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Antti Vihavainen, CEO of Puro.earth, sat down with Onyx for a feature-length interview.
Antti, could you walk us through your career journey—what led you to co-found Puro?
It started in 1995 at university. I founded my first company with friends while also being involved in the student union responsible for environmental affairs. Climate was already a topic that caught my attention. We organized a conference where we invited Finnish corporations to explain how they were deriving a competitive advantage from what we then called "green business” - “sustainability” wasn’t really a word yet!
I also had an interest in building a green business infrastructure—digital or otherwise— that is secure and efficient. This directed my career through telecoms, location-based services, ten years in cybersecurity, and then IoT - all focused on improving digital efficiency and trust.
Between 2015 and 2017 I traveled a lot and read publications such as MIT Tech Review, Harvard Business Review and The Economist. A pattern became clear to me: reducing emissions alone doesn’t solve climate change. What really matters is the atmospheric concentration of CO₂. To lower that, you need to reduce emissions radically—but also remove existing CO₂ from the atmosphere.
This led me to ask: how do we accelerate the development of carbon removal industries?
I’m from a very forest-dense country, Finland, but I’ve always viewed this as an industrial challenge. I believed it needed to be scaled with market-based mechanisms. So originally, we set out to create a marketplace for trading negative emissions—but then discovered the product itself didn’t exist. The kind of verified, credible carbon removal certificate we needed just wasn’t out there.
So our goal shifted. In 2018 and 2019, we created not only the marketplace but also the standard and the registry behind it.
Who are your main customers, and who’s the best fit for what Puro offers?
We're a standard and a registry.
We certify suppliers of negative emissions. These suppliers come to us claiming they meet the requirements of one of our methodologies—the science-based definitions for carbon-negative activities. They provide the required evidence. We review it, and if it holds up, we send in a third-party independent auditor. If everything checks out, we issue certificates into their account in our registry. They can then sell those through intermediaries or directly to corporations, typically climate pioneers who are serious about high-quality removals.
And what makes the Puro standard trustworthy? Why do clients see it as rigorous?
Our methodologies aren’t created by businesses. They're developed by our internal scientific team in collaboration with researchers and practitioners worldwide and then submitted to our advisory board for approval.
Our advisory board includes six highly respected individuals. One of them is Professor Myles Allen from Oxford—sometimes called "Mr. Negative Emissions." He and the others have full authority over which methodologies are approved. The board of directors has delegated that responsibility entirely to them. This separation ensures we stay scientific, independent, and trustworthy.
How are these carbon removal facilities typically financed? Do subsidies play a role?
There are definitely investors looking for the next big opportunity in this space, and carbon removal is attracting attention. That’s how it started—purely private money. But now we're seeing increasing regulatory involvement too.
The U.S. 45Q tax credit is a good example. It supports projects that generate negative emissions, and the amount of support depends on the method—direct air capture gets the highest support, while methods like bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) gets slightly less.
For readers who understand the need for carbon removal but not the mechanics, why does the registry matter? Why is it important to have a high standard?
A few companies, like Microsoft, are willing and able to do their due diligence—working with experts to vet every detail of a removal project. But not every company has those resources. And they shouldn't have to. Puro allows companies to find removal projects of the highest caliber without needing to independently vet them.
Carbon removal is fundamentally a commodity market, so it is vital for companies to feel confident that what they’re buying is real. That’s what the standards are for. We do the hard work of vetting, making it easier for new companies to participate.
And integrity is everything. The first generation of carbon markets taught us that. If standards are too weak, the whole market loses credibility. We don't want that to happen in the carbon removal space and we’re extremely motivated to make sure it doesn’t.
Can you give us a quick overview of where you operate and the main categories of projects you certify?
Sure! We operate globally with projects in 55 countries, from Australia to Latin America.
We also have a wide range of carbon removal projects, but they can be broadly grouped by methodology—the specific process used to remove carbon.
Biochar is one. It’s simple to understand: plants capture CO₂ as they grow. You then thermally treat that biomass through pyrolysis, which stabilizes the carbon and makes it resistant to degradation. It is then mixed into soil, and it can stay locked away for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Then we have direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. These take atmospheric or biogenic CO₂ and store it permanently underground, in licensed wells. Done right, the risk of release is tiny.
Enhanced weathering is another exciting one. You grind up reactive minerals—like basalt or olivine—and spread them on fields. Rain absorbs CO₂ and reacts with the mineral, forming stable bicarbonates. It mimics a natural process, just much faster. Plus, it has co-benefits for agriculture.
Then there are carbonated materials. That includes things like carbon-negative concrete. You treat industrial byproducts—like steel slag—with CO₂, which gets locked in during the curing process.
Finally, there’s terrestrial storage of biomass—taking unused biomass and storing it in conditions where it won’t degrade.
Are any of those technologies leading the way right now?
Biochar, definitely. I’ll admit, I didn’t expect it. In 2019, I thought it would remain a curiosity—a cottage industry. But I was wrong, and I’m happy to be wrong. The largest biochar facility we work with has increased production 80-fold, and they have a line of sight for a 500-fold increase within the next few years.
It’s also relatively economical. Yes, pyrolysis machinery is expensive, but compared to the infrastructure needed for direct air capture and storage (DACS) —liquefaction, terminals, transport, injection—the cost is a lot more manageable, especially in places where those other systems just don’t exist yet. However, DACS can be done anywhere with access to renewable energy and permanent storage.
Enhanced weathering also has huge potential. It may be the most scalable—particularly if we can solve the quantification challenge. We know the chemistry works, but finding a way to measure the removal accurately, affordably, and fast—that's the key.
With COP30 approaching, what trends in the carbon removal industry are you watching?
In the long term, it’s clear that voluntary carbon markets alone aren’t going to get us to the scale the planet needs. Right now, we operate entirely in the voluntary space—but we’re preparing our organization and systems for integration into compliance markets. Carbon removal will become part of regulatory frameworks around the world. The only questions are how and when.
What’s your sense of where we’re heading? Do you feel optimistic?
There’s some momentum. We recently reached our first megaton of verified negative emissions. That’s a huge milestone.
It took five years to reach our first 500,000 tonnes. Then one more year to hit a million. Now, we’re on track to issue the next million within just over a year. That’s exponential growth. If it keeps going—and I believe it will—the impact in ten years will be significant.
Finally, if you had the power to make one global policy change, what would you choose?
Can I make three?
First: Expand compliance markets. Widen the scope of emissions trading or carbon pricing schemes.
Second: Require corporations to buy a minimum quota of carbon removals—not just emissions allowances. Honestly, the whole idea of “allowing” emissions is a bit weird when the atmosphere is already full!
Third: Have the counties or entities selling emission allowances use that revenue to invest in carbon removals locally. This will build up the carbon removal industry within that region. Eventually, once global demand ramps up, those regions can export removal services to others.
