Biochar carbon credits are now the majority of everything the durable carbon removal market actually delivers. Not the majority of press coverage, and not the majority of announced commitments, which is a different and much softer number. The majority of tonnes that reach a registry, get verified, and get retired. That makes this the one removal pathway where a buyer can transact today and a developer can build a revenue model on something other than optimism.
This page is about the commercial layer: the price, the standards, the buyers and the supply constraint. If you want the physics and the arithmetic instead, our sibling piece covers how a biochar carbon credit is calculated from reactor conditions through to net tonnes.
We build the gasification and waste-to-energy plants that produce the char, and we run carbon credit management as a service, covering project certification, trading strategy and MRV. So this is written from both sides of the transaction.
What You Are Actually Buying
One credit is one tonne of CO2 equivalent pulled out of the atmosphere by plants and then locked into a solid that does not rot back. It is a removal, not an avoidance, and if that distinction is fuzzy, note that carbon credits and carbon offsets are not the same instrument.
The storage claim is what puts biochar in the durable category. The Puro Standard credits biochar at 200 years or more of storage with a low risk of reversal, which is why it competes with direct air capture rather than with forestry.
Why Biochar Is Most of the Durable Removal Market
The registry data is not close. Biochar accounts for 57 percent of all-time CDR issuances, 1.58 million tonnes of 2.75 million, issuing at three times the rate of its nearest competitor BECCS, and 53 percent of all CDR retirements at 630,000 tonnes of 1.2 million. Issuance says credits exist. Retirement says somebody used them against a real claim. Biochar leads on both.
The trajectory matters more than the level. Tracking data compiled by the Forest Stewards Guild and Croatan Institute shows cumulative CDR deliveries of 0.3 MMtCO2e at the end of 2023, 0.7 MMtCO2e at the end of 2024 and 1.3 MMtCO2e at the end of 2025, against 44 MMtCO2e sold, with biochar representing over 80 percent of deliverable CDR credits from nearly 90 project implementers. Deliveries have roughly doubled every year while sales ran far ahead.
The reason is unglamorous. Biochar has a higher technology readiness rating and lower cost than direct air capture or enhanced weathering, per the same report. Pyrolysis and gasification are century-old thermal processes running on residues that already exist. There is no first-of-a-kind risk to underwrite, which is exactly why the tonnes show up.
What a Biochar Carbon Credit Costs in 2026
The average has been climbing steadily: 131 US dollars per tonne in 2023 rising to 164 US dollars in 2025, a 25 percent increase in two years.
The average is the least useful number in that sentence. What a specific credit fetches depends on which quartile of supply it sits in. Transacted prices in 2026 for CCP-labelled, post-2024 vintage biochar with verified co-benefits sit in the 130 to 220 US dollar range, with the spread against unlabelled supply widening rather than narrowing. Across the whole sector, including older and weaker inventory, prices typically range between 100 and 200 US dollars per tonne, with around 335 developers operating facilities worldwide.
That premium is not sentiment. A 2026 hedonic pricing study in Communications Sustainability found that biochar credit prices rise 0.14 percent for each 1 percent increase in associated sustainable development claims, that credits with more economic co-benefit claims price higher, and that European origin commands a premium while developing-country origin is associated with lower prices, against an average of 170 US dollars per tonne in the dataset. The market is paying for documented attributes, not for the tonne.
Demand at the top of the market is concentrated and getting larger. In Q1 2026 biochar accounted for 93 percent of a record 2.3 million tonnes contracted, including Microsoft signing 1.24 million tonnes with Exomad Green in Bolivia and Google committing 100,000 tonnes with Varaha in India. The buyer base is dominated by large technology companies, Microsoft and Google above all, though AlliedOffsets notes new entrants from other industries arriving because biochar is cheap relative to other durable removals. For a full breakdown of what drives the price per tonne, see the dedicated piece.
The Supply Gap Is the Investment Case
Set the two AlliedOffsets figures side by side. Cumulative offtake is around 4.8 million tonnes. Cumulative issuance is 1.58 million. Roughly two thirds of what has been bought has not yet been produced.
Every part of that gap is a plant that has not been built, permitted, commissioned or certified. Contracts can be signed in a quarter. Pyrolysis capacity cannot.
Buyers and suppliers are converging on what that scarcity is worth, slowly. The 2026 CDR.fyi and OPIS pricing survey found the buyer-supplier price gap narrowing from 107 to 98 US dollars per tonne with respondents expecting roughly 48 dollars by 2030, and concluded that durable CDR is unlikely to broadly reach 100 dollars per tonne by 2030 because of capital intensity, energy requirements, MRV costs and delivery risk. The survey's blunt warning to buyers waiting for sub-100 dollar removals is that they may be shut out of supply instead.
For anyone weighing a project: the binding constraint on this market is delivered tonnes, and delivered tonnes are an engineering problem.
Choosing a Standard: Puro, Verra, Isometric, CAR and the Global C-Sink
Outside that label sits the largest cohort by project count. The Environmental Defense Fund's protocol comparison records 82 projects registered under the Global Biochar C-Sink Standard, which credits only biochar meeting the European Biochar Certificate or World Biochar Certificate guidelines; notes the CAR protocol was published in March 2024 and applies only to the US and Canada; and finds that while protocols follow similar accounting steps, they differ materially on leakage, uncertainty, permanence and additionality.
