How Industry Is Building Carbon Removal Into Its Factories

Carbon removal is no longer a lab experiment. It is moving into mines, cement plants, pulp mills, and farm operations, embedded directly into existing industrial processes. The durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) market surpassed 1 million cumulative tonnes in physical deliveries as of 2025, and the fastest-growing trend behind that milestone is industrial integration: pairing heavy industry infrastructure with carbon removal technology to remove CO2 at lower cost and faster scale.

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Why Are Industries Now Integrating Carbon Removal?

The economics finally make sense. Industries that already handle large volumes of rocks, water, biomass, or minerals are discovering that carbon removal is not a separate burden. It is a natural extension of what they already do.

According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, sectors like mining, agriculture, cement, pulp and paper, and wastewater treatment produce waste materials that directly feed CDR processes. In many cases, integrating carbon removal delivers cost savings, supply chain security, and new revenue streams alongside the removal itself.

The scale needed makes industrial integration urgent. Current annual CDR sits at approximately 50 million tonnes globally. The volume needed by 2050 is 6 to 16 billion tonnes. That range is comparable to the total material volumes handled by global agriculture, construction, or mining combined. Heavy industry is not just a natural partner for CDR. It may be the only pathway to reaching that scale within the necessary timeframe.

Which Industries Are Leading the Integration Push?

Industrial CDR integration is already happening across multiple sectors. Each brings a different set of assets, waste streams, and removal opportunities.

Mining is one of the clearest fits. Mining operations already crush and transport reactive minerals at scale. Companies can use mine tailings, the leftover waste material from extraction, as feedstock for enhanced rock weathering (ERW). ERW accelerates the natural absorption of CO2 by exposing reactive minerals to the atmosphere, trapping carbon as stable carbonate rock. Vancouver-based Arca, an industrial mineralization company, announced a 10-year offtake agreement with Microsoft in October 2025 to deliver nearly 300,000 tonnes of durable CDR by repurposing byproducts from mining operations, including tailings and waste rock.

Cement is following closely. Holcim and Oman-founded 44.01 launched the world's first pilot project to mineralise CO2 captured directly from a cement plant in Fujairah, UAE, in December 2025. The pilot initially captures 5 tonnes of CO2 per day from cement production and permanently stores it in underground rock formations. Cement accounts for approximately 8% of global CO2 emissions, making it one of the hardest industrial sectors to decarbonize.

Pulp and paper holds outsized potential. Vancouver-based CO280 has more than 10 CDR projects in active development, targeting 10 million tonnes of carbon removal per year by retrofitting U.S. pulp and paper mills. In May 2025, CO280 signed an offtake agreement with JPMorganChase for 450,000 metric tonnes of CDR over 13 years at under $200 per tonne, one of the lowest-ever price points for engineered CDR. U.S. pulp and paper mills emit approximately 88 million tonnes of biogenic CO2 annually, making the sector a compelling integration target.

Agriculture and forestry offer a third pathway. Bolivia-based Exomad Green, one of the largest biochar CDR producers globally, signed the world's largest-ever biochar carbon removal agreement with Microsoft in May 2025: 1.24 million tonnes of CO2 removed over 10 years. Exomad converts sawmill and forestry waste into biochar at two pyrolysis plants in Bolivia, converting material that would otherwise be burned or decomposed into a stable, carbon-rich product that sequesters carbon for centuries.

Industry	CDR Method	Key Company	Verified Deal / Milestone
Mining	Carbon Mineralization (ERW)	Arca (Vancouver, Canada)	Nearly 300,000 tCO2 to Microsoft over 10 years (Oct 2025)
Cement	CO2 Capture + In-Situ Mineralisation	Holcim + 44.01 (Fujairah, UAE)	World's first cement CO2 mineralisation pilot, 5 tCO2/day (Dec 2025)
Pulp and Paper	Biogenic CCS (BiCRS)	CO280 (Vancouver, Canada)	450,000 tCO2 to JPMorganChase over 13 years at under $200/tonne (May 2025)
Agriculture / Forestry	Biochar Carbon Removal	Exomad Green (Bolivia)	1.24 million tCO2 to Microsoft over 10 years, largest-ever biochar deal (May 2025)

What Makes Industrial Integration Different from Standalone CDR?

Standalone CDR projects, such as dedicated direct air capture facilities, require building everything from scratch: land, power, equipment, and logistics. Industrial integration flips that model entirely. The infrastructure already exists. The workforce is in place. The feedstock is often a waste product the company is already paying to manage or dispose of.

A 2025 report from the Bipartisan Policy Center, based on a roundtable with approximately 20 CDR companies, industry partners, and NGOs, notes that industries processing rocks, minerals, biomass, or water generate waste heat and byproducts that are core CDR inputs. The BPC report states that in many cases, processes enabling CDR deliver cost savings, operational efficiencies, and supply chain security, with carbon removal effectively becoming a co-benefit of operations that would happen anyway.

