How Do Tokenized Carbon Removal Credits Differ From Offsets?
Durable carbon removal — direct air capture and biochar — certifies physical CO2 extraction and guaranteed storage duration, not the avoided-emissions counterfactual behind voluntary offset credits. Occidental's Stratos DAC plant is still not operating after three delivery delays, while biochar now accounts for roughly 90% of delivered removal volume. This guide covers durability tiers, MRV mechanics, and where tokenized removal credits break.
TL;DR — Key Takeaways
- ✓Removal vs. Offset: A removal credit certifies physical CO2 extraction and guaranteed storage duration (100-1,000+ years); a voluntary offset credit certifies an avoided-emissions counterfactual. Different verification problem, different registries.
- ✓DAC Delivery Risk: Occidental's 500,000-t/yr Stratos plant broke ground in April 2023 and still had not captured CO2 as of its Q1 2026 earnings call, after a disclosed 'non-process component' issue. Microsoft, Amazon, Airbus, and JPMorgan bought forward credits before first capture.
- ✓Biochar Dominates Volume: Biochar is roughly 90% of delivered durable removal volume globally. Microsoft's 1.24-million-tonne, 10-year purchase from Bolivia's Exomad Green (May 2025) was the largest biochar CDR deal signed to date.
- ✓Durability Tiers: Puro.earth certifies CORC100+, CORC200+, and CORC1000+ by guaranteed storage duration; Isometric defaults to a 1,000-year threshold. A tokenized credit must carry its durability tier as an immutable attribute — DAC and low-temperature biochar tokens are not fungible.
- ✓Pricing Gap: DAC credits (Climeworks, $400-600/t) price well above biochar (Pacific Biochar, ~$180/t), reflecting DAC's higher capital and energy cost. Most named 2025-2026 deals do not disclose per-tonne price.
What Makes a Carbon Removal Credit Different From an Offset
A durable carbon removal credit certifies that CO2 was physically pulled from the atmosphere — via direct air capture (DAC) machinery or biomass pyrolysis into biochar — and stored for a guaranteed minimum duration measured in centuries, not that an emission was avoided elsewhere. This is a narrower and more expensive claim than a standard voluntary offset credit, which typically funds avoided deforestation, renewable energy, or efficiency projects whose value depends on modeling what would have happened without the project.
The distinction matters for tokenization because the two credit types fail in different ways and get verified by different infrastructure. The voluntary avoidance market's well-documented credibility problems — Verra's REDD+ forest-credit scandals, double-counting under Paris Agreement Article 6 — are covered in Blockmaze's guide to compliant carbon credit tokenization. Durable removal has its own, separate failure mode: delivery risk on physical infrastructure that takes years to build and does not always work on schedule.
“Trains one and two [at Stratos] are now moving over to operations... on track to start capturing CO2 this year.”
— Vicki Hollub, then-CEO, Occidental Petroleum, Q2 2025 earnings call (August 7, 2025)
That statement did not hold. Three quarters later, Stratos still had not captured its first tonne of CO2.
Why Occidental's Stratos Plant Is a Case Study in Removal-Credit Delivery Risk
Stratos is a 500,000-tonne-per-year design-capacity DAC plant in Ector County, Texas, built by 1PointFive, Occidental's carbon capture subsidiary, at a cost that has grown from an initial roughly $1 billion estimate to approximately $1.2-1.3 billion. Construction broke ground on April 28, 2023, with an original target of capturing CO2 by the end of 2024. That date slipped to end of 2025, then to Q2 2026, and as of Occidental's Q1 2026 earnings call in May 2026, the company disclosed a “non-process component” issue found during commissioning — described as unrelated to the core DAC technology, which the company said “performed as expected” — with no new startup date given. Incoming CEO Richard Jackson told analysts CO2 injection would continue into 2027, with steady project revenue not expected until the “later part” of that year.
