Microsoft has entered into a contract with Occidental Petroleum to purchase 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) "credits" over six years to support its overall carbon strategy. The move follows a dramatic increase in Microsoft's CO2 emissions due to data center construction.
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The latest deal is with 1PointFive, Occidental's carbon capture and storage business, and is claimed by the Financial Times to be "worth hundreds of millions of dollars", although the exact value of the transaction has not yet been disclosed.
Carbon credits are a way of buying a verifiable emission reduction from a third party in others to "offset" their own emissions, and the concept has attracted some controversy over the years. Nevertheless, Direct Air Capture (DAC), which directly extracts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, has its supporters, with the IPCC saying [PDF] that, while not sufficient, some form of carbon removal is part of "all modeled scenarios that limit global warming to 2° or less by 2100."
1PointFive describes the agreement as the largest single purchase of CDR credits using DAC, and says it highlights the increasing adoption of this technology as a solution to help organizations reach their net-zero emissions goals.
