MOTHER CARBON

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How is carbon removal bought?

Most durable carbon removal is bought in advance, through offtake agreements. An offtaker promises to pay a set price for a set number of tonnes, once each tonne has been removed and verified, often over several years. The project gets a known future income, and the offtaker secures removal that may not exist yet.

On this page

  1. What is an offtake agreement?
  2. Who buys carbon removal?
  3. Is a forward contract the same thing?
  4. Where MOTHER Carbon fits

What is an offtake agreement?

An offtake agreement is a contract to buy a project's future output. In carbon removal, the output is verified tonnes of carbon dioxide removed. The agreement fixes the volume, the price, the delivery years, how each tonne will be measured and checked, and what happens if the project delivers late or short.

Who buys carbon removal?

Mostly large companies with net zero targets. Purchases are concentrated: a handful of offtakers, led by Microsoft, account for most of the tonnes contracted. CDR.fyi counted about 30 million tonnes of durable removal contracted in 2025 alone, far more than has been delivered so far.

Some offtakers act together. Frontier, launched in 2022 by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey, is an advance market commitment: a pledge to buy permanent removal in future, now set at 1.8 billion dollars by 2040, to show builders that demand will be there.

Is a forward contract the same thing?

Very nearly. Forward purchase, pre-purchase and offtake are used loosely. A pre-purchase usually means the offtaker pays some money up front, and a typical offtake pays only on delivery. The difference matters a great deal to a project, because payment on delivery leaves the cost of building to be found somewhere else.

Where MOTHER Carbon fits

An offtake agreement is where MOTHER Carbon's work begins. MOTHER Carbon examines the contract, the project and the offtaker, so that a promise to pay later can support financing now.

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Sources

  1. CDR.fyi, Durable CDR Market Update: From Ambition to Execution, June 2026.
  2. Frontier, an advance market commitment for permanent carbon removal, accessed October 2026.

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