Carbon Dioxide Removal: Costs, Pathways, and Market Outlook

The (welcome) slide in CDR costs

CDR technology overview:

Carbon removal now spans a spectrum from land-based practices to engineered systems. Policymakers group them as “conventional” (e.g., forests, soils) and “novel” (e.g., DAC, mineralization), all aiming to pull CO₂ from air and store it durably in land, oceans, geology or long-lived products.

Different pathways of CDR

• Biochar turns crop and forestry residues into a stable carbon-rich solid via pyrolysis. Added to soils or embedded in materials, it can store carbon for centuries while boosting soil health, one reason it has led early deliveries in voluntary markets.
• Direct air capture (DAC) uses chemical contactors and heat/electricity to strip CO₂ from ambient air before permanent storage, typically in deep geologic formations. It is modular, site-flexible and capital-intensive, with costs expected to fall as plants scale.
• BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) captures CO₂ from biogenic energy facilities - where CO₂ streams are concentrated - and stores it underground, coupling power or heat production with net removals.
• Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) accelerates a natural process: finely ground silicate rock is spread on fields, where it reacts with CO₂ and rainfall to form dissolved bicarbonates and solid carbonates, storing carbon over long horizons.
• Mineralization and carbon-storing products bind CO₂ into stable carbonates in rocks or cement/concrete, or store it in other long-lived materials-offering high-durability pathways tied to construction supply chains.
• Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration increases carbon stored in cropland and pasture soils through practices like reduced tillage, cover crops and improved rotations. Benefits for soil fertility are well-documented; durability and measurement remain active areas of research and standard-setting.
• Afforestation and reforestation expand or restore forest cover to absorb CO₂ in biomass and soils. Widely deployed and relatively low-cost, these approaches face risks from fire, pests and land-use competition, making monitoring and permanence provisions critical.

Ocean-based CDR remains largely pre-commercial. Leading candidates include ocean alkalinity enhancement (adding alkalinity to boost CO₂ uptake) and seaweed pathways (cultivation with potential long-term storage).

Prices are easing and volumes are shifting to forward offtake

Across durable CDR, disclosed order prices fell from roughly $490/t in 2023 to $320/t in 2024, with most pathways down as buyers gained leverage and suppliers priced the learning curve into forward deals (biochar and mineralization were exceptions, edging higher).

• Spot benchmarks: Puro.earth’s CORC composite index printed $148 in July 2025 (-9.5% year-to-date), and its Biochar index $143 (-12.5% YTD) - useful benchmarks for transacted prices on verified tonnes.
• Forward volumes dominate: CDR.fyi’s 2024 review shows around 8 million tonnes purchased last year, versus 319 kt delivered, a delivery-to-booking ratio of 4.4%, i.e., most volume is still contracted for future delivery rather than spot. Moreover, Q2 2025 smashed records with 15.48 million tonnes contracted in a single quarter, led by a handful of megaton offtakes. Delivered tonnes skew toward biochar as the earliest-to-scale pathway.
• Buyers test the frontier: Google’s offtake with Holocene publicly set $100/t for DAC (deliveries in the early 2030s), a forward price that signals where costs could land with scale, not what spot DAC costs today.

Price outlook: cheaper overall, uneven by pathway

Developers are laying out explicit cost-down roadmaps for DAC. Climeworks targets $250-350/t for capture and $400-600/t net removal by 2030, with further declines thereafter; today’s realized costs remain closer to the high hundreds per tonne, so most of the curve is still ahead. Forward deals like Google-Holocene at $100/t should be read as learning-curve bets backed by long lead times and policy support (e.g., 45Q in the U.S.), not current clearing prices.

For BECCS, cost trajectories benefit from concentrated CO₂ streams and existing capture know-how; capture costs for high-purity biogenic streams can be in the tens of dollars per tonne (capture only), with total removal costs dependent on feedstock, transport and storage. Bankable offtakes and project-finance-style terms are emerging, which should lower the cost of capital and compress delivered prices as plants come online late-2020s/early-2030s.

ERW market analysis expects material cost declines toward (or below) ~$100/t by 2030 as quarrying, grinding, logistics and MRV are optimized. However, heterogeneity in soils and supply chains means outcomes will vary. Some investors also warn ERW may face diseconomies at very large scales, so the long-run cost floor is still debated.

Plumbing matters

Standardized offtake terms, non-delivery insurance, and clearer risk allocation are spreading from early workshops and buyer–seller templates into real deals, key to unlocking debt and lowering capital costs. Meanwhile, the IEA has urged advance purchase commitments and procurement to de-risk first-of-a-kind projects and crowd-in private finance, accelerating innovation and cost declines.

Bottom line

Expect continued price compression over the next few years:

• Fastest in DAC (policy, scale and modular learning)
• Steady in BECCS (projects at FID and commissioning)
• Stepwise in ERW (as measurement and logistics mature)

With buyers’ budgets increasingly clustered just above $100/t and total durable demand potentially reaching ~100 million tonnes by 2030, forward books should keep growing while spot volumes gradually catch up as projects deliver.

At OTC Flow, we support companies in navigating the fast-evolving carbon markets, from sourcing high-quality carbon credits to understanding new removal technologies such as biochar, DAC, and BECCS. With our expertise in trading, risk management, and compliance, we help organizations secure reliable solutions to meet their climate targets with confidence.