Dive Brief:

  • Google has committed to purchase $35 million in carbon removal credits, matching the Department of Energy’s carbon removal purchase program, the company announced Thursday. The DOE said its program, launched the same day, invites organizations working on curbing their carbon footprint to make “bigger and bolder purchase commitments” in the voluntary carbon market to help scale the sector.
  • The tech giant said it was the first company to match the DOE’s pilot effort to buy $35 million in carbon removal credits, made through its Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize that launched last year. Google will use both nature-based and technology-based solutions to contract these credits out over the next 12 months.
  • “This model of mutually reinforcing public-private support is an important tool to commercialize carbon removal solutions,” Randy Spock, Google’s carbon credits and removals lead said in a company blog post. “As with many emerging technologies, governments and companies have a critical and complementary role to play in demonstrating promising carbon removal approaches and bringing them to a commercial scale.”

Dive Insight:

Google said it is “working hard” to reduce emissions across its operations and value chain, but recognized that curbing its carbon footprint and addressing climate risk requires “a diverse set of tools.” The search engine platform and computer software company said its pledge to buy carbon removal credits builds on recent purchases it made through Frontier — an initiative led by Google’s parent company Alphabet, Stripe, Meta, McKinsey and others — which aims to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies by cultivating future demand.

“Carbon removal needs to be kickstarted to mitigate global climate change and remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere,” Spock said in a LinkedIn post. However, he noted that companies were uncertain about which solutions to support in the short term and saw such carbon removal purchases as risky.

Spock said the DOE’s program marked the first time the federal government ventured into the voluntary carbon purchase marketplace by procuring carbon removal credits, which paved the way for Google to make a similar commitment for the private sector.

The DOE said its Voluntary Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Challenge will have a public leaderboard to track voluntary carbon removal purchases from companies, as well as provide supporting materials to assist buyers in making “better and larger carbon removal credit purchases” and help more suppliers find customers. Though the program will not issue additional federal funding to support the cause, it encourages companies to make purchase pledges similar to the $35 million the DOE invested.

“This effort aims to address the non-financial barriers holding back carbon removal credit purchases, including lack of transparency into the market and lack of recognition that carbon removal credit purchases are essential and valuable today,” the DOE said in its announcement.