Commercial, GHG Emissions, Industrial  -  May 26, 2022

Alphabet, Microsoft Commit to C02 Removal

First Movers Coalition members Alphabet, Microsoft and Salesforce collectively committed $500 million to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022 in Davos.

Microsoft will further serve as an expert partner by sharing lessons from its carbon removal auctions and the Boston Consulting Group committed to remove 100,000 tons of carbon by 2030.

Through the Coalition, these companies collaborate with other private sector members such as A.P. Møller – Mærsk, Amazon, Apple, Bank of America, FedEx, National Grid, Ford Motor Company, Mahindra, SSAB Swedish Steel, Trafigura, Vattenfall, Volvo Group, Yara International, Western Digital and many more.

Denmark, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom have joined the U.S. as government partners to create early markets for clean technologies through policy measures and private sector engagement.

“The coalition’s members are truly the ‘First Movers’ who are focused on scaling disruptive innovations that pave the way for long-term transformation rather than the lower-hanging fruit of short-term process efficiency gains,” said Børge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum, in a statement. 

The critical climate target of 1.5ºC can only be reached if new decarbonizing technologies are developed at speed. However, the technologies required to clean up the most polluting sectors – such as hydrogen to reduce iron ore, green ammonia to fuel ships, or carbon capture and storage – are either not available or not yet commercially viable.

The World Economic Forum is partnering with the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and over 50 global businesses to invest in innovative green technologies. These financing commitments will ensure new technologies are available for scale-up by 2030 and make a critical contribution to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

The statement noted that these companies have sent the largest market signal in history to commercialize emerging clean technologies by making advance purchase commitments by 2030 for near-zero carbon steel, aluminum, shipping, trucking, and aviation as well as negative emissions through advanced carbon dioxide removal technologies.

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