Carbon Direct, in partnership with Microsoft, has announced the release of the 2025 edition of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).

The 2025 edition builds on the criteria first released back in 2021, which acts as a resource for project developers seeking to deliver high-integrity carbon removal and for buyers evaluating the quality of their carbon removal portfolios.

It establishes standards across nine CDR pathways, ranging from nature-based solutions, including afforestation and soil carbon sequestration, to engineered approaches, such as direct air capture, and the newly addressed abiotic marine methods.

Microsoft, by far the largest corporate buyer of carbon removal credits in the world, directly informed the updated guidance through its vast market experience.

“These updated criteria reflect our accumulated experience evaluating hundreds of CDR projects across multiple pathways and geographies," said Brian Marrs, senior director of Energy Markets at Microsoft. “The 2025 criteria reflect the latest science and operational insights, providing a foundation for continuous improvement to help ensure that as the carbon removal market grows, it does so with integrity and transparency.”

The framework outlines six science-based principles. These include social harms, benefits, and environmental justice, environmental harms and benefits, additionality and baselines, measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV), durability, and leakage.

“Science and policy advances continue to demonstrate the critical need for equitable, science-based CDR standards that not only guide CDR but also inform broader sustainability procurement strategies, including environmental attribute certificates for industrial decarbonization and corporate insetting programs,” said Jonathan Goldberg, CEO, Carbon Direct.

The partners intend to continue their collaboration on future updates of the criteria and intend to explore expansion into additional emerging pathways, including wetland restoration and carbon dioxide utilization technologies.

The partnership builds on Microsoft's already preeminent position as a carbon credit purchaser. The company has already signed numerous removal deals throughout 2025. These include a deal to purchase 2.95 million tons of removal credits from a CCS project in Denmark, a 2.6 million credit deal with sustainable farming group Agoro Carbon Alliance, and a 44,000 credit deal with biochar firm Carba.