Microsoft made a new purchase agreement with a startup CarbonCapture. The startup is working towards removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And with this Microsoft is all set to capture and store its carbon emissions underground.
Microsoft has always been a supporter of emerging technologies aimed at reducing carbon emissions from the atmosphere. This is why the company has agreed to purchase carbon removal credits from CarbonCapture, a Los Angeles based startup. CarbonCapture has a massive DAC plant (direct air capture) in Wyoming.
The agreement is named Project Bison and its facility is estimated to begin in the last half of 2024. With its modular technology, the startup draws carbon dioxide from the ambient air and stores it underground.
This way it is preventing greenhouse gases from further contributing towards climate change. With a goal of getting carbon negative by 2030, Microsoft also aims at removing the equivalent of its historical emissions since the company was founded.
Phillip Goodman, carbon removal portfolio director of Microsoft, said in an announcement, “This agreement with CarbonCapture helps us move toward our carbon negative goal, while also helping to catalyze the growth of the direct air capture industry as a whole.â€
With this new agreement with CarbonCapture the tech giant will be able to capture a fraction of its overall carbon emissions. And the startup expects to capture and store around 10,000 metric tons of CO2 annually, after it successfully deploys its first modules in Wyoming in the coming year.
Modules have the appearance of vented shipping containers stacked one above another. About 75% of the air passing through the equipment is filtered out. Concentrated streams of carbon dioxide thus created a need to be piped around 12,000 feet underground into the saline aquifers.
Adrian Corless, CarbonCapture CEO and CTO said, “This is a big deal for us. The purchase agreement with Microsoft is larger than the sum of the startup’s deals with other, smaller clients put together. This is just an important, you know, validating step for our business.â€
According to Microsoft, it is their priority to remove the pollution it creates in the first place. This way it will minimize the amount of CO2 it would have to withdraw from the atmosphere. But with back-to-back years of failure in this attempt, greenhouse gases emission by the company started rising again in 2021, as mentioned in the recent sustainability report.
At this rate, Microsoft is now responsible for about 14 million metric tons of carbon emission in 2021. This is equivalent to the amount of emission from 35 gas-fired power plants in a year.
Neither company has yet publicly announced certain details regarding when, and how much CO2 Microsoft wants to remove, or how much the cost will be. Other than this deal, Microsoft has also purchased carbon removal credits for an undisclosed amount from Climeworks, a Swiss company. With this Microsoft is all set to capture and store its carbon emissions underground.
A Dallas-based startup Frontier Carbon Solutions is also partnering with CarbonCapture to permanently store CO2 on-site. With such carbon removal credits purchase agreements, CarbonCapture plans to remove 5 million metric tons CO2 per year by 2030 at its Wyoming facility in Sweetwater Country.
Source: Business Wire
