What’s new in the 2025 edition

Each year, we work closely with Microsoft to refine and update the Criteria, ensuring that it aligns with the rapidly evolving carbon dioxide removal (CDR) industry. To do so, we leverage the deep expertise of more than sixty subject matter experts, informed by diligence on hundreds of CDR projects, client engagements, and ongoing synthesis of the latest scientific and technical literature. 

These updates reflect the progress in our shared knowledge of both well-established and emerging solutions, ranging from reforestation and direct air capture (DAC) to marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR). A few of the most significant updates to the Criteria are highlighted below.

Addition of mCDR criteria 

mCDR is a nascent yet high-stakes removal pathway, making enhanced rigor imperative. It offers the potential for durable, large-scale CO2 removal and storage by leveraging the ocean's physical circulation, biogeochemical processes, and marine ecosystems. 

These new criteria help buyers and suppliers understand what quality means for mCDR projects. They focus on the abiotic pathways of ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), which captures and stores atmospheric CO₂ as bicarbonates dissolved in the ocean, and direct ocean removal (DOR), which removes CO₂ from ocean waters and stores it externally. High-quality mCDR projects must prioritize rigorous carbon measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) along with equally rigorous MRV of the ocean ecosystem and marine life (eMRV) to mitigate potential harm. 

Raising the bar for community engagement 

Whether engineered, hybrid, or nature-based solutions, carbon projects are often sited near existing communities, inevitably impacting local people. To ensure that the project prevents social harms and provides equitable benefits, high-quality CDR projects must facilitate meaningful participation and collaboration with local communities throughout the project life cycle. 

To evaluate the project’s level of engagement with local communities (also known as “procedural equity”), we now recommend using the Movement Strategy Center's Spectrum of Community Engagement. Projects must not only “consult” communities, but go a step beyond that to “involve” communities in project development. Involving communities means providing communities with a voice, such as through community meetings, interactive workshops, and community forums, and then integrating community feedback into project planning and design.

A more navigable, transparent format

To make the Criteria more accessible and user-friendly, we’ve published the full content in a new web-based format, with no download or sign-up required. Instead of scrolling through a dense 70-page PDF, users can freely access and explore the Criteria by specific CDR pathways. 

Each pathway, such as direct air capture (DAC), improved forest management (IFM), and carbon mineralization, has its own dedicated, linkable page, reinforcing our commitment to transparency and making it easier to highlight and circulate key information. Whether you’re a policymaker, buyer, developer, or just curious, this format helps you quickly find what’s most relevant to your work and understand how high-quality carbon removal is defined. 

How the Criteria define high-quality carbon removal

The Criteria outline six science-based principles that apply across engineered, hybrid, and nature-based carbon removal approaches:

1. Social harms, benefits, and environmental justice - The extent to which the project prevents new social harms to people and communities, reduces existing harms, and provides meaningful benefits distribution.

2. Environmental harms and benefits - The extent to which the project minimizes and mitigates environmental harms, as well as provides environmental benefits.

3. Additionality and baselines – The evidence that the project’s carbon removal would not have occurred without carbon finance.

4. Measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) – The ability to accurately quantify carbon removal in a repeatable and verifiable way, and to develop a plan for long-term monitoring of the project.

5. Durability – The likelihood that removed carbon remains stored over time, with mechanisms in place to mitigate reversal risk.

6. Leakage – The evaluation of whether project activities cause increased emissions elsewhere.

These principles provide a consistent foundation for procurement evaluation and project benchmarking.

Scaling carbon removal requires shared standards

With the Criteria, our goal is to contribute to rapid and just climate change mitigation. To meet climate targets and achieve billions of tonnes of high-integrity carbon removal, quality must scale alongside volume. 

The Criteria provide a transparent, science-driven foundation to support buyers, developers, and policymakers in delivering durable, measurable climate impact. We recognize that this work is part of a collective effort, and we encourage open dialogue within the CDR community. It is through increased investment, collaboration, and community engagement that we can collectively build a strong foundation for the future of carbon removal.