Current carbon removal projects are mostly in their early testing phases and are not yet operating at the scale required to meet global climate goals. According to the authors of the newly released report, a massive gap exists between the amount of carbon currently being captured and the millions of tonnes per year needed to stay on track for international net-zero targets.
“While announced carbon capture projects have grown in number, the gap between planned and operational capacity remains significant, with current deployment falling short of the scale needed to align with net-zero emissions (NZE) targets by 2030.” Furthermore, the report notes that “to get on track with the goal of NZE by 2050, DAC deployment will need to reach 80 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.”
In simpler terms, although many companies are planning to build carbon removal facilities, very few are actually finished and working today. The technology used to pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere is currently removing only a tiny fraction of what is necessary to stop the planet from warming too much. To meet safety targets set by world leaders, this industry must grow from a handful of small experiments into a massive global network in less than a decade.
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.
