Today, Relae (formerly Carbon Direct) released the sixth edition of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) in collaboration with Microsoft. This edition introduces a new delivery risk framework alongside the Criteria’s updated quality benchmarks designed to help CDR developers, investors, and buyers build and procure high-quality carbon removal.

First published in 2021, the Criteria have been updated every year since, reflecting new advances in science, changes in the voluntary carbon market, and lessons from diligence on hundreds of real-world projects. The Criteria define both a quality floor and an aspirational standard, guiding project developers while informing due diligence by buyers and technical experts.

Delivery risk is the likelihood that a project generates credits at the quantity and on the timeline committed to buyers, and is a distinct problem from credit quality. Even high-quality CDR projects can fail to deliver as planned because of financing, technical, or execution risk. The two are related in practice: a project that fails to deliver reduces the availability of high-quality CDR tonnes, and quality gaps can themselves raise delivery risk by creating buyer uncertainty or limiting financing access. Reaching the scale of CDR needed to help limit warming overshoot of 1.5°C requires projects that are both high-quality and positioned to deliver. This 2026 edition of the Criteria addresses these two dimensions together for the first time.

“It’s been important for this market to focus on quality, and it still is,” said Dr. Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist and Carbon Wrangler at Relae. “But many high-quality projects fall apart when the financing doesn’t hold up, the timeline slips, the team isn’t ready, or for other reasons. For the voluntary carbon market to scale, countering delivery risk must come alongside quality, not after it. Projects must be more commercial and operate well at every point in their life, and this edition of the Criteria is the first to give buyers a way to judge both at once.”

“The effectiveness and impact of CDR depends on projects that perform as promised, not just projects that meet a quality bar on paper,” said Phil Goodman, Director CDR Portfolio at Microsoft. “The delivery risk framework gives the CDR market a clearer way to evaluate anticipated project performance in addition to the Criteria, guiding how we get comfortable that any CDR credits generated represent a tonne of CO2 being verifiably and durably removed from the atmosphere.”

The new delivery risk appendix evaluates open-system projects and closed-system projects separately, given their different risk profiles. The delivery risks are evaluated using the TECOP framework:

  • Technical: the feasibility of the project design, implementation, and long-term management of the project.

  • Economic: the project’s financing structure, financial modeling assumptions, and expenditure profile.

  • Commercial: the extent to which a project’s purchase agreements, supply arrangements, and key contractual relationships are secured or well-advanced.

  • Organizational: the project developer’s capacity and capability to plan, execute, and manage a project of the appropriate size and complexity.

  • Political: governance, policies, and potential changes in regulatory environments, as well as the local communities’ perceptions of and willingness to participate in projects.

Alongside the delivery risk framework, this edition also updates the underlying quality expectations across six essential principles that apply to all CDR pathways: social harms, benefits, and environmental justice; environmental harms and benefits; additionality and baselines; measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification; durability; and leakage, supplemented by pathway-specific criteria across nine pathways. Furthermore, it updates the quality criteria to include direct counterparties, greater rigor for enhanced rock weathering (ERW) projects, and dynamic baselines for afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation (ARR) projects.

This edition builds on Relae’s companion guidance on sustainable agriculture and forestry biomass sourcing for CDR buyers, which were also developed in collaboration with Microsoft. Relae will continue to refine the Criteria with Microsoft as the science and market evolve, and invite developers, buyers, investors, standard-setters, and policymakers to use the Criteria as a reference.

Read the sixth edition of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal.

About Relae

Relae is the trusted energy and climate advisor, delivering scientifically rigorous, technically advanced, and commercially grounded solutions. Our scientists, engineers, and policy experts pair systems-level knowledge with project-level understanding to help clients achieve their energy and climate goals. Founded in 2020 as Carbon Direct, Relae has supported over 150 companies, including Microsoft, Mitsubishi, and JPMorganChase, in navigating today’s most pressing challenges across energy systems, greenhouse gas emissions accounting, carbon markets, climate policy, natural capital, environmental markets, and emerging technologies. To learn more, visit www.relae.co.

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