Charting a Course: Strategic Planning for mCDR MRV

A roadmap that offers strategic guidance for building credible monitoring, reporting, and verification systems in ocean-based carbon removal.

By Sherry Lippiatt and Alicia Karspeck

As marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) technologies move from lab to ocean, the need for clear, credible monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) is more important than ever. 

That’s why [C]Worthy partnered with Third Derivative to publish a new resource: a roadmap to illuminate the broad stages of MRV activity that most commercial mCDR suppliers will move through.

This roadmap is designed to help funders, innovators, and ecosystem partners understand MRV requirements at different stages of development. It’s not a rulebook, but a practical guide informed by the experiences of suppliers, registries, and other innovators that are paving the way with first of a kind technologies.

What you can find in the report and tool:

• An outline of the major steps and milestones in an mCDR suppliers’ MRV journey

• The level of effort and relative resource requirements in each step over time

• Key considerations and decision points that will be unique to each deployment

Why now?
Across the mCDR landscape, suppliers are already advancing credible MRV approaches—from high-resolution ocean models to field-based sensing platforms. But the pace of innovation has outstripped our shared frameworks for evaluating progress.

Our intention is clear:
We set out to capture the realities of building MRV systems in complex ocean environments, and to translate those lessons into a resource that can accelerate shared learning, reduce duplicated effort, and guide informed investment. We hope to support the mCDR community by documenting the current business processes around  MRV—and help shape a future where credible, transparent, and science-based approaches are the norm.

Read more about the roadmap:
https://rmi.org/charting-a-course-strategic-planning-for-marine-cdr-mrv/