From Plans to Plants: Combining Public Support and Private Capital for Large-Scale Carbon Dioxide Removal

Scaling carbon removal from pilots to industrial plants needs more capital than a small group of early corporate buyers can provide. Today their long-dated offtakes absorb most of the market's risk; the next phase needs lenders, insurers and institutional investors who can underwrite removal projects as confidently as they do energy or infrastructure.

The panel will work through the main risks - delivery, technology, counterparty, policy and market liquidity - asking which are overstated, which sit with the developer, and which can be transferred through insurance or financial structures, drawing on lessons from renewables and infrastructure finance.

Many of the most scalable pathways, biochar above all, are being built in Latin America, Africa and Asia, where the cost of capital is highest. Putting a Latin American developer alongside a global bank, an insurer and a development bank brings a discussion about addressing this financing gap on stage, along with what blended, public and development finance can do to close it. IDB Invest will join to bring the blended and multilateral finance perspective.

The panel will close on what must exist by 2030 for capital to move at scale.

The key audiences takeaways will be: what makes a removal project bankable, which risks can move off buyers' balance sheets today, and what governments, development banks and the market must put in place for Global South projects to reach final investment decision.