The demand for carbon removal continues to rise as corporate efforts to get to net zero and mitigate climate change intensify. The voluntary carbon market (VCM) grew fourfold in value from 2020 to 2021, reaching $2 billion, and it is expected to grow to between $10 billion and $40 billion by 2030. As the market develops, it is also evolving to focus more on the quality of carbon sequestration—such as through permanence and transparent evaluation of carbon credits—rather than just its volume. Increasingly, sophisticated buyers will pay for these improvements.

This article explores how new approaches to soil carbon sequestration can deliver a significantly higher quantity of carbon removal with higher permanence. Recent research indicates that the potential for storing carbon in soil is greater than previously believed, with the potential to sequester 5 gigatons of CO2 annually until 2050. This means that soil could play an outsize role in carbon markets. Alongside emerging solutions, registries and project developers are focusing on using new measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) methodologies that cater to these new carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques. This will help speed their deployment.