A new proposal in the U.S. Senate, called the CREST Act, could change how the country handles carbon emissions. It introduces a tax credit specifically aimed at biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS).
Backed by bipartisan support, the legislation supports the expansion of sustainable biomass projects that help pull carbon dioxide out of the air and store it safely. The bill hopes to boost much-needed investment in carbon removal just as demand grows sharply to address climate change.
How Will the CREST Act Support Carbon Removal?
The Carbon Removal Enhancement and Storage Tax (CREST) Act offers financial support for projects that remove and store carbon using biomass. This includes materials like wood, crop waste, and other organic matter. These materials naturally absorb carbon during growth, which can then be captured and stored through advanced processing methods like pyrolysis or gasification.
The main goal of the tax credit is to make these efforts more affordable and attractive to investors. Too often, biomass carbon removal projects struggle with financial uncertainty. Without strong incentives, many projects find it difficult to grow or even launch. The CREST Act aims to change this.
These tax credits would work much like similar credits for solar or wind power, helping companies offset costs and take on larger, long-term projects. This move could unlock more innovation and drive better carbon capture technology.
Why Biomass Could Be a Game-Changer for Carbon Removal
Biomass carbon removal uses organic materials—like trees or crops—to draw CO₂ from the air. Captured carbon can be stored underground or changed into products like biochar. Biochar is a solid carbon form that boosts soil health and traps carbon for hundreds of years.
This approach does more than lower emissions. It also helps rural communities. Many of these projects use forest or farm waste, creating jobs and boosting local economies. According to a USDA assessment, biomass can play a key role in sustainable agriculture and carbon management.
Still, scaling up biomass carbon removal faces challenges. It requires advanced infrastructure and clear policies to show that captured carbon will stay stored. The CREST Act would help by offering the financial support needed to build that infrastructure and refine these methods.
From CO₂ Cuts to Healthier Forests: CREST’s Broader Impact
Improving biomass carbon removal could reduce emissions while also benefiting the environment in other ways. Here’s how:
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Lower Greenhouse Gases. Biomass captures carbon from the atmosphere, which can then be stored long-term. This reduces the amount of CO₂ contributing to climate change.
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Healthier Forests and Farmland. Waste from agriculture and forestry is reused, helping prevent wildfires and supporting soil health.
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Rural Development. More projects mean more jobs and steady income for farming and forestry communities.
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Stable Carbon Storage. Technologies like biochar or carbon injection into geological formations keep carbon out of the atmosphere for long periods.
The success of these systems depends on strong rules. Experts warn that it’s important to track and verify every ton of carbon captured. With clear standards, this industry can provide real environmental value and win public trust.
Analysts See Growth in Biomass-Based Removal
Market analysts see strong growth potential for carbon removal, especially following this type of legislation. The global carbon market was worth $272 billion in 2020, and it keeps growing as countries adopt climate goals.
However, biomass has often been left behind due to a lack of support. Many government programs have favored industrial carbon capture, not biomass.
The CREST Act fills this gap. By targeting biomass carbon pathways with specialized tax credits, it offers the predictability investors want. Cutting dependence on unstable carbon credit prices helps attract private capital to sustainable biomass projects.
Industry leaders say this tax credit could drive innovation in methods like:
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Pyrolysis – converting plant material into carbon-rich biochar
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Combustion – managing heat energy for carbon storage
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Gasification – turning biomass into gas-based fuel and capturing carbon
These tools could help develop a larger, more flexible carbon management system. With stronger funding, companies can improve accuracy, model carbon removal better, and ensure permanence in storage.
What the Numbers Say: Biomass Carbon Removal Is Surging
The carbon dioxide removal (CDR) market is growing fast. This shows that companies and governments are more committed to climate goals.
By 2025, the global carbon dioxide removal market could be about $842 million. It could grow at around 14% to nearly $2.85 billion by 2034. This growth comes from more people knowing about and using natural and tech carbon removal methods, like biomass-based approaches.
Biomass carbon removal is gaining traction. This includes methods like pyrolysis to make biochar, gasification, and combustion with carbon capture.
Biochar projects made up 86% of carbon removal purchases by volume in 2024. This shows how dominant the sector is in the CDR market. BiCRS refers to biomass carbon removal & storage, which includes BECCS and BCR.
The market for durable carbon removal credits is growing fast. These credits ensure long-term carbon storage. Forecasts say this market could hit $14 billion by 2035, at a growth rate of 38% from 2025 to 2035.
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In the first quarter of 2025, about 780,000 carbon removal credits were contracted. This is a 122% increase from the same time in 2024.
The rising demand shows that companies want reliable, verified carbon credits to reach their net-zero goals.
The carbon removal market, which includes Direct Air Capture (DAC), Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), and enhanced weathering, is valued at about $2 billion. It could grow to $40 billion by 2030 and may even surpass $250 billion by 2035.
Biomass carbon removal is key in this ecosystem. It offers scalable, nature-based solutions. Plus, it brings extra benefits like rural economic growth and reduced wildfire risks.
The World Resources Institute says biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) could make up around 20% of total biomass use in the U.S. by 2050. This is if biomass is used wisely for both carbon removal and other purposes. This shows strong growth potential for biomass pathways. Policies like the CREST Act support this.
Biomass Tax Credit Could Reshape Global Carbon Trading
A stable, well-supported industry around biomass carbon removal could shift the balance in carbon markets. It would encourage more entrants into the market, giving buyers more reliable and verified carbon credits. That means companies trying to meet climate goals could support cleaner methods and reduce their overall footprint with confidence.
If passed, the CREST Act could unlock large-scale funding for sustainable biomass projects across the country. This would not only help meet climate goals but also offer reliable income to farmers and foresters willing to participate.
The tax credit shows how good policy and advanced technology can tackle big climate problems. Whether it gains final approval depends on political negotiations, but momentum is strong thanks to bipartisan support.
Passing this bill would be a big step for U.S. carbon policy. It brings a mix of environmental responsibility, economic opportunity, and technical innovation into play.
The post Biomass Gets a Boost: What the CREST Act Means for Carbon Removal appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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