SWITZERLAND – Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify are officially the first companies in the world to pay to filter their carbon dioxide emissions out of the air, store those emissions underground, and have that service verified by a third party. Climate tech company Climeworks announced that it had completed the service, and its third-party verification of the carbon removal marks a first for the emerging industry.
In 2021, Climeworks opened up the world’s largest direct air capture (DAC) plant, called Orca, which essentially filters carbon dioxide out of the ambient air. That captured carbon is then supposed to be trapped in basalt rock formations permanently, keeping the greenhouse gas from lingering in our atmosphere and heating up the planet.
The tech sort of mimics what forests and trees do naturally when they take in and store carbon dioxide, a process companies have attempted to exploit for years as a way to “offset” their carbon dioxide emissions. But forest offsets have a track record of failing to result in any real-world reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. That quality control problem makes verifying carbon removal from new direct air capture facilities crucial.
Auditing company DNV certified the carbon removal for Climeworks following a years-long effort to develop criteria. Since this is an industry first, they had to craft a methodology for checking how much carbon dioxide has been pulled out of the atmosphere, transported, and permanently stored. The methodology is now publicly available and will be used to verify future “batches” of CO2 that’s been captured and stored for customers.
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