How can we manage costs while developing diverse removal solutions?

Emerging solutions are essential for a diversified and resilient CDR portfolio. There is no single 'silver bullet' method for carbon removal – each has its own capabilities and limitations that factor into its scaling potential. We must pursue a suite of pathways to fight climate change, including emerging solutions. However, these are often nascent technologies, operating within a broader supporting ecosystem that is still under development. This is evident in the limited pool of entities capable of executing third-party validation and verification audits, as well as the implementation of measuring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems. While improving quickly, these factors can hinder the roll-out of a project or technology.

It's a real chicken-and-egg problem: early-stage solutions need funding to mature, but high price and limited supporting infrastructure make widespread investment seem both costly and risky. On the other hand, organisations with net-zero targets know they need to purchase diversified CDR to reach net zero, but can pause due to these barriers. As a result, many projects struggle to secure off-takes or investment due to their early-stage status and high price per tonne.
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The power of aggregation and intermediation: how 'regular' companies can help scale the market.

While tech giants or large banks can financially support record-breaking CDR purchases on their own and even handle their due diligence and contracting, most companies need alternative approaches. Most entities understand best practices when it comes to carbon removal in Net Zero strategies, but they need support in mitigating price of credits, understanding the broader market complexity, and engaging meaningfully with suppliers.

By working with clients over long-term, multi-year commitments, we can support stronger planning for individual clients. At the same time, we also aggregate their demand with that of other clients, creating a buyer pool to take advantage of particular market opportunities that arise from our dialogue with key project partners, such as InPlanet. This coordinated approach enables us to provide greater certainty to projects and then pass that value back to our clients through risk-mitigated contracting approaches.

For sustainability teams and leads managing complex decarbonisation strategies among many other objectives, procuring a diversified and cost-effective CDR portfolio alone is simply not feasible. Klimate simplifies this process. We help clients build balanced portfolios of vetted projects while selectively providing pre-financing to suppliers, reducing a project’s costs per tonne. Through bulk purchasing, we create direct savings for clients while fostering both a more supportive ecosystem for CDR innovation and price reduction.

A case study in Klimate InPlanet Partnership: innovative Financing & Structuring

Our collaboration with best-in-class carbon removal projects enables us to demonstrate year-on-year how innovative financing structures facilitate scaling. One notable example is our partners at InPlanet, a project developer specializing in Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW).

Enhanced rock weathering, in general, faces several challenges, including:

• High baseline price per ton, especially for near-term credits.
• MRV and certification infrastructure are still in the process of maturing.
• Low availability of spot credits excludes ERW from many "same year" credit portfolios.

Still, ERW is a highly permanent and scalable solution, with broader co-benefits — an essential piece of the climate toolkit.

InPlanet, in particular, is a key leader in the ERW category, with an emphasis on tangible co-benefits for local farmers, high project transparency, and, importantly, certified MRV standards via Isometric. Their approach reinforces trust and integrity in ERW as a carbon removal method.

By aggregating demand from clients with forward-looking net-zero strategies, Klimate can sign multi-year agreements with InPlanet with later delivery timelines, looking forward to 2030. And, pre-financing helps cover the gap between some of the upfront operational costs and the ensuing sequestration timeline, inherent to ERW. The equation of later delivery plus pre-financing results in a lower purchasing price per tonne, lowering barriers to entry and thus strengthening the incentive to act now. 

Why does this financing structure matter to a CDR buyer?

Many companies seek to meet net-zero and SBTi targets by 2030. When purchasing CDR, these goals align with the later delivery timeline of our multi-year commitments. Buyers benefit from a balanced portfolio of carbon removal solutions, featuring both short-term and long-term deliveries while mitigating risk and achieving annual targets in the short term.

That InPlanet has already successfully issued third-party certified credits via Isometric adds to the credibility of the project and also instills confidence that clients can utilise these credits with confidence for neutralisation purposes in their strategy.

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How we sustainably scale the market.

When Klimate aggregates demand across various clients, we also identify the right opportunities that strike a balance between risk and benefits. These could be a combination of different delivery timelines, project or technology preferences, voluntary or mandatory frameworks, risk appetites, or connections to broader sustainability objectives.

Mitigating risk across diversified pathways and project developers can also help build confidence across the market, as portfolios and client investments are more stable and secure. One project or pathway that underdelivers or struggles will not mean the entire market suffers. It benefits market health as a whole and allows for prioritising different pathways for different purposes. This is particularly apparent across permanence and delivery timelines, allowing companies to depend on more mature technologies for short-term deliveries while still supporting the growth of others in the long term.

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A model that meets the mission

Klimate's model unlocks long-term viability for enhanced weathering, contributing to our mission of accelerating and developing essential pathways while also bringing tangible impacts to the climate and communities. InPlanet has already demonstrated project-level success and has particular credibility from its previous successful issuance of certified credits via Isometric. Partnering with projects like InPlanet enables our clients to benefit from strategic alignment, cost savings, and progress towards decarbonisation. And this growing support signals a mature, scalable pathway for permanent carbon removal — essential for achieving net zero.

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