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Today’s interview is with Micah Macfarlane, Chief Supply Officer, Carbon Direct
What is Carbon Direct?
For those unfamiliar, what is Carbon Direct, and how does your science-led approach help drive high-integrity CDR?
We are a team of scientists and market experts who help companies and organizations make effective net zero transitions. We are probably best known for our engagement in more than two thirds of the carbon removal procurement in the Voluntary Carbon Market. Our team of 70+ scientists and engineers designs technology-specific, company-specific approaches for decarbonization, and our team of finance and market experts makes sure that decarbonization is robust, derisked, and scalable.
One of the real joys of being part of Carbon Direct is that we have all that world-class expertise in house. We have the greatest degree of technical depth of any entity that I know in the market. I come from a project finance and project development background so my expertise is scaling high-quality carbon projects. When I have a question about geologic sequestration or biomass sourcing or any other scientific issue, I never have to guess about the answer. I pick up the phone and call the world’s expert in that area, then we build their analysis into the project.
Our work on CDR procurement is a good example of that. We work across each of the high-quality technologies from IFM and reforestation to BECCS, BiCRS and direct air capture to mineralization, and emerging technologies. Our science team does the deep, project-specific, technology-specific assessments that a buyer needs to make sure that a project is high quality. Our supply team assesses project viability and scalability, structures bankable and effective contracting, and equips buyers with quality and delivery protections so that they get the impact they need.
Companies like Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, Sumitomo Corporation, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, JetBlue, and The Russell Family Foundation trust Carbon Direct to help them maximize their impact because our support is grounded in rigorous science and real-world technological, policy, and commercial realities.
Guidelines
You recently published a collaborative standard with Microsoft on high‑quality marine CDR, covering durability, ecosystem and social impacts, and MRV. How do these guidelines help elevate ocean-based solutions from niche to scalable?
That was great to launch. Marine CDR (mCDR) is a new addition to the quality standards that Microsoft and Carbon Direct publish each year on CDR.
As a whole, our quality standards are designed to give clear, implementable guidelines so that the market can reach the level of scientific quality that we need to hit climate goals. Given the emerging nature of mCDR, the lack of consistent benchmarks can get in the way of project assessment and diminish confidence in novel approaches, so the standards are focused on laying out evaluation requirements.
The criteria are designed to be accessible to a broad range of audiences, addressing a common challenge in the mCDR space where information is often presented in highly technical formats. Broad stakeholder engagement, including that of local communities, will be essential to the advancement of mCDR, ensuring that all parties are informed and able to participate meaningfully.
Unique Risks & Barriers
The voluntary market remains constrained by CDR supply. Your portfolio offers 1.6 Mt of rigorously vetted removal credits. What unique risks and barriers do you see in mobilizing these volumes, and how does Carbon Direct help buyers navigate them?
We build our curated portfolios to make sure companies have access to the best-in-class projects in the market. Today, that can be difficult because:
- It requires a high degree of technical knowledge and effort to distinguish good projects from bad ones;
- High-quality removals that can be retired in-year are scarce and transaction costs can be high; and
- It is essential to have quality assurance and delivery protections for reliable impact.
Between 2022 and 2024, only 4% of carbon credit issuances on the registries were true removals. Even within removals, fewer than 10% of the credits in any technical domain clear Carbon Direct’s quality bar. Assuring scientific quality is essential to working with buyers in the market today. Our curated portfolios are the top ~30 projects from the more than 800 we have assessed, and we have 1.6Mt of 2025 capacity to address the scarcity of quality removals. Those projects are also structured for multi-year offtakes and available through 2040. From there, we build in delivery protections, ongoing assurance, and risk-mitigating contracting to systematically address the barriers for buyers.
Review Process
Carbon Direct offers rigorous technical diligence and annual updates to your Criteria. How do you incorporate the latest science and policy developments, such as the IRAs or EU directives, into your review process?
It is fantastic to see governments like the European Commission or the Government of Canada building strong roles in carbon removal. We do a lot of work with national, state and county governments, helping add the support into those processes. It is equally important to incorporate policy and government incentives into project assessments.
Our global policy team monitors developments in areas like Article 6, the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and the Inflation Reduction Act. These insights are integrated into our guidance and criteria updates. At the diligence phase, that is particularly important in assessing variables like a project’s viability and financial additionality. For buyers, policy is also a key variable for sustainability reporting and compliance. We help with that as well to support credible claims and reporting.
We publish regularly about these areas and our Climate Policy Navigator helps buyers and developers get a summary of complex regulatory frameworks and incentive pathways.
Marine CDR Criteria
How are you translating your marine CDR criteria and diligence frameworks to emerging pathways beyond marine, such as mineralization, enhanced weathering, or biochar, and what lessons carry across approaches?
Our quality criteria are all rooted in the same core principles: additionality, durability, leakage, harms and benefits, and effective quantification and monitoring. We evaluate every carbon project across these categories. When we do, we apply the criteria iteration for that technology. That specificity is essential to assess each removal pathway for its specific characteristics.
That is why our large science and engineering teams are so critical to the work we do. It takes dedicated expertise to evaluate projects in the more than 15 technology types in CDR. Assessing agroforestry is profoundly different from assessing ex situ mineralization, and the teams need to match that expertise. It is not just the technologies that create variability. It is essential to build in assessments for variables in areas like the site, feedstock, facility engineering, and policy landscape.
That is not to say there aren’t themes. In the more than 800 carbon projects we have diligenced some of the recurring lessons. First, project baselines and counterfactuals are one of the most common pitfalls, and being able to document and prove that is critical. Second projects need to be able to reliably and repeatably quantify their sequestration, as well as be willing to update methods of measurement as data improves. Finally, delivered quality is ultimately key; lots of projects look good on paper, but it is the built and delivered sequestration that creates a climate benefit. Feasibility, the state of the science, and project development are often left out of registry and procurement assessments, but we feel it’s essential to include them.
CDR Credit Structures
As institutional and corporate demand intensifies for high-integrity CDR credits, what role do you see Carbon Direct playing in shaping CDR quality norms, credit structures, and market confidence?
Our goal is to build the market the world needs to hit climate goals. We do that by:
- Embedding scientific rigor into every step of the process;
- Building procurement standards and protections so that companies can sign offtakes with confidence; and
- Structuring for bankability and scale so that buyers can maximize their climate impact and accelerate carbon removal to the gigatonne level.
Biggest Barrier
Looking ahead, what’s the single biggest barrier to scaling durable, verifiable CDR at gigatonne scale, and how can science-first firms like Carbon Direct help overcome it?
Market integrity is the single biggest barrier to scaling CDR. Buyers need assurance that the tonnes they purchase are real and robust. Financiers need clarity on technical feasibility and risk-adjusted returns. Project developers need long-term certainty on demand and access to capital. And finally, regulators need verifiable proof that climate claims are credible. If we can offer a bedrock of reliable quality, more buyers will enter the market. That is the key for unlocking the finance and policy to scale carbon removal to where it needs to be.
