Durable carbon removal has an unusual shape. Since 2020, buyers have contracted 46.4 million tonnes, and one company, Microsoft, accounts for 78.5% of it. Every other buyer combined holds around 8 million tonnes. Carbon Direct’s 2026 State of the Voluntary Carbon Market report says it plainly: most organisations with 2030 climate targets have yet to begin buying removals at all.

The usual explanations are price, policy, and permanence, and each one matters. There is a more ordinary constraint that gets far less attention, though, and it sits inside every transaction: diligence.

Before Residual, my co-founder and I worked on the other side of the table; I co-founded Oka, a carbon insurer, and Ted came from BeZero, a carbon ratings agency. From both seats we saw the same pattern. A developer shares a data room. It holds hundreds of documents, organised around the developer’s logic rather than the buyer’s questions. The buyer’s team, often one or two people, spends weeks working out what matters before they can decide whether the project is even a fit. Often it isn’t, and those weeks are gone.

Hyperscalers can absorb that cost. It has a dedicated team, specialist advisers, and the volume to justify both. A consumer goods company buying its first 1,000 tonnes has none of these. If this market is to grow beyond a few dominant buyers, the cost of getting comfortable with a project has to fall; developers are best placed to bring it down.

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