Microsoft Bought 93% of Carbon Removals. Now What?

Microsoft purchased 93% of all carbon removal credits globally in 2025, according to research by BloombergNEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. That figure is striking, but it tells a story of a young market being held up by one committed buyer, and the early signs of a more diversified future are already showing.

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What Does 93% of a Global Market Actually Look Like?

Global CDR demand reached 57 million metric tonnes in 2025, doubling the 2024 total (BloombergNEF and Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, 2025). It was the first year the two organizations formally tracked market demand for carbon removal.

Of that, Microsoft contracted 45 million metric tonnes with 21 companies worldwide in fiscal year 2025, nine times its 2023 volume and more than double its 2024 volume (Microsoft Environmental Sustainability Report, 2026). Reforestation accounted for 56% of the global total, with biochar carbon removal and BECCS close behind.

Microsoft's portfolio spans a wide range of removal pathways. That breadth is deliberate. By investing in direct air capture, BECCS, enhanced rock weathering, soil-based removals, and large-scale reforestation simultaneously, the company is hedging across technologies rather than concentrating on any one bet.

Why Is Microsoft the Anchor Buyer for an Entire Industry?

Microsoft made its carbon removal pledge in 2020, committing to become carbon-negative by 2030 and to eliminate every tonne of emissions the company has produced since its 1975 founding. As AI infrastructure pushed its emissions up 29% between 2020 and 2024 (Microsoft, 2025), the need for high-quality CDR became more urgent each year, not less.

The company funds projects before they're listed on registries and performs deep due diligence that other buyers then rely on. Microsoft's waste-based carbon removal commitment and its $300 million forest partnership with EFM both follow the same model, offering long-term offtake agreements that give suppliers the financial runway to actually build.

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Is a Single-Buyer Market Structurally Risky?

Market concentration at 93% is genuinely fragile. If Microsoft paused procurement, shifted priorities, or faced pressure to redirect sustainability spending, the ripple effects on CDR suppliers would be real. Many early-stage projects were funded specifically on the strength of Microsoft's forward commitments, and a sudden absence of that demand signal would destabilize project financing across the board.

But concentration risk has a counterweight here. Without Microsoft's aggressive buying, most of these projects wouldn't have had the capital to launch. The company's commitment subsidized the industry through its most vulnerable early years, funding projects before they were listed on registries and validating them for buyers who lacked the internal capacity to do their own due diligence.

It's the inescapable tension of being the anchor buyer, since you become the market's greatest asset and its single biggest dependency at the same time.

Year	Microsoft CDR Contracted	Global Market Total	Microsoft's Share
2023	~5 million metric tonnes	Not formally tracked	Not tracked
2024	~20 million metric tonnes	~28.5M (derived: half of 2025 per BNEF/BCSE doubling statement)	~70% (calculated)
2025	45 million metric tonnes	57 million metric tonnes (BNEF/BCSE, 2025)	93% (BNEF/BCSE, 2025)

How Is the Buyer Pool Starting to Expand?

The CDR market's first-half 2025 data showed the clearest diversification yet. Roughly 50% of all H1 2025 purchases came from first-time buyers, per CDR.fyi. The durable CDR market recorded 1 million tonnes in deliveries across 521 purchasers from 35 countries, sourced from 117 suppliers in more than 28 nations (CDR.fyi, 2025).

ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, purchased over 100,000 tonnes through Rubicon Carbon. Google, Shopify, KIRKBI, and SAP all made active CDR buys. G20 governments still lag badly on CDR commitments, which means private sector demand must continue carrying the market while public policy catches up.

The SBTi Net-Zero Standard v.2 is expected to formally incorporate CDR requirements into corporate sustainability strategies, which could unlock a new wave of buyers who have been waiting for clear, standardized guidance before committing. That kind of structural pull, combined with the DAC cost reduction roadmap pointing toward $100 to $150 per tonne by 2050, creates real conditions for the buyer base to grow substantially in the years ahead.

What Does the CDR Market Need to Grow Beyond One Buyer?

Microsoft built the quality standards, funded the suppliers, and established the due diligence framework the rest of the market borrows. As the 2025 North America CDR year in review showed, momentum is real and infrastructure is in place.

The CDR market doesn't need Microsoft to pull back. It needs more companies to step forward. With 57 million metric tonnes in global demand in 2025 and a scientific consensus target of 7 to 9 billion tonnes annually by 2050 (Microsoft/IPCC, 2026), the gap between where the market is and where it needs to go is vast. That gap is the opportunity.