'Big Carbon'
Is this the next trillion dollar market?

"I need to bring this godless industry under my control." - John D. Rockefeller
In a recent LinkedIn post (an extract of which is pasted below), Tobias Munk, CEO of B10 Char, the South African biochar producer, outlines why he thinks the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) industry will be the next trillion dollar market - dwarfing even the oil market (bolding his own):
"On a linear pathway to net zero by 2050, we do not stabilize at 422 ppm. We overshoot to about 455 ppm. Returning just to where we are today would mean removing 392 gigatonnes of CO₂. At $100 per ton, that is a $40 trillion market. Almost a third of the entire history of oil, recreated just to claw back to the present.
And that is only part of the story. If carbon removal capacity ramps from zero today to 24 gigatonnes per year by 2050, that ramp-up itself would generate about 300 gigatonnes of removals by mid-century. But the problem does not stop in 2050. To actually reach net zero, we still need to offset 10 gigatonnes per year of residual emissions. Over the 25 years from 2050 to 2075, that is another 250 gigatonnes.
Put the pieces together: 300 + 392 + 250 = 942 gigatonnes of carbon removal required by 2075. At $100 per ton, this equates to a $94 trillion industry.
Think about that scale. Oil’s century-long revenue was $122 trillion. Carbon removal gets three quarters of the way there in just 50 years — and unlike oil, it is not optional. It is the price of cleaning up the very system that oil, coal, and gas built.
Meanwhile, today’s CDR industry is worth only $3.4 billion. That is less than the annual budget of a mid-sized tech company. To meet this challenge, the market must expand by a factor of 1,000× within a single generation.
This is not a niche. It is not a sideline. It is the next great industrial build-out, one that will rival oil, steel, and electricity in size. Oil was the biggest market in history. Carbon removal will be bigger. Much bigger.
When was the last time you saw an opportunity like this? I have put my money where my mouth is and invested substantially in this market. You should too."
Let's take a look at the calculation in detail before then considering the market dynamics, and importantly, who is likely to be in a position to benefit. Hint: you may not like the answer.
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