Our first series on carbon infrastructure

Recent headlines around Microsoft and carbon removal have sparked concern, but the underlying shift is more important than the noise. The CDR market isn’t slowing down; it’s moving from rapid expansion to disciplined procurement. Here’s what that means and why biochar is well positioned in this next phase.

Much like financial investments, carbon removal strategies benefit from spreading risk across different approaches. Some technologies offer extremely high durability but remain expensive and infrastructure intensive. Others are closer to nature and provide important ecological benefits, yet face challenges related to monitoring, permanence, or scale. The emerging consensus is that no single pathway optimises for durability, cost, scalability, and speed at the same time. A well designed carbon removal portfolio therefore needs to balance several factors like durability, scalability, cost, deployment speed and environmental & social co benefits

From a buyer’s lens, biochar CDR is no longer about bold claims but about proven durability, clear additionality, secure feedstock access, and resilient unit economics. As scrutiny increases, only transparent and financially robust projects will earn long term institutional trust

Projects have reportedly stumbled over gaps in field sampling integrity, model calibration, and data transparency, leading the validation and verification body (VVB) to withhold its approval. Hence, we analyse if the VCM has officially entered the stage of accountabilityt?

Utkarsh Raj jots down some insights from on pyrolyzers, from the ground.