Celebrating Biochar CDR on Carbon Removal Day

Today, on Carbon Removal Day, IBI is celebrating biochar’s impact!  

Already one of the most powerful climate change solutions scaling around the world, biochar is proving that we can transform waste into a circulatory system of resilience. All while pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. Biochar is powerful. It’s absolutely worth celebrating. 

The Big Picture: Carbon Removal at Scale

Back in 2015, the Paris Agreement called on countries around the world to reduce emissions and take serious action to reduce the worst of climate change impacts. This means limiting the earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius; to do that requires removing 7–9 gigatonnes of CO₂ annually by 2050. While the world is not on target toward delivering that goal, biochar can play an important role in making progress.

The carbon removal market is still small — only approximately 8 million tonnes of CO₂ removals were contracted in 2024. That’s less than 0.1% of what’s needed. But, biochar is leading the way. This ancient practice turned modern climate technology represented approximately 86% of carbon dioxide removal purchases by volume in 2024 across the entire voluntary carbon market.  

As a snapshot, more than 2.7 million tones of CO₂e credits have been purchased from biochar producers worldwide as of June 2025. 

Beyond carbon removal benefits, biochar boosts soils, supports food security, and helps farmers and communities turn waste into value. 

Biochar CDR Moments from 2025 

There are success stories and industry-scaling moments happening monthly across the biochar movement. We’re excited to highlight a few groundbreaking ones from the year so. 

  • Supercritical and Exomad Green expanded their partnership: securing 130,000 tonnes of biochar carbon removal via multi-year offtake agreements. This helps stabilize supply and pricing for buyers in the voluntary carbon market.
  • Google made what was described as the “world’s largest” biochar carbon removal offtake deal in India with startup Varaha — 100,000 tons to be delivered by 2030. The project uses agricultural waste from farms to produce biochar and helps with monitoring + verification via digital tools.
  • Microsoft signed a 5-year offtake agreement with biochar firm Carba to purchase 44,000 tons of carbon removal credits.
  • NetZero was awarded $15 million as runner up in the $100M XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, for its efficient biochar-based carbon removal model. The judges judged its potential to scale to 1 billion tonnes of CO₂ removal in a cost-efficient way.
  • A young startup (founded by a 16-year old CEO among others) raised $3.5M in seed funding, already pre-sold $7M in biochar, and has deals with ~300 almond farms in California to mitigate ~1.5 million tons of CO₂ emissions via biochar conversion of agricultural waste.
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Share Your Contributions to Biochar’s Success

Carbon Removal Day is a reminder that every tonne counts. Whether you’re a farmer applying biochar to your fields, a researcher innovating production methods, or a company supporting durable carbon removal, you’re part of biochar’s success story. 

We invite you to share your biochar story using #CarbonRemovalDay to elevate the important role biochar is playing in trusted, durable carbon removal. 

Let’s celebrate what biochar has achieved so far! Imagine in the next ten years how much further we can go.