…Destroying an intact rainforest and promising to replant it later is a bit like bulldozing the Louvre and assuring everyone that an excellent photocopier has been ordered…
Engineered carbon removals have had a bumpy 12 months. We had feverish excitement in the market throughout 2025, only to have the brakes slam up against demand uncertainty. That Microsoft ‘pause’ caused a lot of ripples. These are only growing pains and to my mind though, there is no question that removals should and will play a serious role in any credible long-term net-zero strategy. But that does not change the fact that the most scientifically important carbon asset in the world is not potential future removal capacity, but rather the intact forest that is standing today.
One thing I have worried about amid the buzz and clamour as the removals market tries to establish itself is the risk of confusing future necessity with present priority and how this can lead to a zero-sum game in the carbon market. Engineered carbon removals are trading at around $160 per tonne in the forward market, while high-integrity forest avoidance credits trade at around $6 in the spot market (Sylvera, State of Carbon Credits 2025). The implication some buyers draw is that removals are inherently better climate assets, and that avoidance should gradually be deprioritised. This is a dangerous misconception.
For anyone who doesn’t know, I am the Commercial Director at Permian Global. The Katingan Mentaya Project, the 157,875-hectare peatland conservation project we manage with PT Rimba Makmur Utama in Central Kalimantan, is approaching the issuance of a substantial volume of avoidance credits, and I am responsible for placing them. Treat what follows as informed advocacy. I honestly think the broader argument stands independently of Katingan.
Removals belong in any serious climate portfolio. And we are going to need a great deal of them. But a portfolio without high-quality avoidance, particularly avoidance of primary tropical forest loss, is buying durability at the cost of immediacy and irreplaceability. With the IPCC carbon budget compressing year by year, that is a trade major buyers cannot afford to make.
There are at least three risks that the price gap is missing.
Irreplaceability. The carbon stored in the world’s tropical primary forests is about 104–118 petagrams, which is close to the entire remaining 1.5°C carbon budget (Mackey et al., 2020). The plantations that typically replace cleared tropical forest hold 30% to 50% less carbon, with substantially less stable storage over time (Osuri et al., 2020). We cannot plant our way back to that asset once it is gone.
Immediacy. A direct air capture facility captures carbon at its installed capacity per year, and the global build-out of DAC sufficient to be climatically material will itself take decades. A young tropical plantation is typically a net carbon source in its first decade, becomes a meaningful net sink only at year ten to twenty, and Neotropical secondary forests take a median of around 66 years to recover 90% of old-growth biomass (Poorter et al., 2016). A standing tropical forest, by contrast, is already operating at planetary scale.
Scale. In 2025, Forestry and Land Use credits accounted for approximately 62 million tonnes of retirements, 37% of the market, with REDD+ alone responsible for 25%. Engineered durable carbon removals registered under one million tonnes (Sylvera, 2025). That sixty-to-one gap is not a near-term arbitrage. It is the size of the supply problem facing any major buyer who wants to deploy serious capital against residual emissions this decade.
The Market Often Confuses Durability with Superiority
The premium attached to engineered removals reflects several legitimate advantages: measurable storage pathways, long-duration permanence potential, and strong MRV narratives.
But durability is only one dimension of climate value.
A tonne permanently removed in 2055 does not neutralise the climatic consequences of a forest destroyed in 2027.
This is particularly relevant for peatland systems. When tropical peatlands are drained and burned, they release centuries of accumulated carbon (the peat at the Katingan Mentaya Project is up to 20,000 years old in places) while simultaneously degrading hydrology, biodiversity, and regional climate resilience. Those emissions are immediate and extremely difficult to reverse.
The right question, therefore, is not “avoidance or removals?” It is “what is the most effective portfolio mix, especially in this moment when extreme climate thresholds are still avoidable?”
The evidence points clearly toward complementarity rather than substitution.
The market is pricing real concerns, but those of us on the supply side have solid answers to them:
- Buffer pools and the emerging carbon-credit insurance market (Howden, CFC, Kita, and others) have turned avoidance permanence into a managed risk, calibrated against the ICVCM’s 40-year reversal-risk standard.
- The integrity test sits at the project level, not the methodology label. A serious developer can put a conservative baseline, sensitivity analyses, third-party validation, and a multi-year audit trail in front of any buyer who asks.
- The market is not failing. It is stratifying. Quality is being rewarded; the job of any serious buyer is to be in the top decile.
So, here’s my practical decision rule for corporates in 2026.
Allocate against the science. Cut operational and value-chain emissions hard and fast; there‘s really no compromise there. Protect standing forests today through high-integrity avoidance. Build a growing position in removals as durable, scalable supply matures.
Allocate against time. The cheapest tonne removed from the atmosphere in 2055 will not save a forest lost in 2027.
Allocate against irreplaceability. There is nothing else in your portfolio that protects an asset of comparable carbon density, biodiversity value, and tangible community investment.
This is not a compromise position. It is a risk-adjusted climate strategy.
The market’s instincts on quality are essentially right. Its instincts on category are still catching up.
This is where the phrase “we’ll just plant more trees” begins to resemble climate folklore rather than climate strategy. Avoided deforestation is not simply about preserving existing tonnes. It is about preventing the irreversible loss of carbon systems that cannot realistically be rebuilt within the timeframe that matters for climate stability.
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