Who actually buys carbon removal, and why is demand growing?

The demand that appeared from an unexpected direction

For most of its history the voluntary carbon market had a weak demand problem. Buyers purchased because they had chosen to, budgets were discretionary, and when a quarter went badly the offset line was among the first cut.

Then the AI build out happened, and it changed who the serious buyers are.

Large technology companies had made public commitments to reach net zero. They then began building data centres at a scale that raised their electricity consumption steeply, and clean power cannot be added to a grid as quickly as servers can be added to a building. The gap between the commitment and the consumption had to be closed somehow, and purchasing carbon removal is one of the few instruments available on that timescale.

The result is that the most committed buyers of carbon removal are now companies whose core business has nothing to do with land, and whose demand is driven by a technology boom rather than by environmental sentiment.

There is something worth noticing in that. The industry consuming the power is funding the removal, which is the closest thing to an automatic correction this market has produced.

What these buyers actually want

Access to this demand is not open to every project, and the filter is strict. Three things matter to them, in this order.

Durability. This is the decisive one. A forest holds its carbon only while it stands, and can burn, be felled, or die in a drought. Buyers who have been publicly embarrassed by credits that turned out to represent very little are now strongly biased toward removal that cannot easily be reversed. Carbon locked in a stable form, such as biochar in soil or carbon placed in geological storage, commands prices well above forestry credits for exactly this reason.

Measurement they can defend. Not a model, a measurement, with a stated method, sample size and uncertainty. These buyers have technical teams and they read the methodology. A project whose survival numbers were never counted properly does not reach them, however good the story is.

A story that survives scrutiny. These are heavily reported purchases, and a project that displaced communities or planted a monoculture over natural habitat creates a problem for the buyer rather than solving one. Community rooted projects with published safeguards have a real advantage here, and it is a commercial advantage rather than a moral one.

What this means for a project in India

Four practical consequences, and the third is the one most people miss.

Your best customer may not be Indian. India’s compliance carbon market applies intensity targets to nine industrial sectors, and land based projects sit outside it. That route matters, and it is not where the highest prices for removal currently are. Selling internationally is normal for a project of this type rather than a sign that something is unusual.

Biochar is the door. Forestry alone runs into the durability preference above. Pyrolysing residue from a restoration block converts part of the same biological carbon into a durable form, which is the product this demand is actually looking for. It also returns a soil amendment to the exact ground being restored, so the same operation serves both purposes.

Pre purchase solves the funding problem, not just the sales problem. Several of these buyers pre purchase removal that will be delivered in future years. For a developer that means the buyer provides capital upfront and a committed offtake in the same agreement, which is the combination that makes a long horizon project financeable. It is also a mission aligned counterparty rather than a lender, so the incentives point the same way.

Verification is the whole gate. Every advantage above is locked behind the same question: can you prove your tonnes. This is why we treat measurement as core work rather than as compliance overhead, and why our method is published before any number is.

The honest caveats

This demand is real and it is also concentrated in a small number of buyers, which is a different risk from the one the voluntary market used to have. A handful of large purchasers setting standards means the standards can move quickly, and a project designed around one buyer’s current preference is exposed if that preference shifts.

Commitments can also be revised. Public net zero targets have been quietly softened before and will be again. So the sensible position is the one we take everywhere: build the operating business on buyers who are obliged or commercially compelled to purchase, and treat premium removal demand as the upside that makes a good project excellent.

That reasoning, and why we refuse to run on grants, is set out in our thesis.

Related questions

Why are technology companies buying so much carbon removal?

Because they made public net zero commitments and then their electricity consumption rose steeply as they built AI data centres. Reducing those emissions directly is slow and constrained by how fast clean power can be added to the grid, so purchasing removal is the route available to them in the meantime.

Why do these buyers prefer durable removal to tree planting?

Because of reversal risk. A forest holds carbon only while it stands and can burn, be felled or die. Buyers who have been publicly criticised over low quality credits now favour removal that is difficult to undo, such as biochar in soil or carbon in geological storage, and they pay a premium for it.

Can an Indian project sell removal to these buyers?

Yes, and the buyer being outside India is normal rather than exceptional. What decides access is not location but whether the tonnes are measurable, durable and independently verifiable. Projects that cannot prove their numbers to a demanding buyer do not reach this part of the market at whatever the price.