Reducing the high price of pulling carbon from the atmosphere depends on a combination of technological maturity, government subsidies, and the expansion of shared infrastructure. According to the authors of the newly released report, increasing the scale of operations and securing large-volume purchase agreements will play a critical role in lowering per-tonne costs across various removal methods.
The report notes that “As production scales and technologies mature, cost sensitivity is expected to decrease, particularly for emerging pathways.” Furthermore, it states that “Large-scale offtake agreements can drive down per-tonne costs, particularly for high capex pathways such as DAC.”
To make these technologies cheaper, the industry needs to grow from small-scale experiments into a massive commercial sector where things can be built and operated more efficiently in bulk. When big businesses sign long-term deals to pay for these services, it provides the steady cash flow developers need to build more efficient facilities and invest in better hardware. Just like solar panels became cheaper as more were manufactured, these carbon-cleaning tools will drop in price as they become more common and the expensive equipment needed to run them is shared across more projects.
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.