BlackRock committed $550 million to Stratos through a joint venture announced November 7, 2023 — roughly 40% of the project's cost at the time. Despite the plant not yet capturing a single verified tonne, corporate buyers had already signed forward offtake agreements: Microsoft for 500,000 tonnes over six years (announced July 2024), Amazon for 250,000 tonnes over ten years, Airbus for 400,000 tonnes over four years, and JPMorgan Chase for 50,000 tonnes over ten years.
Key Insight
Every one of Stratos's named offtake agreements was signed against a plant that, at time of writing, has never captured a verified tonne of CO2. A compliance framework for tokenized DAC credits has to price and disclose this as forward-delivery risk on physical infrastructure — the same underwriting discipline applied to a construction loan, not the settled-asset treatment appropriate for an already-verified retirement.
How Biochar Became 90% of Delivered Removal Volume
Biochar — biomass heated without oxygen (pyrolysis) into a stable, carbon-rich solid that is buried, embedded in concrete or asphalt, or applied to soil — accounts for roughly 90% of all delivered durable carbon removal volume worldwide as of 2026, because pyrolysis facilities cost a fraction of a DAC plant and can be built in months rather than years. Microsoft's purchase of at least 1.24 million tonnes over ten years from Bolivia's Exomad Green, announced May 21-22, 2025, was described at signing as the largest biochar carbon removal agreement in history — following an earlier, smaller 32,000-tonne purchase from the same supplier announced in December 2023.
Verification for biochar runs on mass-balance accounting rather than DAC's direct-measurement approach: registries track the feedstock's carbon content, the pyrolysis temperature the material was processed at, and a durability test — commonly the H:Corg (hydrogen-to-organic-carbon) ratio — that predicts how much of the fixed carbon will persist for centuries versus degrade on a shorter timescale. High-pyrolysis-temperature biochar can retain roughly three-quarters of its carbon for over 1,000 years, while low-temperature biochar's durability claim can fall to a 100-300 year range — the same nominal product, biochar, spanning a wide durability range depending entirely on how it was made.
Charm Industrial
Converts biomass into bio-oil injected into deep geological wells. Named 2025-2026 buyers: JPMorgan Chase (61,500t, June 2026), Boeing (100,000t, its first aviation customer, November 2025), TD Bank (44,000t, January 2026).
Vaulted Deep
Injects biomass slurry into deep, permitted disposal wells. Microsoft committed up to 4.9 million tonnes over 12 years (July 2025) — one of the largest durable removal deals signed to date. Google committed 50,000 tonnes by 2030 (September 2025).
Exomad Green (Bolivia)
Large-scale biochar producer. Microsoft's 1.24-million-tonne, 10-year deal (May 2025) is the largest biochar-specific agreement on record; Swiss Re separately committed to 70,000 tonnes over 7 years (June 2024).
Liferaft & Varaha
Liferaft (US Midwest biochar) signed a 1,000,000-credit, 10-year deal with Microsoft (March 2026). Varaha (India, cotton-waste biochar) signed a 100,000-tonne, 3-year deal with Google (January 2026) and a separate deal with Microsoft.
None of the deals above disclosed a per-tonne price publicly. Pacific Biochar, a smaller US supplier with a more transparent transaction history via the CDR.fyi registry, has traded credits around $180 per tonne — a useful benchmark given how rarely biochar pricing surfaces in named-buyer press releases.
Durability Tiers: Why a DAC Credit and a Biochar Credit Aren't Fungible
Puro.earth, one of the two leading removal registries, certifies three CO2 Removal Certificate (CORC) tiers by guaranteed minimum storage duration: CORC100+ guarantees at least 100 years, CORC200+ guarantees several centuries and aligns with the EU's Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming Regulation definition of permanent removal, and CORC1000+ guarantees storage lasting millennia. Puro.earth discontinued methodologies certifying less than 100 years of storage in December 2022. Isometric, the other major registry, applies a default 1,000-year durability threshold for any credit to qualify as a “Removal” at all, with a specific biochar protocol offering buyers a choice between a 200-year or a 1,000-year certificate.
