To ensure that CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) consolidates itself as one of the primary tools for atmospheric capture, a demonstration and scaling phase is required. The third chapter of “The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal, 3rd Edition” report analyzes the stage where technologies transition from pilot testing to commercial deployment.
Demonstration and Scaling
The chapter addresses the demonstration and scaling phase of CDR, which acts as the bridge between innovation and mass deployment. After analyzing R&D in Chapter 2 and before quantifying current CDR levels in Chapter 7, this chapter focuses on how pilot and demonstration projects, startups, financing, and workforce development are shaping the ecosystem needed to take CDR from the lab to industrial practice. Demonstration and upscaling are presented as the phase where technical viability confronts the market, policies, and institutional capacities.
A key element is the role of public demonstration programs. The global initiative Mission Innovation, which groups the EU and 22 countries, includes a “CDR Mission” co-led by the United States, Canada, and Saudi Arabia, and a “CDR Launchpad” that commits several governments to build CDR projects with a capacity of at least 1,000 /year before 2025, share data, and contribute 100 million USD to pilots and demonstrators. Based on data from Mission Innovation, ministerial meetings, the IEA’s CCUS projects database, and other sources, the chapter identifies 46 demonstration projects announced between 2020–2030 in BECCS, DACCS, biochar, enhanced weathering, mineral products, and ocean capture, of which nearly 80% exceed 1,000 /year. However, data coverage remains partial, and there is a warning about the need to expand monitoring beyond Launchpad members.
Ecosystem of Companies, Investment, and Employment: Progress and Volatility
The chapter analyzes the CDR company ecosystem using the Net Zero Insights database, identifying 766 companies that meet the definition of CDR, of which 396 have received investment since 2005. In total, 1,260 investors have contributed around 8.4 billion USD to these companies, most of which were founded after 2005. The number of new CDR companies peaked in 2022 (114 foundations) and declined in 2023, though this subsequent drop may be affected by data truncation. More significantly, while total climate-tech financing declined after its peak in 2022, investment in CDR rebounded in 2025 to about 1.6 billion USD, raising CDR’s share in climate-tech from 1.7% to 2.6%. This rebound relies heavily on an increase in grants and debt financing from public and quasi-public entities, highlighting the ecosystem’s volatility and the importance of policy instruments to sustain scaling when private capital is more cautious.
For the first time, the report incorporates an analysis of the workforce required by CDR. The “CDRjobs” dataset covers full-time job openings in CDR companies and enabling firms between April 2024 and December 2025, identifying 1,312 positions in DACCS, 445 in biochar, 290 in BECCS, 309 in mineral products, 1,079 in enabling companies, and 1,102 in other methods. The distribution of vacancies shows a high demand for engineering and technical operations profiles, R&D, and software/IT, but also for finance and strategy, sales and marketing, operations, and HR professionals. This pattern reinforces the idea that CDR is not just a technological challenge but also an organizational and commercial one, requiring multidisciplinary teams capable of designing, financing, operating, and scaling projects with integrity.
Ambitions, Goals, and the Pace of Scaling
The chapter gathers 52 corporate announcements regarding their novel CDR capacity targets for 2030–2050, extracted from industry surveys, updated data from the 2nd edition, and goals communicated in funding rounds or public documents. The sum of these ambitions reaches 5.29 /year of novel CDR capacity in 2050, of which 71% would correspond to DACCS, 19% to carbon sequestration in agricultural soils and pastures, 10% to biochar, and less than 1% to other methods. Since the previous edition, ten companies have withdrawn their targets and five have delayed or reduced them, reflecting the uncertainty and volatility of these ambitions. Despite this, the total announced volume exceeds the median for novel CDR in the scenarios analyzed in Chapter 8, a sign that, at least in the narrative, corporate ambition is high.
The chapter contrasts these targets with two global goals for 2030: the “30 by 30” campaign (30 /year of novel CDR) and the CDR2030 initiative, which proposes 100 /year of novel CDR and 3 /year of conventional CDR by 2030. Starting from around 1.3 /year of novel CDR in 2023, reaching 30 in 2030 requires a compound annual growth rate of approximately 57%, while reaching 100 requires near 86% annually. Compared to 181 historical cases of global technology scaling, these rates sit at the higher end of the spectrum but are not unprecedented: magnetic data storage, mobile telephony, lithium-ion batteries, and internet traffic have grown just as fast or faster. The message is that the scaling required for novel CDR is highly demanding, but not impossible if coherent policies, sufficient investment, and industrial capacities are mobilized.
The chapter concludes that the 2026–2030 decade will be critical to consolidating CDR as a stable component of the climate system: robust demonstration programs, diversification of methods and actors, stable policies, and clear demand signals are required so that novel CDR can sustain scaling rates comparable to those of other transformative technologies. Otherwise, the detected vulnerabilities—geographic and technological concentration, dependence on a few large buyers, and political volatility—could hinder its capacity to help close the CDR gap described in later chapters.
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