Building a Curated Portfolio of Carbon Removal Solutions

The Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Industry didn't exist a few years ago. Since then it's grown to encompass a wide array of approaches, is methodically developing its measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) and is finding its critical role in the science-backed road to Net Zero.

For businesses of all sizes - from compact SMBs to huge enterprises - navigating this rapidly evolving market can be challenging. Both from a cost and risk perspective.


- From a cost standpoint, permanent carbon removal is currently significantly more expensive than legacy carbon credits. It's likely to stay that way for a while, with medium term goals for most solutions to reach about US$100/tonne or thereabouts. Read more: Transitioning Company Offsets to Carbon Removal and Why Fund Carbon Removal Now.

- From a risk perspective, there's both reputation risk and project delivery risk, there's a fine line to walk.

For reputational risk, transparency should be the default position, though it is not easy to navigate this with the nuance that it's necessary to include in any science-based emissions reduction and removal initiatives. We see many businesses trying to do what they can now with the desire to be able to talk about it openly. Even so, there is some level greenhushing happening, due to a concern about their initiatives being interpreted as "not enough". We believe that getting out in front of this is not only the right thing to do, it will become a competitive advantage in building your internal ability to communicate what you're doing. Read more: The Difference Between Net Zero, Carbon Neutral and Climate Positive. and the Climeworks Call for Differentiation between Reductions and Removals.

For project delivery risk, it's part of the current stage that permanent CDR is in that, while the solutions are scaling up, there will be varying degrees of delivery risk. This is part financial and part did the removal actually happen in the real world? We think that the funding - both from offtakes as well as project finance - and the focus on developing third-party validated methodologies and MRV, as well as the emerging possibility of insuring investments in CDR, are positive signs this is being addressed by the sector.

TLDR: finding a way to reconcile these risks is possible.

- From a future compliance viewpoint, new regulations are on their way for companies in both Europe and the US. Being ahead of the curve is a competitive advantage, though at present there are limited regulatory incentives. Read more: Compliance and Voluntary Carbon Markets and What is Carbon Removal.


We don't take any of these serious and complex considerations lightly - they are essential to work through to build a successful, and net zero aligned, strategy. The biggest step your business can take is to start now in earnest. And then improve and mitigate them one-by-one over time.

Whether your business already has a climate program or not we do advocate for embedding a range of permanent CDR in your initiative as early as possible, in combination with other aspects, as this approach is inline with the latest science.

With this all in mind we ask all the companies we talk to consider these three questions:

- What is the purpose of your climate and offsetting programs and how do you align it closer to the science?

- If you're already buying carbon credits to offset like-for-like tonnes of company emissions, how confident are you that the tonnes are actually being removed?

- Going forward, what proportion of your budgets can you allocate to carbon credits that are highly additional and remove carbon for hundreds to thousands of years more?

What's the solution?

Building trust, transparency and scale for the CDR industry is a key component of achieving a science-based Net Zero in line with The Paris Agreement. Aligning to this is core to the Zopeful mission.

Presently, researching, purchasing and managing a portfolio of high permanence carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions takes time, care and a great breadth of knowledge from companies. Read more: Why a Portfolio Approach to Carbon Removal Makes Sense.

It's not easy for businesses that don't have a sizable sustainability team to keep up to date with new developments, or internal resources to find and analyize the different solutions and project developers on a regular basis. That's where we can help. We curate a full range of carbon removal project developers from around the world, following a permanence and additionality first methodology.

We believe that making the selection and management of CDR easier for businesses of all sizes will increase both demand and supply of high quality carbon removal. That's a good thing all round.

No business is too big or too small to contribute to solving the greatest shared challenge (and opportunity) the world faces this century.

Reach out if you'd like to chat to our team to explore how you can add curated, hand-picked portfolios of carbon removal to your climate and sustainability initiatives.

Have hope, make progress 💚

Team Zopeful