Tech Giants Form Coalition to Invest in Carbon Removal Technologies

A coalition of major tech companies, including Google, Stripe, and Shopify, is set to invest $1.7 million in carbon removal credits from three nascent firms. This initiative, which operates under the name Frontier, aims to stimulate the emerging market for carbon removal technologies crucial for meeting climate goals that mandate the extraction of five to ten billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually by 2050. The coalition also counts Meta, H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase, and Salesforce among its supporters.

Frontier consolidates the purchasing power of its members to aid early-stage carbon removal solutions developed by U.S.-firm Karbonetiq, Italy’s Limenet, and Canada’s pHathom. By securing contracts early in the process, these companies can enhance their operational capacity, secure funding, and advance their technologies, as noted by Frontier's head of deployment, Hannah Bebbington, who highlighted that early contracts could demonstrate the commercial potential of these innovations.

Since its inception in 2022, Frontier aims to invest at least $1 billion in carbon removal credits over an eight-year period and has already committed $600 million. The coalition’s latest agreement involved a substantial investment of $41 million to acquire 116,000 tons of carbon removal from biomass waste management firm, Arbor. The technologies supported focus on enhancing ocean alkalinity to sequester carbon more effectively, often through the addition of quicklime, while others aim at accelerating the mineralization process to capture carbon dioxide using crushed rocks or industrial waste. Bebbington emphasized the scalability and cost-effectiveness of these methods, deeming them highly promising in the quest for large-scale carbon removal solutions.