Over 500 parties involved 12 billion dollars for voluntary CO2 removal
Over 500 companies and private individuals worldwide have purchased certificates for CO2 removal. They paid over twelve billion US dollars for this, as data from the online portal "CDR.fyi" shows.
16.05.2026, 07:30
16.05.2026, 08:13
SDA
The aim is to remove 47.3 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Companies and private individuals offset emissions from air travel, for example. However, only three percent of the orders have been delivered so far.
This is due to the fact that technologies for removing and storing CO2 are only available to a limited extent. There are currently 526 providers on the market. One of these is the Swiss company Climeworks, which extracts CO2 from the air and stores it in the ground.
By far the most certificates have been purchased by the US technology group Microsoft (36.4 million tons), followed by the corporate conglomerate Frontier Buyers (1.8 million tons), the Zurich-based financier Altitude (1.5 million tons) and Google (1.1 million tons).
CO2 removal should not be confused with CO2 compensation. With offsetting, companies and private individuals can pay for climate protection projects, for example. These are considered controversial as the benefits cannot be measured directly. Greenhouse gas removal, on the other hand, is considered more reliable.
