As climate change accelerates, scaling carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions has become a critical part of achieving global net-zero goals. However, for many companies, investing in CDR remains challenging due to high costs, uncertainty about impact, greenwashing concerns and a lack of in-house expertise. For small to medium-sized businesses in particular, these high barriers to entry can feel insurmountable. But there’s another way: by pooling funds with like-minded businesses, companies can increase their purchasing power and make meaningful contributions to their climate goals while maximising their budgets and impact.

This collaborative approach, akin to the buyers club model, offers a safe and practical solution to overcome the hurdles of purchasing carbon credits—and trusted partners like Opna are here to help.

buyers clubs and pooling funds for carbon removal

What are pooled funds, and how do they work for CDR?

Pooled funds are when several companies combine their budgets to invest in something together, making it easier to tackle bigger projects or challenges. It’s a common approach in finance and development, used to share costs, reduce risks, and achieve greater impact than any single contributor could on their own.

For carbon removal (CDR), pooling funds works in a similar way. By contributing to a shared budget, companies can invest in high-quality, scalable solutions that might be out of reach individually:

Access bigger, more impactful projects.
Share the costs and effort of finding and managing investments.
Retain a locked-in supply of verified CDR credits with multi-year offtake agreements.
Make their climate investments go further through quantified collective effort, even with limited internal resources.

A pooled fund doesn’t just maximise budgets—it offers consistency, oversight and control. Having an intermediary platform to manage your collective CDR investments can further simplify the process and help accelerate progress toward your net-zero goals.

Pooling demand — without the need for a buyers club

What are buyers clubs?

Buyers’ clubs are coalitions of companies that pool their resources to purchase CDR credits collectively. By combining budgets, these groups can invest in higher-quality projects at a greater scale than individual companies could achieve alone.

Several high-profile examples demonstrate the power of this model:

Frontier: A $1 billion advanced market commitment (AMC) backing breakthrough CDR technologies with high long-term potential, co-founded by companies like Google, Stripe, and Microsoft.
Symbiosis Coalition: Focused on scaling nature-based solutions like reforestation and agroforestry, targeting 20 million tonnes of high-quality removals by 2030.
LEAF Coalition: A public-private partnership tackling deforestation with $180 million in credit purchases from regions like Para, Brazil. Key players include Amazon, H&M, and Inditex.
NextGen CDR: A Mitsubishi-South Pole venture pooling resources from companies like SwissRe and UBS to invest in innovative solutions like biochar and direct air capture.

This collective approach not only lowers costs but also simplifies the process of sourcing, evaluating, and procuring CDR solutions. However, at the same time, setting up this kind of coalition requires a lot of resources, legal and tax frameworks, as well as creating separate investment funds.

Maximising impact for your climate budget and the planet

While initiatives like Frontier involve large corporations and significant budgets, the same principles can be applied on a smaller scale—and that’s where platforms like Opna come in. By pooling your funds with other medium-sized companies, you can gain access to high-quality CDR projects that align with your sustainability goals, while maximising your budget’s impact.

Pooling funds via a trusted partner addresses key barriers to investing in CDR, allowing you to:

Access high-quality, scalable CDR projects that may be out of reach for individual buyers.
Lower costs and simplify procurement through shared expertise and streamlined processes.
Ensure investments deliver verified, long-term climate benefits, particularly for nature-based solutions.

At Opna, we simplify the process by managing evaluation, sourcing, and project selection, so you don’t need an in-house carbon management team. We work exclusively with projects that meet rigorous standards for quality, scalability, and permanence, ensuring your investments drive real-world climate benefits.

Pooling funds through Opna's platform allows your company to maximise its budget and achieve greater climate impact—turning your sustainability ambitions into measurable outcomes.

Ready to reach your climate goals?

Investing in carbon removal doesn’t have to be daunting or expensive. By pooling resources with trusted partners like Opna, companies can maximise their budgets, reduce complexity, and create a bigger impact—all without the need for extensive internal resources and complicated frameworks.

This collaborative approach, inspired by buyers’ clubs, enables businesses of all sizes to contribute meaningfully to global net-zero goals. Whether you’re new to CDR or looking to scale your efforts, Opna is here to help you take the next step toward a sustainable future.