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Today’s interview is with Alexander Rink, Co-founder & CEO, CDR.fyi
What is CDR.fyi?
For those unfamiliar, what is CDR.fyi, and how does it contribute uniquely to the carbon removal ecosystem?
CDR.fyi is a global portal to the carbon removal market. On an ongoing basis, we ingest fresh data from public announcements, registries, suppliers, marketplaces and our community submissions, reconcile them, and surface intelligence and insights to guide market participants and interested parties. For buyers, this translates into increased awareness and confidence in the supply options; for suppliers, it means enhanced visibility and credibility with prospective customers; and for investors, policymakers, NGOs, and the media, it means a real-time pulse on how quickly we are progressing toward our multi-gigatonne goals.
Eliminating Blind Spots
CDR.fyi is widely seen as a source of market transparency, what specific data gaps or blind spots in the CDR industry does it aim to illuminate?
When we started, even basic questions - How much durable CDR has actually been contracted? By whom? Has it been delivered? - had no single answer. We focus on five gaps:
- Demand. At Carbon Unbound East Coast in May 2024, we highlighted the concentration of order volume amongst the top buyers, most notably Microsoft. Since then, the gap between Microsoft and the rest of the pack has widened. We continue to draw attention to the importance of expanding the demand base and actively engaging in education and policy to accelerate carbon removal.
- Contract vs. delivery. There is a big distinction between “contracted” and “removed.” We track orders along their entire trajectory, including individual deliveries and retirements, so progress and delays are visible to all. While contracted volume is currently most important, the focus and priority will increasingly shift to delivery.
- Price opacity. Deals range from sub-$100/t to well over $1,000/t. Our Pricing Survey and whitepaper, developed in partnership with OPIS, as well as our forthcoming Price Insights tool, provide benchmarks to help buyers and sellers proceed with confidence.
- Intermediaries. We track the engagement of intermediaries such as marketplaces, buying clubs, and brokers. By reconciling their submissions with those of suppliers, purchasers, and registries, we are able to distil net market figures.
- Emerging NbS removals. We recently launched nbs.CDR.fyi to track high-quality afforestation and reforestation deals. Our focus remains on high-integrity carbon removal.
Industry Trends
What trends have surprised you most in the voluntary carbon removal market over the past 12 months, and what do they suggest about where the field is heading?
I wouldn’t say surprised, but a few trends stand out in my mind:
- Microsoft: Microsoft’s commitment to the sector and leadership in purchasing, far above and beyond any other company. With their latest purchase announced earlier this week, they are now over 20x the contracted volume of Frontier, itself a market-leading purchaser.
- Quarterly Volatility: This trend largely follows the previous one. With one purchaser driving such a significant portion of the volume, the quarters often fluctuate in line with their activity. Since our first tracked orders in 2019, over 73% of volume has been announced in Q2, and just over 10% in Q1 and Q4 combined.
- Market Resilience: As previously stated, we need more buyers to scale. That said, average contract sizes keep growing and we continue to see promising signs of first-time buyers across multiple sectors entering at meaningful scale. There are many who might use the political winds of the new US Administration as a cause to pause, but the leaders continue to progress with their eyes firmly fixed on the long term.
- Standards: Candidly, we would like to see more from standards bodies, such as SBTi, CORSIA, and ISO, to name a few. Temperatures continue to rise, there is no net zero without CDR, and specific guidance on durable removal is overdue.
CDR Dynamics
How do you see the dynamics between engineered and nature-based CDR shifting, based on the data CDR.fyi is tracking?
Engineered removals still dominate dollars spent, but demand for high-integrity NbS credits is rising. BCG’s recent analysis suggests demand for nature-based removal credits could outstrip supply as early as next year. Our data and conversations indicate that more buyers are layering NbS (for near-term tonnage) with engineered (for long-term durability), treating them as complementary rather than competing options. We do not track the lower end of the market, but from what we have seen, there is an increased interest in high-integrity removals, for the right price.
Corporate Buyers
What role do you think corporate buyers are really playing in shaping the CDR market, and what distinguishes a meaningful buyer from a performative one?
We don’t see many performative buyers in durable CDR. The higher price points and concerns about reputational risk tend to deter less serious buyers.
