom & Leilac signed license & collaboration agreements to deploy renewably-powered electric kilns at future Heirloom DAC facilities.
S.F.-based Heirloom opened 1st commercial DAC facility in the US. With a capture capacity of up to 1,000 tons per year, the CO2 captured at this facility will go for storage in concrete from CarbonCure so that it cannot continue heating the planet.
AirCanada has become the 1st airline in North America to sign up for Airbus’ Carbon Dioxide Removal initiative, with 400,000 tonnes of durable carbon removal to be delivered over 4 years by 1PointFive using CarbonEngineer’s DAC technology.
Boston Consulting Group announced a purchase agreement with Direct Air Capture Company Climeworks. Spanning 15 years, the agreement is the largest corporate purchase announced to date by Climeworks at 80,000 metric tons of CO2 removal.
Carbonfuture signed an offtake agreement with Microsoft, to supply biochar CDR credits from Exomad Green Concepción project located in Bolivia. This project is on track to deliver ~32,000 tonnes of CDR credits to Microsoft by June 2024.
Norwegian Direct Air Capture Company Removr partnered with CarbFix to develop a 100,000-ton C02 per year facility in Iceland (planned to start in 2027).
Brilliant Planet partnered with WSP, led by its African Maritime division, to build a large-scale modular Carbon Dioxide Removal facility in Morocco. It is considered the largest modular algae sequestration facility in the world.
Montreal startup Deep Sky partnered with Captura to build a direct ocean capture facility in eastern Quebec in 2024. The facility will remove 100 tonnes of CO2 from the ocean annually.
Octavia & Cella partnered to build the first DAC plant in the southern hemisphere (targeting 1k tons of annual CO2 removal and storage capacity).
Babcock & Wilcox secured a contract with Northstar Clean Energy for a BECCS engineering study on converting coal-fired power plant to biomass, providing power to more than 70,000 homes while producing net-negative CO2 emissions.
Greentech company, ONNU, announced the first of 16 pyrolysis hubs in the UK’s Wye Valley that will collectively sequester more than 500,000 t/y of CO2 making this project the UK’s biggest Carbon Removal initiative.
Deep Sky & Exterra Carbon Solutions partnered on a carbon removal pilot facility to help reverse climate change. The plant in Southern Quebec will be completed in H2 2024 and sequester up to 1,000 tons of CO2 annually.
Puro.earth partnered with the first biochar producer in Bolivia, Exomad Green. The company expects to capture & store up to 200,000 tons of CO2 annually once it reaches peak operational capacity in the next ten months.
CO2 Energie AG, South Pole & Airfix launched the largest biomass carbon removal and storage project in Switzerland with an aim to remove 21,800 tonnes of CO₂ over five years.
Petrox and M&L partnered to develop a biochar facility in Edmonton, Alberta, with an annual production capacity of 3,500 tonnes at a capital cost of $3.7 million.
Holcim invested in Neustark to remove 1 million tons of CO2 by 2030.
Climeworks teamed up with project development venture Great Carbon Valley to develop large-scale direct air capture facilities in Kenya, aiming to remove as much as 1 million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Carbon Streamer partnered with Microsoft. Through its Waverly Biochar project, Carbon Streamer will deliver up to 10,000 tonnes of CDR credits per year towards Microsoft's carbon-negative target.
Deep Sky and Mission Zero Technologies (MZT) partnered to establish Canada as a CDR hub by deploying Direct Air Capture facilities.
Air Capture and 44.0 partnered to pilot a 500-ton-per-year project to begin operations in late 2024 in Oman.
1PointFive signed an agreement with ADNOC Group to launch a preliminary engineering study for a 1M metric tons/year DAC facility in the UAE.
Mash Makes partnered with the UK-based CDR marketplace Supercritical. Supercritical has pre-paid for 10,000 metric tons of biochar-based CDR, which MASH will start delivering next year from its 2 pyrolysis-based projects in India.
Aramco and Siemens Energy AG signed an agreement to build a pilot project for direct air capture, as the major oil producer wants to reduce emissions from its activities.
Carbonfuture partnered with Greenly to provide high-quality, durable carbon removal to Greenly’s business customers.
General Mills, Walmart & Sam's Club jointly launched a collaborative endeavor to encourage the adoption of regenerative agriculture on approximately 600,000 acres in the US by 2030.
CarbonCure and Heirloom signed an agreement through 2025 to permanently store atmospheric CO2 captured by Heirloom’s Direct Air Capture technology in concrete using CarbonCure’s carbon mineralization technologies.
Deep Sky and Equatic joined forces to deploy DAC units with ocean sequestration in Canada. Equatic will install an electrolyzer at Deep Sky's Quebec pilot facility in 2024 that will have the capacity to remove 365 tons of CO2 yearly.
Evero Energy Group Limited partnered with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on Carbon Capture technology for the BECCS project in the UK's North-West.
Weyerhaeuser marked its first transaction in the voluntary carbon market by inking an agreement to sell nearly 32,000 forest carbon credits at $29 per credit.
Equinor & Captura partnered to develop ocean carbon removal solutions. Starting with a 1,000 t/yr CO2 removal pilot plant in Norway, their goal is to construct large-scale, commercial units in strategic locations across the world.
The Direct Air Capture leader Climeworks joined forces with Deep Sky to explore large-scale direct air capture & storage (DAC+S) projects in Canada with a pathway to remove up to 1M tons of CO2 from the air.
Startup Graphyte inked the first CDR deal with American Airlines. The aviation giant has committed to acquiring 10,000 tons of permanent CDR through Graphyte’s process (mummifying plant matter to clean up CO2 emissions), slated for delivery in early 2025.
AirCanada became the first airline in North America to sign up for Airbus’ Carbon Dioxide Removal initiative, with 400,000 tonnes of durable carbon removal to be delivered over 4 years by 1PointFive using Carbon Engineer’s DAC technology.
Lufthansa partnered with aerospace giant Airbus for the pre-purchase of 40,000 tons of carbon removal credits, to be delivered through the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere using DAC tech, as part of the Airbus Carbon Capture Offer.
McLaren Racing partnered with UNDO in a CDR partnership. Over the next 3yrs, UNDO will spread over 24,000 tonnes of crushed basalt rock on behalf of McLaren Racing, which will permanently remove ~6,165 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Deep Sky & Carbon Atlantis partnered to deploy CDR tech in Canada. Carbon Atlantis will deliver & install a DAC unit to be operated at Deep Sky’s pilot facility in Quebec in 2025. The unit will have the capacity to remove 260 tonnes of CO2/yr.
Carbon removal firms UNDO, and CUR8 teamed up with British Airways and Standard Chartered to launch what they claim is a first-of-a-kind model to unlock debt financing for carbon removals.
Microsoft and nature-based carbon removal startup Chestnut Carbon declared a 15-year offtake agreement, with Chestnut providing Microsoft with potentially more than 3 million tons of nature-based credits from its U.S.-based afforestation project.
Deep Sky, a Montreal-based gigaton-scale carbon removal project developer & ReCarbn, a Netherlands-based firm, partnered to deploy CDR tech in Canada. ReCarbn will deliver & install a DAC unit with the capacity to remove 50 tonnes of CO2/yr.
ARCHIVE OF ALL CARBON DIOXIDE REMOVAL DEVELOPMENTS FROM 2023
For those who haven't kept up with the advancements in Carbon Dioxide Removal from 2023, here are links to relevant research papers, news articles, reports, theses, event recordings, podcasts, YouTube videos, and more:
CDR UPDATES FROM DECEMBER
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