June 2026 saw a broad pullback across the CDR market, with offtake, investment, issuance, and retirements all down month-on-month. The decline came in the same month that London Climate Action Week brought the CDR community together in force and shifted the conversation decisively from whether removals are needed to how the market scales them.
Offtake totalled 321,420 credits across 11 deals, down 77.20% month-on-month. Investment came in at $21.8 million, down 54.68%. Issuance reached 103,851.83 credits, a 23.23% decline, while retirements fell to 25,424.19 credits, down 56.65%.
Carbon Removal Offtakes and Corporate Purchases
Offtake volume totalled 321,420 credits across 11 deals in June, down 77.20% month-on-month. Offtake activity slowed sharply from May, though a large share of this month's deals carried undisclosed volumes, pointing to continued deal breadth even as disclosed tonnage fell.
Banking and financial institutions were active buyers this month. TD Bank signed a 10-year CDR agreement via Climeworks (volume undisclosed) and, within the same month, agreed a further offtake with Deep Sky for 18,000 credits via direct air capture, expanding its removal portfolio on two fronts. JP Morgan Chase expanded its existing commitment with Charm Industrial by 61,500 credits via biomass-derived bio-oil sequestration, while Freepoint Commodities agreed a 10,000-credit BECCS offtake with FS Agrisolutions.
Shipping and industrial buyers also made notable moves. Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK Line) signed an offtake with Graphyte via biomass direct storage (volume undisclosed) a first for a major shipping line entering biomass-based removals. NATS committed over $600K to a diversified CDR portfolio via CUR8 (volume undisclosed), and The Economist signed an agreement with Bigadan via Carbonfuture (volume undisclosed).
Biochar and enhanced rock weathering (ERW) featured prominently among disclosed deals. Altitude Carbon signed a 180,000-credit biochar offtake with Equilibrium, the largest disclosed transaction this month and a continued marker of India's growing biochar supply base. Microsoft signed an offtake for 36,920 credits with Alt Carbon via enhanced rock weathering, continuing its pattern of backing India-based ERW suppliers.
BECCS also saw activity in the Nordics, with Axfast signing a BECCS agreement with Stockholm Exergi (volume undisclosed) and Fastpartner agreeing a further 15,000-credit BECCS offtake with Stockholm Exergi, signed alongside the Axfast deal.
Investment
CDR investment totalled $21.8 million in June, down 54.68% month-on-month. The largest single raise came from Captura, which secured $12.5 million from a broad consortium of strategic and institutional investors, Equinor Ventures, Maersk Growth, Eni Next, EDP Ventures, Aramco Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, National Grid Partners, and Japan Airlines Innovation Fund, alongside institutional backers Freeflow Ventures and mTerra Ventures.
Corporate venture activity also came through CarbonX, a Japan-based corporate investment program, which backed four companies this month: Octavia Carbon, Cella, AirCapture, and ParallelCarbon.
Government funding featured in one of the month's few publicly disclosed deals, with Carbon Alpha securing $1.8 million from Canada's National Research Council Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP). Deep Sky also received a strategic investment from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, though the amount was undisclosed.
Issuance : Biochar Carbon Removal Credits Lead Supply
Total credits issued in June came to 103,851.83, down 23.23% month-on-month. Issuance declined from May but remained led by a familiar pair of biochar developers.
Exomad Green was the top issuer with 34,300 credits, followed closely by Carboneers (30,035.28) and Varaha (12,933.81). Together, these three largest issuers accounted for the bulk of this month's supply.
Vaulted Deep contributed 5,288.01 credits via biomass storage, while a longer tail of smaller developers rounded out the top ten, Fasera Estates, Kalp Climate Tech, Truecoco Ghana, Wongphai Company, Vertree Partners, and Eversink each contributed between roughly 1,400 and 2,500 credits.
Retirements
Total retirements came to 25,424.19 credits in June, down 56.65% month-on-month. The retirement-to-issuance ratio fell to 24.48%, down from May's 43.36%, meaning supply continues to outpace demand absorption, with the gap widening this month.
Deutsche Telekom led retirement activity by a clear margin, retiring 10,000 credits, well ahead of Arup Group (2,500) and Grab (2,122). Malta International Airport and JP Morgan Chase rounded out the top five.
CDR During London Climate Action Week: What Changed?
Our team was present at most of this year's events, with the CDR team alone attending 8 events across 5 days. London was cooking, literally and figuratively and the irony wasn't lost on anyone. The reason we're all in these rooms is that climate change is real, and emissions reduction plus removals are now the baseline for a livable future.
The conversation has moved on. A year or two ago, panels were still debating whether CDR was needed at all, was it scalable, was it a distraction from reductions, could we wait until 2050. That debate is over. The question this year wasn't if we should fight climate change, it was how.
Where will the money come from?
Compliance schemes drew serious interest as developers look beyond the voluntary market, with blended finance repeatedly floated as a bridge. Voluntary and compliance aren't converging, they're complementary. The EU's ETS review lands 17th July, and a key design question is whether procurement runs through a centralized buyer intermediary or stays direct between developer and buyer, a decision that will shape how much room is left for marketplaces and brokers. Separately, survey data from Supercritical's summit reinforced a "quality over price" theme: average buyer cost targets for CDR have roughly tripled since 2022, with portfolio approaches across multiple pathways increasingly favoured over single-pathway bets.
Beyond the Headline Numbers
The market's plumbing is shifting too, beneath the top-line deals. Insetting is gaining ground, as buyers look more at value chain interventions than pure offset purchases. Offtakes are still getting signed, but mostly behind closed doors - public data lags, though a good chunk of that private pipeline should surface over coming months.
The real constraint isn't supply. Novel CDR still makes up just 0.1% of global removals, and most corporates can't yet formally report these purchases under current accounting rules. That leaves spend invisible on the balance sheet, and with roughly 65% of credits retired anonymously, trust is what's actually missing.
Standardization is catching up, though. OSCAR's offtake template is gaining traction with suppliers and has already been used in deals with Exomad, a direct answer to corporate buyers who still approach carbon contracts like office supplies. SBTi drew mixed opinions, but the fair consensus was that two steps forward, one step back is still a step forward. And buyer needs are fragmenting: some want a liquid spot market, others are building multi-methodology portfolios, as new sectors start procuring CDR for the first time.
June's numbers were down across the board, but the room in London told a different story. This market isn't debating whether it should exist anymore, it's wrestling with harder questions now: how to scale, how to standardize contracts, how to earn trust. The volumes will come back. The shift in what people are actually talking about probably won't reverse.