Seizing the Industrial Carbon Removal Opportunity

This report by RMI argues that heavy industries are uniquely positioned to scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) by leveraging their existing infrastructure, material flows, and expertise. It outlines a business case for industrial integration of CDR to create new revenue streams, manage regulatory risks, and meet net-zero targets, while emphasizing that CDR must complement, not replace, aggressive decarbonization.

• Heavy industries possess the necessary infrastructure and expertise in managing large material flows—such as rocks, minerals, biomass, energy, and water—to support the massive scale of carbon removal required to stabilize global temperatures.
• The projected annual need for carbon removal by 2050 is between seven and nine billion metric tons (gigatons), a volume comparable to the material handling of the world's largest industries, including mining, construction, and agriculture.
• Integrating carbon removal offers significant commercial opportunities, including new revenue from carbon credits and green product premiums. Market estimates for voluntary carbon removal credits by 2040 range from $6 billion to $150 billion per year, with McKinsey estimating a total market size of $1.2 trillion USD by 2050.
• Industries can optimize carbon removal by utilizing waste streams and byproducts as feedstocks, which reduces costs and the overall carbon footprint. Examples include using industrial tailings and slags for geochemical removal, or waste heat from data centers to power direct air capture.
• Carbon removal is categorized into three primary types based on feedstock: biogenic (sustainable biomass), geochemical (alkaline minerals or rocks), and synthetic (engineered systems using low-carbon energy).
• There is a risk of 'mitigation deterrence,' where the promise of carbon removal is used to justify delaying or avoiding the decarbonization of industrial practices. The report stresses that carbon removal cannot replace decarbonization, as the maximum projected capacity by 2050 (less than 15 GtCO2 annually) is far below current annual emissions of approximately 40 GtCO2.
• Governments can incentivize industrial carbon removal through direct grants, procurement of low-carbon products, and tax credits, such as the United States' 45Q tax credit which pays $180 per ton of permanently removed carbon via direct air capture.

APA

RMI (2025). Seizing the Industrial Carbon Removal Opportunity. https://rmi.org/resources/seizing-the-industrial-carbon-removal-opportunity/

Chicago

RMI. Seizing the Industrial Carbon Removal Opportunity. 2025. https://rmi.org/resources/seizing-the-industrial-carbon-removal-opportunity/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Seizing the Industrial Carbon Removal Opportunity |date=30 April 2025 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/seizing-the-industrial-carbon-removal-opportunity/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2025seizing, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Seizing the Industrial Carbon Removal Opportunity}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2025}, month = apr, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/seizing-the-industrial-carbon-removal-opportunity/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }