Carbon Integrity

The four integrity axes

Durable fraction

Of one contracted tonne, how much is still durable removal on a multi-decadal timescale once realization lag and reversal are accounted for. This is the number most marketing collapses into "one tonne".

Durability horizon

The characteristic storage timescale, to an order of magnitude. Centuries and millennia are different products and should not clear at the same price.

Verifiability

How mature independent measurement actually is for that method. Across the stack this is the recurring binding constraint, more often than cost or capacity.

Reversal risk

The chance carbon is re-released after the credit has already been issued and retired.

The distinction the screen is built on

A carbon-removal claim and a durably realized, independently verified removal are not the same quantity. Most comparisons in this market are made on dollars per tonne, which silently assumes the tonnes are equivalent. They are not.

The screen separates methods into two families. Storage pathways are physics-exempt: durability is largely fixed at the moment of injection or storage. Process pathways are kinetics-gated: realization lags, sometimes by years, and can be lost before it is ever complete. Those two families fail in different ways and should not be scored on one axis.

Every number is a band, not a point

No value in the framework is published as a single figure. Each is a low, central and high band carrying its source and an explicit confidence flag. Where the evidence is thin, the band is wide and the confidence says so.

That is deliberate. A point estimate invites a spreadsheet to treat it as fact. A band with a confidence flag forces the reader to notice how much is actually known, which for several methods is not much.

What it is for

Comparing methods on integrity grounds rather than price. Identifying the binding gate for each pathway, meaning the thing that actually limits its integrity today rather than the thing its proponents most enjoy discussing. Giving a policy or press audience a defensible basis for saying which claims currently hold up.

The framework is a seed for external review, not a verdict. Every cell is designed to be contested, which is why the source and the confidence travel with the value.