Microsoft, RBC bet on new approach to carbon cleanup
Microsoft Corp. and Royal Bank of Canada have agreed to buy carbon dioxide removal credits from Canada’s first commercial facility to suck carbon from the air.
Pulling carbon from the atmosphere is increasingly important in limiting global warming to relatively safe levels. The world will likely need to take billions of tons of CO2 from the air per year by mid-century, yet current capacity is just a fraction of that. A wave of startups is attempting to address that using a range of techniques, including deploying machines that perform what’s known as direct air capture (DAC).
“We need to prove that this stuff works. We need to prove that we can actually build the projects we say we’re going to build, and we actually have to deliver credits to the customers who have, over the last couple of years, been making commitments to future supply,” said Damien Steel, chief executive of Deep Sky. “If that supply doesn’t start showing up soon, we as a market are in big trouble.”
Microsoft and RBC agreed to purchase 10,000 tons of CO2 removal services over a 10-year period from Deep Sky, a Canadian project developer with a distinct approach to carbon removal: the company is convening multiple technologies at the same site, powered by a single energy source and funneling CO2 to the same storage well. Deep Sky is building a facility in Alberta that, upon completion, is expected to house eight DAC units, each designed and built by a different startup.
Co-founder Fred Lalonde, who is also the co-founder and chief executive officer of Canadian travel company and unicorn startup Hopper Inc., said he wasn’t going to “sit here and watch the world burn.”
Centralizing different startups’ DAC units in a single location will help reduce overhead
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