That last finding is the practical one. The choice of standard is a commercial decision, not a clerical one. Geography narrows it first, then intended end use, then which registry your target buyers already hold inventory from. Two protocols applied to the same plant will not produce the same tonnage, and the difference lands in your revenue line.
One structural rule catches developers out: the EDF review confirms credits are awarded to the project proponent, usually the producer rather than the end user, and the carbon sink is only formally recognised once the biochar is in an approved end use. You do not get paid for making char. You get paid for placing it.
What Serious Buyers Check Before They Pay
Sylvera frames credit reliability as three pillars: feedstock, MRV and permanence. Genuinely waste or sustainably sourced biomass; transparent tracking from feedstock through pyrolysis conditions and stability testing to final application; and evidenced durability of at least 100 years. Its named failure modes are worth reading as a pre-mortem on your own project: feedstock misclassification and leakage where the biomass had another beneficial use, weak lifecycle assessment that ignores transport emissions, inconsistent pyrolysis conditions, and unmonitored end use.
The buyer survey data agrees and adds a commercial dimension. Buyers and suppliers broadly converge on 100-plus year permanence, supplier transparency and supplier track record as core requirements, with premiums paid for co-benefits, 1,000-plus year permanence and policy alignment. Delivery risk was cited by 40 percent of purchasers as a blocker, second only to budget.
Read that list backwards and it becomes a build specification. Track record and delivery confidence are things a developer either designed for or did not. There is more on the diligence side in our piece on whether biochar carbon credits are reliable.
Where the Credit Is Won: Inside the Plant
Every requirement above resolves to a decision somebody made about hardware and feedstock, usually before the certification conversation started.
Feedstock and pre-treatment
Feedstock arrives wet, mixed and variable. We have argued publicly that thermal pre-treatment is non-negotiable in gasification and pyrolysis, for moisture reduction, energy density and feedstock homogenization. In carbon accounting terms, homogeneous input produces consistent stability results batch after batch, and consistency is what an auditor is testing. Erratic input forces conservative assumptions, and conservative assumptions cost issued tonnes at every verification.
For municipalities, the relevant feedstock is often the one they are already paying to dispose of. That is the case we make for sewage sludge gasification: a disposal line item becomes a feedstock line item, and the char that comes out the other end carries a credit.
Build for the credit and the kilowatt at the same time
The methodologies reward plants that recover their own process heat, control their emissions and log their operating temperatures. Those are not compliance features bolted on for an auditor. They are how a plant makes money on energy.
Our public five-step process runs on exactly that logic: collect local biomass and sludge, gasify at high temperature to clean syngas, convert it to dispatchable electricity and heat, and capture biochar plus verified CO2 offsets from the same process, on site. A project financed only on credit revenue is exposed to a young voluntary market. A project financed on power, heat, avoided disposal cost and credits has four revenue lines and the credit is the upside rather than the premise. When the tonnes exist, selling the credits once they are issued is a separate exercise in offtake structuring.
Where These Credits Can and Cannot Be Used
Biochar credits are voluntary market instruments. The IETA carbon management business brief on biochar surveys voluntary and compliance market developments alongside the evolving policy outlook across jurisdictions including the EU, UK and Japan, and the honest summary of that outlook is that compliance eligibility is still being written.
No biochar credit discharges an EU ETS obligation today. Any supplier implying otherwise is selling a market that does not exist yet.
FAQ
How much does a biochar carbon credit cost?
The market average was 164 US dollars per tonne in 2025, up from 131 in 2023. What you actually pay depends on quality tier: CCP-labelled, post-2024 vintage credits with verified co-benefits transacted in the 130 to 220 dollar range in 2026, while the sector-wide range including weaker inventory is roughly 100 to 200 dollars.
Who buys biochar carbon credits?
The buyer base is concentrated in large technology companies, with Microsoft and Google purchasing the majority of credits, though new entrants from other industries are increasingly participating because biochar costs less than other durable removal pathways.
Which biochar standard should a new project certify under?
Geography usually decides first. The Climate Action Reserve protocol covers only the US and Canada, while Puro.earth, Verra VM0044, Isometric and the Global Biochar C-Sink Standard operate globally. After that, intended end use and which registry your target buyers already source from matter more than the accounting text, because the protocols share their accounting steps and diverge on leakage, uncertainty, permanence and additionality.
Can a gasification plant built for power also earn biochar credits?
Yes, and it is often the stronger business case. The char from a thermal conversion plant can be credited provided the process, feedstock and end use meet the chosen methodology, which means the same asset earns on electricity, heat, avoided disposal cost and removals rather than on credit revenue alone.
How long before a new project issues its first credits?
Longer than buyers would like, which is why cumulative offtake across the sector runs at roughly three times cumulative issuance. Delivery risk is the second most cited blocker among purchasers after budget, and offtake agreements are therefore structured around delivery schedules rather than spot supply.
Do biochar credits count towards compliance obligations?
Mostly not. They are voluntary market instruments, and while policy work is under way across the EU, UK and Japan, no biochar credit currently satisfies an EU ETS obligation.