The minute
- Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) announced it will use carbon capture and storage (CCS) at one of its corn processing facilities in Nebraska to generate voluntary carbon credits.
- The facility has an annual carbon capture capacity of over 800,000 tons.
- The credits will be issued through Puro.earth, a registry focused on carbon removal credits.
Why it matters: ADM is one of the largest agribusiness companies in the world, and its entry into the voluntary carbon market as a credit supplier (not just a buyer) signals that industrial-scale CCS is reaching a point where companies see it as a revenue stream, not just a compliance cost. With over 800,000 tons of annual capacity at a single facility, ADM could become one of the largest individual suppliers of engineered carbon removal credits globally, at a moment when the voluntary market is struggling with oversupply of cheaper, nature-based credits and persistent questions about quality.
Who wins and who loses
The move benefits buyers who want high-permanence credits. CCS stores CO2 in geological formations, which means the carbon stays locked for thousands of years, unlike forestry credits that can be reversed by fire or land-use change. For corporate buyers under pressure from frameworks like SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative) to demonstrate real emissions reductions, CCS credits from a traceable industrial source offer a stronger narrative than many alternatives.
On the losing side are suppliers of lower-quality credits. If large buyers start shifting procurement toward engineered removal, projects that rely on avoided deforestation (REDD+) or improved cookstoves may see demand soften further. The voluntary market already saw a sharp price correction in 2023 and 2024 as integrity concerns mounted. ADM flooding the market with 800,000 tons of CCS credits per year could accelerate the bifurcation between premium removal credits and cheaper avoidance credits.
What this means for Brazilian credit suppliers
Brazil is one of the world’s largest sources of voluntary carbon credits, mostly from REDD+ and reforestation projects in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. ADM’s move does not directly compete with those credits on paper, since CCS and nature-based solutions occupy different categories. In practice, however, they compete for the same corporate budget. A sustainability officer deciding between a REDD+ credit at a lower price and a CCS credit with geological permanence now has a clearer reason to choose the latter, especially if the buyer’s climate strategy emphasizes removal over avoidance.
Brazilian project developers may need to respond by improving monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) standards to demonstrate that their credits deliver durable climate benefits. The growing presence of industrial players like ADM in the supply side of the voluntary market raises the bar for all participants.
The Brazilian regulatory contrast
Brazil approved its national emissions trading system, the SBCE (Sistema Brasileiro de Comercio de Emissoes), through Law 15.042 signed in December 2024. The regulated market is still in the rulemaking phase, with the government working on the operational details, including which sectors will be covered, how allowances will be allocated, and whether and how voluntary credits (offsets) can be used for compliance. That last question is critical: if the SBCE allows voluntary credits for compliance, it could create domestic demand for both nature-based and engineered removal credits. If it does not, the two markets will remain separate.
Unlike the United States, where there is no federal carbon market and CCS projects operate within a patchwork of state incentives and the federal 45Q tax credit, Brazil is building a national framework from scratch. But CCS as a technology has limited application in Brazil’s agricultural sector. The country’s emissions profile is dominated by land-use change and agriculture (methane from livestock, nitrous oxide from fertilizers), not by industrial CO2 streams that are easy to capture. Whether Brazilian agribusiness companies could replicate ADM’s approach at corn ethanol or sugarcane ethanol plants is an open engineering and economic question that lacks public feasibility data.
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