Explainer

What is carbon removal, really?

Removal takes CO₂ that is already in the atmosphere and stores it somewhere it will stay. That sounds simple. Almost everything difficult about the carbon market lives in the details underneath it.

Removal is not the same as avoidance

This is the distinction that decides whether a claim holds up, and it gets blurred constantly — sometimes carelessly, sometimes not.

Avoidance means emissions that were not released. A wind farm displacing a coal plant, or a forest that was not logged. The atmosphere has less CO₂ than in some counterfactual world — but nothing was taken out of it. The claim depends entirely on what you assume would have happened, and that assumption is unfalsifiable.

Removal means CO₂ physically leaves the atmosphere and enters durable storage. You can weigh it. You can sample it. Nothing depends on a counterfactual.

Both have a place in climate policy. They are not interchangeable, and a portfolio that mixes them while claiming "removal" is overstating what it bought. CarbTrust lists removal only.

The three questions

How to judge any removal claim

Every serious assessment reduces to these. If a seller cannot answer all three, the credit is not what it says it is.

1. Did the carbon actually leave the atmosphere?

Not "was it modelled to" — was it measured. Ask what instrument produced the number, who calibrated it, and whether you can see the raw reading rather than a summary of it.

2. How long will it stay?

Durability ranges from decades to geological time. A forty-year credit and a ten-thousand-year credit are different products at different prices.

3. Who says so, and who pays them?

If the developer chose and paid the verifier, independence is a claim rather than a structure. Ask how the auditor was assigned.

Pathways

The main routes, and what each trades off

There is no best pathway. There are different balances of cost, durability, and how confidently the removal can be measured.

Biochar
Biomass pyrolysed into stable carbon, applied to soil. Measured by mass balance plus lab assay.
500–1,000 yrs
Enhanced rock weathering
Crushed silicate rock reacts with CO₂ and rainwater to form stable bicarbonate. Hardest of the four to measure precisely.
10,000+ yrs
Direct air capture
Industrial filters pull CO₂ from ambient air; it is mineralised underground. Easiest to measure, most expensive.
Permanent
Reforestation
Native restoration on degraded land, monitored by LiDAR and ground plots. Cheapest, but carries reversal risk.
40–100 yrs
Reversal

Biological storage can give the carbon back.

A forest can burn. Soil carbon can be released by a change in tillage. This is not a reason to avoid biological pathways — it is a reason to price and insure them honestly.

The standard mechanism is a buffer pool: a percentage of every issuance is held back, unsold, to replace credits if a reversal is confirmed. Ask any seller how their buffer is sized, what it has paid out, and whether the balance is published.

How to run diligence →
Restored forest canopy
40–100
Years typical
Buffer
Reversal cover
LiDAR
Monitoring
Next

Measurement is where the claim is won or lost

If removal is the what, MRV is the how-do-you-know. It is the part most buyers skip and most auditors ask about first.

What is MRV? → Talk to our team