This week, Puro.earth, in partnership with the Carbon Business Council, hosted a vibrant carbon removal ecosystem at the inaugural APAC CDR Summit 2025.
Held in Singapore, the event was an anchor point for many leading industry names, carbon removal suppliers, investors, and organizations working on scaling the global CDR industry.
As this particular climate tech sector prepares to enter a new growth phase, the summit served as a hotspot for stakeholders to engage in dialogue and share ideas on catalyzing strategic CDR action and forming symbiotic industry collaborations.
Packed with a series of expert panels, the event provided a platform for knowledge-sharing and discussions on topics crucial for the ramp-up of carbon removal efforts.
Commenting on the importance of the gathering, ClimeFi’s Patricia Toth said: “This event is hugely valuable and couldn’t have come at a better time. Puro.earth has done an amazing job of uniting the CDR community in the region, driving forward discussions with some really interesting panels addressing the key challenges in the market. In a region as fast-evolving as APAC, this summit has proven more than just a networking event; it’s helped drive meaningful progress in the CDR market.”
She also added that the region’s diversity, both in terms of economies and ecosystems, makes it uniquely positioned to lead on certain pathways, pointing to Mati Carbon, who recently won first place in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, as well as Arca, Takachar, Yuanchu, and Mash Makes who were all finalists.
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Standard Chartered’s Chris Leeds kicked off the main summit, opening the way for a productive Fireside Chat that delved into setting the stage for APAC’s leadership in CDR. Moderated by Ben Rubin, it featured the CEO of South Pole Daniel Klier and Singapore Economic Development Board’s VP of Environmental Sustainability Michelle Tan.
Keeping in line with the event’s main theme, the scaling of CDR was the focal point of the keynote delivered by Fredrik Ekström from Nasdaq, as summit guests settled in for a series of five expert panel discussions that brought the spotlight to different aspects of the CDR scale-up journey ahead.
A panel on unlocking CDR finance at scale, moderated by Puro.earth’s Head of Supply, Alvin Lee, brought on stage experts from Standard Chartered Bank, Carbon Removal Partners, Sumitomo Corporation, and the Sustainable Finance Initiative.
To get a better understanding of the CDR purchasing side, the summit also held a panel on what corporates need, hearing from leaders at Carbonfuture, Climate Impact Partners, ClimeFi, and Semi.org in a discussion moderated by Puro.earth Vice Chairman Antti Vihavainen.
Biochar potential and feet on the ground
With a focus on biochar breakthroughs, a separate panel moderated by Yingying Chen provided a deep dive on ways to scale agriculture- and forestry-based CDR, with expert opinions from Biomass Projects, Alcom, Arukah Capital, Golden-Agri Resources, and Varaha AG.
Speaking on the back of a partnership announcement with Carbonfuture and Residual for the removal of 500,000 tons of CO2, Biomass Projects CEO Richard Paterson focused attention on both the potential of the region but also some of the risks: “The opportunity from a biochar CDR perspective is there are billions of tons of biomass globally. The risk is there is a lack of technologies available to lower the cost of CDR and increase the efficiency.
The investment in CDR and climate tech, I think, is being led by Asia Pacific. This is where there’s huge investment, particularly out of Japan. Singapore is definitely an investment hub for Southeast Asia for some of the big Japanese investors. And the opportunities are here. We’ve got land, biomass, and lots of people. For me, from a biochar CDR perspective, it’s a perfect storm, really.”
Panels and discussions on the sidelines reflected some of the issues faced by carbon removal in Europe and the U.S. Creating demand for CDR and establishing market mechanisms were mentioned frequently but the overall feeling was one of optimism and realization that the potential for growth in APAC is real, with some companies sharing their short-term goals.
“The region has made some progress in recently, both on the project development side as well as on the buy-side, where we have seen a lot of first movers in recent months. APAC is a key pillar in ClimeFi’s growth strategy. We have multiple projects that we are looking at in South East Asia, and some new projects from the same region are set to be included in our upcoming XPRIZE portfolio offering.
As it happens, we are actually looking to confirm our commitment to APAC and get feet on the ground – so watch this space!,” added ClimeFi’s Patricia Toth.
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