| Tier | Registry | Guaranteed Storage |
|---|---|---|
| CORC100+ | Puro.earth | At least 100 years |
| CORC200+ | Puro.earth | Several centuries (EU CRCF "permanent") |
| CORC1000+ | Puro.earth | Millennia |
| Biochar Protocol (200-year option) | Isometric | 200 years |
| Default Removal Threshold | Isometric | 1,000 years (default) |
The practical consequence for tokenization: a token representing a CORC1000+ DAC credit and a token representing a 200-year biochar credit both carry the label “carbon removal,” but they are not interchangeable claims and must not be pooled into a single fungible token class. ISO 14068-1, published in 2023 as the international standard for organizational carbon neutrality, requires a reduce-then-remove-then-offset hierarchy — reinforcing that buyers under this standard need removal credits specifically, with durability documented, not a generic offset substituted in.
Who Tokenized Removal Credits Are For — and When They Break
Tokenized carbon removal credits fit corporate buyers with net-zero commitments that specifically require durable removal — not avoidance offsets — and institutional carbon-market participants comfortable underwriting forward-delivery risk on physical infrastructure. They are a poor fit for buyers who need immediately retirable, already-verified tonnes, or for anyone treating a DAC forward-purchase agreement as equivalent to a delivered biochar credit.
Who it's for
- Buyers under ISO 14068-1 or similar reduce-remove-offset mandates
- Institutional allocators comfortable with multi-year delivery risk
- Buyers who need durability-tier documentation, not just a tonne count
- Programs diversifying across DAC and biochar for portfolio durability mix
Who it's NOT for
- Buyers who need immediately retirable, already-delivered tonnes
- Programs treating removal and voluntary avoidance credits as interchangeable
- Buyers unwilling to underwrite construction/commissioning delay risk
- Anyone pooling different durability tiers into one fungible token
When it breaks
- Forward-purchased credits from a plant that never reaches operation (Stratos)
- Low-pyrolysis-temperature biochar sold at a high-durability price
- No mass-balance or H:Corg evidence backing a biochar durability claim
- Token design doesn't distinguish delivered tonnes from forward commitments
How Blockmaze Handles Tokenized Carbon Removal Compliance
Blockmaze structures a tokenized removal credit around four protocol-level controls — a durability-tier attribute that travels immutably with the token, a delivered-versus-forward status flag, registry-linked retirement verification, and MRV evidence anchoring — so a DAC or biochar program is configured against its actual verification requirements instead of being flattened into a generic carbon token.
Immutable Durability Tier
Every token carries its CORC100+/200+/1000+ or Isometric durability class as a non-editable field, preventing a low-durability credit from being resold as a higher tier.
Delivered vs. Forward Status
A token representing a forward offtake from an uncommissioned plant is flagged distinctly from one backed by an already-verified, registry-retired tonne.
Registry-Linked Retirement
Issuance requires a cryptographically attested retirement record from Puro.earth, Isometric, or an equivalent registry — the same anti-double-counting principle applied to voluntary credits, adapted to removal-specific methodologies.
MRV Evidence Anchoring
Mass-balance data, pyrolysis temperature records, and H:Corg test results (for biochar) or injection-volume verification (for DAC) are anchored on-chain alongside the token, not left as an off-chain PDF.
The general oracle-verification problem this solves — pulling a verified off-chain measurement on-chain without trusting a single party's claim — is the same pattern covered generally in how oracles price tokenized real-world assets, applied here to a durability test rather than a market price feed.
Tokenizing a Carbon Removal Program?
Blockmaze provides the compliance framework for durable carbon removal tokenization — immutable durability tiers, delivered-vs-forward status tracking, registry-linked retirement, and on-chain MRV evidence anchoring for DAC and biochar programs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a durable carbon removal credit, and how is it different from a carbon offset?
