According to the authors of the newly released report, the primary barriers to expanding carbon removal technologies include prohibitive costs, regulatory ambiguity, and a lack of unified market standards. These hurdles make it difficult for projects to secure the long-term financial commitments needed to move from small-scale pilots to massive, industry-wide operations.
“High costs, regulatory uncertainty, limited long-term demand commitments and fragmented market structures remain critical bottlenecks to progress.” Additionally, “the lack of oversight and inconsistent standards for verifying credit quality (for example, permanence, additionality) creates distrust among buyers and stifles investment.”
Essentially, pulling carbon from the atmosphere remains far more expensive than other environmental efforts, and companies are reluctant to invest because they do not know if future laws will recognize these credits. Because there is no single rulebook for proving that the carbon has been successfully removed and will stay locked away forever, it is hard for developers to win the trust of the banks and big companies needed to fund the construction of large-scale facilities.
The white paper “Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies: Market Overview and Offtake” was published in March 2026 by the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland. Prepared in collaboration with Oliver Wyman and ClimeFi, the report maps the evolving financial structures, buyer profiles, and contractual frameworks scaling the global carbon removal industry.