CO280's model illustrates this principle clearly. By retrofitting existing pulp and paper mills to capture biogenic CO2 from boiler stack emissions, CO280 avoids the cost of greenfield development entirely. Mill stack emissions are 300 times more concentrated than atmospheric CO2, which makes capture far more efficient and less expensive than direct air capture. That structural cost advantage is what allowed the JPMorganChase deal to land at under $200 per tonne, a price point that signals real movement down the cost curve for engineered CDR.

Biochar applies the same logic to agriculture. Biochar systems are modular and co-located with existing biomass operations. They use forestry or agricultural waste that would otherwise decompose or be burned. Biochar delivered roughly 86% of all durable removals in the 2024 voluntary market, according to Oxford Energy. Cost typically ranges from $100 to $250 per tonne, well below current direct air capture costs of $230 to $630 per metric tonne.

How Much Carbon Removal Does the World Actually Need From Industry?

The gap between where CDR is today and where it needs to be is enormous. Current global annual CDR sits at approximately 50 million tonnes. Projections from the RMI and the CDR30 initiative put the need at 6 to 16 billion tonnes per year by 2050. That is a 120 to 300-fold increase from today's levels, and every year of delay compounds the challenge.

The durable CDR market contracted 15.48 million tonnes in credits during H1 2025 alone, a 78% year-over-year increase over H1 2024, according to CDR.fyi. But actual physical deliveries still lag significantly behind contracts. Companies reported delivering approximately 450,000 tonnes of carbon removal across all of 2025, with biochar accounting for roughly 80% of that total. The remaining deliveries came from ocean-based methods, enhanced rock weathering, and early-stage engineered systems.

Scaling those delivery volumes faster means bringing CDR inside industrial facilities where the feedstock, infrastructure, and processing capacity already exist. Industrial integration is the mechanism that closes the gap between contracts signed and carbon actually removed.

What Policy Frameworks Are Accelerating Industrial CDR?

Policy is catching up with the market. The UK has set the world's most detailed binding engineered CDR targets: 5 million tonnes per year by 2030, rising to 75 to 81 million tonnes per year by 2050. The UK also announced plans to fully integrate CDR into its Emissions Trading Scheme by 2029. Germany committed €476 million in federal CDR procurement funding, with a focus on integrating bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) into existing bioenergy infrastructure.

In the U.S., the Bipartisan Policy Center's April 2025 roundtable identified specific federal levers to unlock industrial CDR. Participants called for shielding mining companies from liability when using legacy tailings for enhanced rock weathering, for permitting reform that speeds up CO2 transport and sequestration infrastructure, and for clearer classification of mining waste under environmental regulations to encourage its use as CDR feedstock.

The EU's Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) took its first legislative steps in 2025. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland formed the Nordic Carbon Removal Association (NCRA) to coordinate regional CDR deployment. These frameworks are important because they turn voluntary corporate purchases into a regulated, fundable market that can attract institutional capital at scale.

Who Is Buying Industrial CDR Credits, and How Is the Market Developing?

Corporate buyers are the primary demand driver, though the market is still heavily concentrated. Approximately 65% of carbon removal credit purchases in 2024 came from a single buyer: Microsoft. The company locked in multiple large industrial CDR deals across 2025, including the 1.24 million tonne biochar agreement with Exomad Green and the nearly 300,000 tonne mineralization deal with Arca.

Other companies are building meaningful commitments. JPMorganChase's 450,000 tonne deal with CO280 made it one of the first major banks to commit to engineered CDR at this scale. Bain and Company signed a deal with German enhanced weathering company ZeroEx. Swiss Re secured 70,000 tonnes of biochar removal credits from Exomad Green's Riberalta project in Bolivia. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines partnered with Isometric to generate verified CDR credits tied to shipping sector decarbonization.

Analysts expect the next wave of buyers to come from the tech sector, as expanding AI infrastructure and data center power use pushes technology companies further from their climate targets. That demand pressure is expected to pull more industrial operators into CDR integration programs rather than standalone offset purchases.

The Factory as a Carbon Sink

The IEA reports that the number of CDR startups has grown fivefold in five years, and venture capital investment in the sector has increased sevenfold over the same period. Innovators are now commissioning facilities capable of capturing 15,000 to 40,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. Utilities and energy majors are advancing even larger projects targeting 200,000 to 800,000 tonnes annually.

Industrial integration connects those numbers to the billions of tonnes the climate math demands. It does not require building new factories. It requires unlocking what factories already have: scale, logistics, feedstock, and a workforce that knows how to run complex operations at volume.

The global CDR market is projected to grow from $610.9 million in 2023 to $2.1 billion by 2032. Voluntary CDR purchases grew at a 237% compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2024. The cumulative delivery milestone of 1 million tonnes was reached in 2025. Those numbers are the result of early movers proving the model inside existing industrial sites. The next phase of growth belongs to the industries that are already built and already running.