In March 2024, the Department of Energy (DOE) published a Notice of Intent Regarding Launching a Voluntary Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchasing Challenge (Purchasing Challenge). To participate in the Purchasing Challenge, organizations must disclose to DOE several details about each associated carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credit, including the purchaser, supplier, underlying project, and crediting methodology. DOE will maintain a public inventory of these details. Missing from the public inventory will be the price paid per tonne of CDR, which participating organizations must privately disclose to DOE.
The Institute for Policy Integrity submitted comments recommending ways DOE could better balance concerns about the disclosure of commercially sensitive information with the benefits of allowing researchers and market actors to access price data. For example, the Department could make price data public in anonymized form, allow tiered access to price data, or limit access to this price information to researchers only.