Puro.earth Passes 2 Million CORCs Issued, Eyes 1.9 Million a Year

Puro.earth's registry has now issued more than 2 million CO2 Removal Certificates (CORCs) — 2 million tonnes of independently verified engineered carbon removal certified since the platform's first issuance in 2019.

The pace is the real story. The first million CORCs took roughly six years. The second million took 19 months. That's less than a third of the time, and it puts current issuance velocity above 50,000 CORCs per month — a fourfold jump on the registry's six-year historical average.

Registry forecasts point to more acceleration. Annual issuance should pass 1 million CORCs in 2026 and reach 1.9 million CORCs in 2027. The takeaway: the bottleneck in engineered carbon removal is shifting from certification capacity to buyer demand.

What's inside the 2 million tonnes?

Every credit in the second-million cohort was certified under methodologies requiring physical carbon storage durability of at least 100 years. The standard also holds program-level Core Carbon Principles (CCP) eligibility from the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM).

The technological mix across all 2 million CORCs looks like this:

• Biochar — 49% of total volumes, the single largest pathway
• Geologically stored carbon — 31%, including BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) and DACCS (direct air carbon capture and storage)
• Carbonated materials — 4%
• Terrestrial biomass storage — 0.8%
• Enhanced rock weathering — 0.6%

Biochar's dominance is worth watching. It's the pathway with the lowest capital intensity among the engineered options, and it's carrying nearly half the registry's certified volume.

How did Puro.earth speed up issuance?

Infrastructure, mostly. To support higher issuance frequency and cut verification lag, the registry rolled out digital upgrades including the MyPuro 2.0 interface, automated dMRV API integrations, and the Puro Issuance Plus batch processing framework.

Those changes cut the median time from data submission to credit issuance by 25%. In a market where buyers want delivery dates they can book against, verification speed is a competitive edge.

Liquidity has accelerated in parallel. More than 1 million CORCs have been permanently retired by over 900 corporate buyer organizations. The gap between issuance and retirement has collapsed from 325 days in 2019 to 23 days in 2026.

That 23-day figure matters more than the headline 2 million. Credits that sit unhung in registries invite scrutiny; credits retired within a month signal functioning demand.

What's driving demand from here?

Public money is now in the frame. Commercial growth is underpinned by government procurement initiatives in Canada, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, alongside regulatory scaffolding in the EU — the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) certification mechanism, and the potential integration of permanent removals into the EU Emissions Trading System.

Those are the levers that turn voluntary purchases into compliance-grade demand. If permanent removals land inside the ETS, the buyer pool stops being 900 companies and starts being every covered emitter in Europe.

What decides the next milestone?

Watch three numbers. First, whether 2026 issuance actually clears 1 million CORCs as forecast. Second, whether the issuance-to-retirement gap holds near 23 days as volumes scale. Third, and biggest: the EU's decision on folding permanent removals into the ETS — that single regulatory call would do more for demand-side depth than another million certificates on the supply side.