Google-backed coalition to help scale ocean, rock carbon removals

A man using a mobile phone walks past Google offices in New York (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, FILE)

LONDON — A coalition backed by Google, Stripe and Shopify will spend US$1.7 million to buy carbon removal credits from three early stage firms on behalf of the tech giants to help scale up the nascent markets, an executive told Reuters.

The world is expected to need to suck between five and 10 billion tons a year of carbon emissions out of the atmosphere by mid-century to reach its climate goals, yet at the moment most technologies are small scale.

The coalition, called Frontier, is also backed by H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase and Salesforce, among others.

The group, which aggregates demand from its members, will spend $1.7 million to buy credits from U.S.-firm Karbonetiq, Italy-based Limenet and Canadian firm pHathom.

By contracting to buy early, the firms are better able to hire, raise finance and get the technologies off the ground, said Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier.

“It allows companies to demonstrate commercial viability,” she said.

Frontier’s support for these early stage firms, which aim to lock emissions away in the ocean or in rocks and industrial waste, marks its fifth series of commitments.

Frontier, which was set up in 2022, aims to invest at least $1 billion in carbon removal credits between 2022 and 2030. It has already committed $600 million, some on the series of pre-purchases and the bulk on a series of off-take agreements with larger firms. Last week, it agreed to pay $41 million for 116,000 tons from waste biomass firm Arbor.

For oceans, the aim is to increase the alkalinity of the water, helping it to lock away more carbon emissions. This is often done by adding “quicklime,” made from limestone.

For the mineralization technologies, meanwhile, projects attempt to speed up the process whereby rocks and industrial waste naturally absorb carbon dioxide, for example by crushing up the material to create a larger surface area.

Bebbington said both technologies had the potential to be impactful because they could be scaled quickly and cheaply.

“We think (they) are extremely compelling from that really cheap at really large scale perspective.”

(Reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Susan Fenton)