A durable carbon removal credit certifies that CO2 was physically extracted from the air or biologically fixed and stored for a guaranteed minimum duration — 100 to 1,000+ years, depending on the method — rather than certifying that an emission was merely avoided or reduced elsewhere. Direct air capture (DAC) pulls CO2 from ambient air and injects it into geological storage; biochar pyrolyzes biomass into a stable carbon form and buries or embeds it. A voluntary offset credit, by contrast, typically pays for avoided deforestation, renewable energy, or efficiency projects — value that depends on a counterfactual (what would have happened anyway) rather than a physical extraction event. Registries like Puro.earth and Isometric certify removal credits under separate methodologies from avoidance credits precisely because the verification question is different: durability and mass-balance measurement, not counterfactual modeling.
Why is Occidental's Stratos direct air capture plant relevant to carbon removal credit compliance?
Stratos, a 500,000-tonne-per-year design-capacity DAC plant built by 1PointFive (Occidental's carbon capture subsidiary) in Ector County, Texas, illustrates the delivery-timeline risk built into every DAC credit purchase agreement. Construction broke ground in April 2023 with an original 2024 startup target; as of Occidental's Q1 2026 earnings call, the plant was still not capturing CO2, having slipped through 2025 and into an undated timeline after the company disclosed a 'non-process component' issue during commissioning. Occidental's incoming CEO said injection would continue into 2027. Microsoft, Amazon, Airbus, and JPMorgan have all signed multi-year offtake agreements for Stratos-sourced credits before the plant produced its first verified tonne — a forward-purchase structure that a compliance framework must price and disclose as delivery risk, not treat as an already-verified asset.
How is a biochar carbon removal credit verified, and how much of the removal market does biochar represent?
A biochar credit is verified through mass-balance accounting of the feedstock's carbon content, the pyrolysis process temperature, and a durability test — commonly the H:Corg (hydrogen-to-organic-carbon) ratio, which predicts how much of the fixed carbon will persist over centuries versus degrade faster. Puro.earth and Isometric, the two leading registries, both require this durability evidence before issuing a certificate. Biochar represents roughly 90% of all delivered (not merely contracted) durable carbon removal volume worldwide as of 2026, because pyrolysis facilities are far cheaper and faster to build than DAC plants — Microsoft's 1.24-million-tonne, 10-year purchase from Bolivia's Exomad Green, announced in May 2025, was described at signing as the largest biochar carbon removal agreement ever signed.
What durability tiers do carbon removal registries use, and why does it matter for tokenization?
Puro.earth certifies three CO2 Removal Certificate (CORC) tiers by guaranteed minimum storage duration: CORC100+ (at least 100 years), CORC200+ (several centuries, aligned with the EU's Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming Regulation definition of permanent removal), and CORC1000+ (millennia). Isometric applies a 1,000-year default durability threshold for any credit to qualify as a 'Removal,' with a biochar-specific protocol offering either a 200-year or a 1,000-year certificate option. A tokenized removal credit must carry its durability tier as an immutable, protocol-level attribute — a DAC token backed by geological storage and a low-pyrolysis-temperature biochar token both claim 'removal,' but they are not fungible against each other or against a voluntary avoidance credit, and treating them as interchangeable is the single most common compliance failure in early tokenized carbon markets.
Who buys tokenized carbon removal credits, and at what price?
Corporate buyers with net-zero commitments requiring durable removal — not just avoidance offsets — under frameworks like ISO 14068-1 (published 2023, which requires a reduce-then-remove-then-offset hierarchy) are the primary market. Named 2025-2026 deals include Microsoft's purchases from Exomad Green (1.24 million tonnes), Vaulted Deep (up to 4.9 million tonnes over 12 years), Carba, and Liferaft; Google's purchases from Charm Industrial and Varaha (100,000 tonnes each) and Vaulted Deep (50,000 tonnes); and JPMorgan Chase, Boeing, and TD Bank's purchases from Charm Industrial. DAC credits price well above biochar: Climeworks has priced removals in the $400-600 per tonne range, reflecting DAC's higher energy and capital cost, while Pacific Biochar credits have traded closer to $180 per tonne. None of the named deals above disclosed a per-tonne price publicly — buyers negotiate bilaterally, which is itself a transparency gap a tokenized settlement layer can close.
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