More than four-fifths of high-quality biochar carbon removal supply for 2026 was already committed by July, three months earlier than the same threshold was reached last year, according to a new market report from carbon removal marketplace Supercritical. For buyers still planning spot purchases in the second half of the year, the message is blunt: the best inventory is largely spoken for, and what remains is likely to get more expensive.
H1 2026 Outbought All of 2025
The report, titled “The biochar supply crunch: Market intelligence for H2 2026”, quantifies how sharply procurement has accelerated. Buyers purchased more carbon dioxide removal volume in the first half of 2026 than they did during the whole of 2025. Excluding Microsoft, the market’s largest single buyer, offtake volumes rose roughly tenfold, from 176,000 tonnes in H1 2025 to 1.81 million tonnes in H1 2026.
The composition of buying is changing alongside the volume. Supercritical notes that as the biochar market matures, larger buyers are moving away from ad hoc spot purchases toward structured, multi-year procurement. That shift pulls demand forward in the calendar and explains why the 81% commitment threshold arrived in July this year rather than in the autumn, as it did in 2025.
Why Biochar Sets the Pace for Durable Removal
Biochar occupies a unique position in the carbon removal market. According to the report, the pathway has delivered more than twice the volume of all other permanent CDR methods combined, and it is currently the only durable removal method with a liquid spot market.
That liquidity cuts both ways. It makes biochar the venue where durable CDR prices are actually discovered, which is useful for buyers benchmarking other pathways. It also means biochar is the first place where a demand surge becomes visible as scarcity. When engineered removal buyers with 2030 net zero targets compete for the same certified tonnes, the spot market tightens fastest in the one segment that can actually deliver today.
What Is Left on the Shelf
The report’s central warning concerns the second half of 2026. With buyers having secured larger volumes earlier in the year, fewer credits remain available on the spot market, and Supercritical’s data suggests prices tend to rise in H2. One illustrative datapoint: credits that sold at $155 per tonne in July 2025 had reached $185 per tonne by November for the same project. Buyers who moved earlier paid less and had more choice.
Two further figures frame the remaining scarcity. Active enterprise requests for proposals could absorb up to 70% of the unsold high-quality credits still on the market. And nearly half of the remaining high-quality supply is listed exclusively through Supercritical’s own marketplace. That second claim deserves a caveat: Supercritical is a market intermediary with a commercial interest in directing buyers to its platform, so its distribution data should be read as indicative rather than neutral. The underlying direction, however, is consistent with what Carbon Pulse reported independently: high-quality biochar supply for 2026 is tightening months ahead of last year’s pace.
The definition of “high-quality” does much of the work in these numbers. Total biochar pipeline volumes are larger than the tight market implied here, but only a share of projects pass the durability, certification and delivery standards that enterprise buyers now apply. The scarcity is real specifically at the top of the quality curve.
What This Means for Buyers
The procurement calendar has become a pricing variable. A buyer that treats biochar credits as a year-end spot purchase is now competing for the residual inventory of a market that committed most of its quality supply by midsummer, at prices that historically firm up in H2. Procurement teams planning 2026 retirements should expect thinner choice and less negotiating room than they had even a year ago.
The more durable response is structural. The tenfold rise in non-Microsoft offtake volumes shows that corporates are increasingly signing multi-year agreements for future vintages rather than chasing spot tonnes. For buyers with multi-year net zero plans, forward commitments for 2027 and 2028 supply now offer both price visibility and a claim on capacity before the same crunch repeats.
What This Means for Developers
For project developers, an 81% commitment rate by July is a financing signal as much as a sales metric. Committed volumes de-risk project economics: revenue visibility two quarters before year-end supports debt financing, equipment orders and expansion decisions that a spot-driven market cannot underwrite.
The quality bar is the catch. Demand is concentrating on credits that clear enterprise-grade durability and certification screens, and the report’s framing makes clear that much of the raw pipeline does not qualify. Developers able to certify early, verify delivery and offer multi-year supply are capturing the demand shift. Those selling uncertified or lower-tier tonnes are watching the premium tier pull away.
What to Watch Through Year-End
Three signals will show whether the crunch deepens or eases. First, whether the active enterprise RFPs actually clear, absorbing that 70% of unsold high-quality supply, or stall on price. Second, H2 spot prints: a repeat of last year’s $155 to $185 trajectory would confirm the seasonal premium pattern. Third, 2027 vintages: if buyers respond to this year’s scarcity by committing next year’s supply even earlier, the biochar market’s center of gravity moves decisively from spot to forward contracting, and spot liquidity becomes a residual rather than the main event.
