Companies pledge $925 million to carbon-removal innovation

A group of leading technology companies, including Google and Meta, joined payment company Stripe in its newly launched carbon-removal innovation fund, committing a total of $925 million to fund the development of novel solutions. The fund marks a new phase in the commitment of major companies to funding the technology which climate scientists believe will be necessary to achieve the carbon reductions targeted by governments. The IPCC estimates that 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide will need to be captured annually to remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius warming. However, the technology is not yet mature enough to rely on its ability to reach this scale or do it cost effectively and permanently.

Stripe’s carbon-removal fund aims to identify promising technologies by assessing their ability to reach the necessary scale cost-effectively, achieve results permanently, and minimize the impact on the local communities the plants are located in. The prices paid for carbon-removal at this stage may be extreme, but by purchasing carbon-removal from the solutions identified as most promising, the fund and its committed partners enables the developers to further tweak the solutions in order to reach market-readiness.

Read more about the fund in an article at the Atlantic.