Spot is easy. Offtake builds supply. Ex ante makes scale possible. Why pooled demand is the missing link for serious carbon removal buyers.
Most companies that buy carbon removal credits aren’t doing anything wrong.
They’re doing what the market quietly nudges them to do.
They buy small volumes. They stay flexible. They avoid long commitments. They wait for delivery before trusting the outcome.
From the inside, it feels prudent.
From the outside, it’s exactly why carbon removal struggles to scale.
Spot purchases exist because they’re easy.
No long discussions. No forward commitments. No uncomfortable questions about future budgets or delivery risk.
But ease comes at a cost.
Spot demand doesn’t send a signal that projects can build on. It doesn’t unlock financing. It doesn’t support new capacity.
It simply absorbs what already exists, usually at a premium.
Over time, this creates a strange imbalance: buyers complain about high prices and limited supply, while projects struggle to justify expansion.
Both sides are reacting. Neither is shaping the market.
Spot markets work when supply is abundant.
Carbon removal is the opposite.
High-quality removals are scarce, capital-intensive, and slow to scale. When more buyers show up without committing early, prices rise and access tightens.
Spot buyers end up competing for the same limited volumes, often with very large players who can pay more and move faster.
What looks flexible in year one starts to look fragile by year three.
Offtake agreements change the equation.
They replace opportunistic purchasing with planned demand. They allow projects to take final investment decisions. They create supply instead of chasing it.
For buyers, offtake isn’t about locking themselves in blindly.
It’s about securing access, predictability, and influence over the market they’ll depend on in the future.
The challenge is that offtake, done alone, can feel heavy.
The most impactful carbon removal is enabled ex ante.
Commitments made before delivery are what allow projects to be built in the first place.
And yet, ex ante is where many buyers hesitate.
Delivery risk. Timing risk. Internal scrutiny. The fear of being the only one who committed early.
These concerns are reasonable.
What’s unreasonable is expecting each buyer to shoulder that risk on their own.
Most procurement structures force companies to choose between two extremes.
Either buy spot and stay reactive. Or commit alone and carry disproportionate responsibility.
That’s not how mature infrastructure markets work.
They work because demand is coordinated.
Pooling demand allows buyers to move beyond spot purchasing without becoming single points of failure.
By coordinating commitments across multiple companies, demand becomes large enough, stable enough, and credible enough to support long-term offtake.
For buyers, this unlocks something important.
Instead of one company underwriting a project, commitment is shared.
Each buyer participates at a level that fits their governance and budget, while still contributing to a demand signal that actually matters.
Spot markets promise flexibility. Pooled offtake delivers access.
Access to future supply. Access to better pricing over time. Access to projects that wouldn’t exist otherwise.
In constrained markets, access is the real advantage.
Ex ante commitments are hardest when made in isolation.
When demand is pooled, ex ante becomes a collective action rather than a solitary leap.
Risk doesn’t disappear. It becomes distributed, governed, and far easier to stand behind internally.
Carbon removal doesn’t need more buyers chasing spot volumes.
It needs buyers willing to coordinate demand and help build the supply they expect to rely on.
Spot is what you do when you don’t get involved.
Offtake is what you do when you do.
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