Climate science and evolving global policy highlight the scale of the challenge: according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires annual removals (across all project types) of 5 to 10 billion tonnes of CO2 by midcentury, leading to an aggregate of 100 to 1,000 billion tonnes by 2100. Recent shifts in global policy (including U.S. funding initiatives, EU certification frameworks, and COP29’s guidance on carbon trading) are creating momentum for accelerated deployment of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) solutions.
However, the current deployment of high-quality CDR remains well below required levels. To address both the quality and quantity gaps in today’s carbon removal market, the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) was introduced in 2021 by Carbon Direct and Microsoft. On July 11, 2025, both organizations released an updated version of the Criteria, setting strengthened standards for evaluating and scaling CDR technologies across nine pathways, including emerging marine-based solutions.
The 2025 edition builds on Microsoft’s expanding CDR procurement program, which now includes over 22 million tonnes of contracted removals, and incorporates lessons from evaluating more than 400 CDR projects across regions and methodologies.
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) and its Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) have been established as the foundational framework for integrity across the voluntary carbon market (VCM). While both the CCPs and the Carbon Direct Criteria aim to enhance climate impact and credibility, they differ in scope, design, and intended use.
Understanding the Two Quality Frameworks
- ICVCM Core Carbon Principles (CCPs)
The ICVCM launched the CCPs as a foundational benchmark for credit quality in the VCM. These principles serve as a baseline integrity threshold across all project types, including emission reductions, avoidance, and removals. They are designed to assess both crediting programs and methodologies, providing a consistent standard for defining high-quality carbon credits. Their universal scope makes them particularly useful for establishing market-wide trust and harmonization across registries.
The 10 core principles are organized under three pillars: Governance, Emissions Impact, and Sustainable Development.
- Essential Principles for High-Quality CDR by Carbon Direct
Carbon Direct’s principles are specifically tailored to carbon removal, covering both technology-based and nature-based solutions, Direct Air Capture (DAC), Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), and Abiotic Marine CDR to Soil Carbon and Improved Forest Management (IFM). These principles provide a consistent foundation for buyers seeking to evaluate the quality of CDR projects, often for procurement and project benchmarking purposes.
The eight principles address: Social harms, benefits, and environmental justice; Environmental harms and benefits; Additionality and baselines; Measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV); Durability; and Leakage.
What’s New in 2025 Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal
- Pioneering guidance for marine carbon removal: The 2025 criteria represent one of the first in-depth standards developed for abiotic marine CDR, particularly Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) and Direct Ocean Removal (DOR). This new guidance tackles the distinct complexities of marine systems, such as ocean circulation modeling, biogeochemical monitoring, and environmental risk management in marine environments.
- Improved technical precision across all pathways: The 2025 update introduces refined technical requirements for each carbon removal pathway, supported by newly added glossaries that define specialized terms and help clarify complex concepts.
- Strengthened measurement and verification standards: The 2025 edition places greater focus on using direct measurements, when possible, while acknowledging the continued role of validated models in comprehensive carbon accounting. Updated measurement protocols incorporate advances in remote sensing, automated monitoring systems, and analytical techniques that have emerged since the last edition.
Microsoft’s direct procurement experience informed the updated Criteria, drawing on practical lessons from evaluating, contracting, and managing a diverse CDR portfolio. According to Net Zero Compare, Microsoft’s program expanded from 1.3 million tonnes of contracted removals in 2021 to over 22 million tonnes in fiscal year 2024, with applications increasing by 90% since the program's launch.
Q2 2025 marked a significant milestone for the sector, with the durable CDR market more than doubling in size, from 13.5 million tCO₂ to over 29 million tCO₂. Year-to-date credit purchases have already more than doubled 2024 totals, with April 2025 alone exceeding the combined total of the previous seven quarters.
Are the Essential CDR Principles and the CCPs compatible, or do they take opposing approaches?
Though developed independently and for different purposes, the two frameworks are largely complementary. The CCPs provide a minimum quality threshold for carbon credits across the VCM, while Carbon Direct offers a science-first evaluation standard for those investing specifically in durable removals.
However, some CCP-eligible removal credits may not meet Carbon Direct’s durability or MRV expectations. Likewise, buyers focused on high-durability removals might bypass CCP eligible options in favor of direct procurement aligned with the Carbon Direct Essential Principles. As buyer expectations evolve and climate science advances, the need for nuanced, fit-for-purpose frameworks is growing.
For VCM stakeholders, whether developers, registries, buyers, or policymakers, understanding the differences and intersections between these frameworks is essential. Ultimately, maintaining climate credibility in the carbon market will require both broad-based integrity standards and rigorous, science-driven guidance, especially as CDR becomes a central pillar of net-zero strategies.