Aside from sheer volume, what distinguishes the most meaningful buyers is:
- Volume aligned with climate math – they commit to a removal pathway (for example, 10% of residual emissions today, rising to 100% by 2050).
- Multi-year offtake contracts – not one-off token purchases.
- Openness – public disclosure of suppliers, tonnes, prices and MRV approach to help the market benefit from their learning and experience.
NBS & Afforestation Credits
How does CDR.fyi’s recent tracking of NBS and afforestation/reforestation credits improve transparency or trust in the carbon market?
Transparency breeds trust. By applying the same rigour - unique contract IDs, delivery status, registry cross-checks - to afforestation and reforestation credits, we aim to make it easier for corporates to compare durability, co-benefits and price across the full toolkit instead of defaulting to the cheapest option. It also highlights the distinct supply constraints and permanence risks that come with land-based solutions, which is vital for honest portfolio construction.
Price Insights Tool
Can you walk us through the key features of the new ‘Price Insights’ tool from CDR.fyi and what it aims to solve in the carbon market?
Price Insights aggregates contract data (price, volume, method, delivery window) and price quotes to provide users with the most comprehensive view on pricing in the CDR markets. With Price Insights, users can view:
- Market price ranges by method and soon by submethod and vintage;
- Price trends by method over time;
- Price discount curves by method and volume
Our goal is to help buyers' CFOs answer the “how much should I pay” question and enable suppliers to benchmark their own pricing. Ultimately, we aim to help all market participants improve the accuracy and credibility of their business modelling and projections for financing and budgeting.
Quality Tracking
As methodologies evolve, how is CDR.fyi tracking quality, permanence, and durability across different CDR approaches, and what standards do you see emerging?
CDR.fyi tracks quality, permanence, and durability not only through order data but also by monitoring the development of methodologies and protocols. As methodologies evolve, our focus is also evolving to include not just volume and price data, but also metadata that signal quality, including verification status, MRV providers, project-level information, and crediting standards.
As the industry evolves, we will continue to follow scientific advancements and emerging consensus to regularly update quality attributes associated with different CDR approaches.
Every credit in our system currently has optional metadata on:
- Technological pathway (based on our updated method taxonomy).
- Registry / standard (Puro, Isometric, Verra, Gold Standard etc.), if applicable.
- Estimated durability.
We will be adding more metadata fields in future. The more suppliers share about their orders, the more they increase their transparency and credibility with prospective customers.
We follow scientific advancements and industry-wide consensus to update the quality and permanence attributes of the CDR methods we track.
Friction Points
From a data perspective, what are the key bottlenecks or friction points preventing faster scale-up of high-integrity carbon removal projects today?
Pricing gap - The difference between what suppliers see as a price they need to charge to stay in business vs what purchasers are willing to pay. Emphasis on today, as the price gap is narrowing.
Financing gap – Early-stage projects struggle to secure debt because of offtake uncertainty; the median contract is <5 years, too short for project finance.
MRV cost and complexity – For some methods, such as enhanced weathering, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and non-traditional methods, third-party verification can pose a significant operating expenditure that reduces gross margins and reinvestment.
Policy permitting – Long lead times for capture plants and injection wells create a mismatch between contracted delivery dates and on-the-ground progress. Early-stage, low-volume projects have uneconomically logistical requirements to access high-permanence storage options.
Political climate – It’s not a data issue per se, but the current political climate provides some buyers with a convenient reason to delay their climate commitment and hence CDR engagement.
Challenges
What's the biggest challenge facing CDR’s engineered/nature-based solutions, and what is required to scale and solve them in 2025?
- Durable removals: Cost and infrastructure. The median price of engineered CDR is still 50–100× avoidance credits, and infrastructure (energy, storage) is a bottleneck. The remedy is multi-layer risk sharing - advance market commitments, first-loss guarantees, streamlined permitting, and favourable standards - to unlock lower-cost debt and compress prices rapidly.
- Nature-based removals: Permanence and land availability. Even with new suitability maps highlighting 195 million hectares of reforestation potential, social license and long-term stewardship are required. Potential solutions include durable buffer pools, long-term land tenure agreements, and satellite-enabled verification to cut MRV costs.
We may overestimate what we intend to accomplish this year, but if we maintain this pace with our eyes firmly fixed on our collective climate goals, we will underestimate what we will all accomplish this decade.
