Plants help the climate by taking up a tremendous amount of carbon. Each year, plants capture more than ten times as much carbon dioxide from the air as fossil fuel sources emit. They then convert it into biomass carbon in roots, stems, and leaves. But most of that carbon quickly returns to the atmosphere as plants decompose, are digested, or burned. By redirecting a share of that biomass carbon into durable storage, we can harness the natural process of photosynthesis to keep emissions out of the atmosphere and draw down carbon dioxide.

The emerging biomass carbon removal industry aims to do just that. Instead of allowing plant carbon to cycle back to the atmosphere within months or years, projects collect the extra plant material around us: crop residues, sawmill byproducts, winter grasses, and put that carbon underground, underwater, and in materials where it will last for centuries or longer.

(Stephanie Herbstritt Senior Bioenergy Manager, Land Systems at Clean Air Task Force and Tom Richard, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Penn State. Images courtesy of CATF)

Each bit of biomass retained in a biomass carbon removal project can help chip away at the climate problem, provided that environmental safeguards are in place to protect water, nutrient cycling, biodiversity, and other critical ecosystem functions that keep natural climate regulation intact. These projects can also deliver additional benefits, like low‑carbon energy, soil amendments, and industrial products like chemicals and bioasphalt.

But financing and funding are needed to scale this industry. Carbon markets are a major channel, issuing credits that companies buy to offset their emissions and meet climate goals. Standards, or protocols, determine how projects measure and verify carbon removals and establish safeguards.

If those standards are weak, however, credits can overstate climate benefits, erode trust, and slow progress. This is a story we’ve seen play out before in early conventional bioenergy and forest carbon credit markets, where rules left room for over-crediting and unintended consequences. Those experiences show us how public confidence can quickly slip when the guardrails aren’t clear. Strong standards won’t hold back biomass carbon removal; they’ll allow it to scale. They give buyers confidence that credits reflect real, durable removal, give communities confidence that projects won’t repeat past mistakes, and give developers the certainty they need to invest.

In a new report from Clean Air Task Force, we lay out a roadmap for what it will take to raise the bar and set stronger standards. At its core, credibility hinges on rigorous greenhouse gas accounting. All significant sources of emissions associated with a project should be accounted when calculating credits (to the extent they can be reasonably attributed), and when data are uncertain, standards should use conservative assumptions that are more likely understate rather than overstate climate benefits. Consistency across standards is also essential.Today, similar projects can be evaluated under different rules depending on the registry issuing the removal credit, making it difficult to compare outcomes. Greater alignment would help ensure that a removal credit represents the same atmospheric benefit regardless of who certifies it.

Credit: Vasil Velev, Carbon Herald