Subnational Patterns in Carbon Dioxide Removal Deployment in the United States

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a core component of U.S. decarbonization strategies, yet the emerging CDR market is developing unevenly across states. While federal incentives play an important role, state-level spatial patterns and policy contexts strongly shape where projects are developed, which technologies are deployed, and which actors invest. This study aims to answer: how do state-level spatial variation and policy contexts structure the market landscape of CDR deployment in the United States?

To address this question, we construct a project-level dataset of U.S. CDR activities by compiling and harmonizing data from multiple public sources. Projects are categorized by technology type and investor class, and capacity is consistently attributed across participating investors to enable comparative analysis across states. Where capacity information is incomplete, targeted data collection and statistical imputation are used to ensure analytical coverage.
The results reveal a segmented market shaped by strong spatial and place-based dynamics. Capture projects are geographically widespread but typically small in scale, whereas storage capacity is highly concentrated in a limited number of states. Investor participation varies systematically across both technologies and states: industrial emitters and oil and gas–linked actors dominate capacity in storage-oriented states, while technology firms, corporate buyers, and public actors play a larger role in states supporting emerging capture pathways. More importantly, cross-state variation in capacity concentration and investor diversity cannot be explained by policy incentives alone, highlighting the influence of broader spatial and historical factors.

By empirically mapping technologies, investors, and geography, this study provides a market-centered perspective on the early U.S. CDR landscape. The findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between project counts and capacity, capture and storage pathways, and investor roles when assessing CDR deployment trajectories, and they underscore how market formation in CDR is shaped jointly by technological maturity, capital preferences, and place-based constraints rather than policy signals in isolation.