Puro.earth announced that its Puro Registry has officially hit the 1 million mark of retired CO2 Removal Certificates (CORCs).
According to Puro, this achievement testifies to a shift in the voluntary carbon removal market, where demand is on the rise and buyers are procuring with increasing speed and confidence, while retirements follow issuances in a matter of days rather than months.
Each of the issued CORCs stands for one tonne of CO2 that has been permanently removed from the atmosphere, with full lifecycle traceability from issuance to retirement.
The CORCs are designed as a third-party-verified, registry-tracked instrument for durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) with permanence over 100+ years and, in many cases, 1000+ years.
They meet the due diligence requirements of corporate sustainability frameworks, banks, institutional investors and infrastructure funds, serving to demonstrate high-integrity CDR. As an asset class, CORCs help unlock project debt and equity financing for developers working on durable CO2 removal solutions.
Data from the Puro Registry shows retirements grew 140% in 2024 and a further 112% in 2025, highlighting a drop in the average time from issuance to retirement from 510 days in 2019 to just 7 days in 2026.
As explained by Puro, this indicates that buyers have transitioned from initial purchases to systematic, repeatable ones, retiring credits quickly because they trust the instrument and have CDR embedded into their climate frameworks.
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The data also points to a growing number of new buyers, evident in the 4.7x increase in the number of CORCs beneficiaries between 2020 and 2025. Puro also signals that the average time to primary trade – when a CORC is purchased – has fallen from 115 days in 2024 to just 7 days in 2026.
In terms of CDR pathways, the CORC retirements came from biochar (48.1%), geologically stored carbon (33.3%), carbonated materials (4%), terrestrial storage of biomass (0.7%), enhanced rock weathering (0.3%), and other pathways (13.7%).
“We are grateful to every supplier and buyer who has built this market alongside us,” said Puro.earth President Jan-Willem Bode. “It has required patience, rigour, and the willingness to operate in an emerging market. The results are now visible, measurable, and repeatable,” he added.
