A new project backed by Bill Gates wants to make carbon removal more legitimate

Companies are increasingly turning to innovative ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a way to achieve their sustainability goals. But who is watching to make sure these tactics are working?

A new project called Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI) launched today, with the aim of helping develop standards for CO2 reduction and sequestration efforts. They are big names in technological expansion investments in carbon dioxide removal (CDR), although there are still concerns about whether these technologies will be able to prove their value on a commercial scale.

CDR can look like many different things – building an industrial facility to filter CO2 from the air or seawater, for example. While they may look green on paper, there is a danger that all carbon accounting will not be enough to help stop climate change. These new industrial facilities use a lot of energy, for example, and the carbon they capture could potentially be used to produce more oil and gas. There is still not much oversight to ensure that new projects live up to their claims.

Policymakers are still trying to keep up with all these new technologies. The European Union is developing the first certification framework of its kind for carbon removal technologies. Meanwhile, industry groups have created their own initiatives to kickstart CDR. Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify and McKinsey Sustainability launched an effort called Frontier in 2022 to connect vetted carbon removal projects with companies interested in paying for their services.

Rather than developing its own guidelines for others to follow, CRSI it says is taking a “bottom-up approach to standardization.” The aim is to provide technical assistance to regulators and other organizations working on carbon removal policies. Already set up one publicly available database of academic articles, industry white papers and other resources on the emerging landscape.

CRSI wants to differentiate itself as a nonprofit organization that does not accept corporate donations or rely on the sale of credits from carbon removal projects. “As the carbon removal industry grows, there is a lot of self-regulation,” says Anu Khan, founder and CEO of CRSI. “Industry will always be part of standards development, but industry cannot be the only voice in the room.”

Admittedly, CRSI’s initial backers include Bill Gates’ climate investment firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Microsoft bet big on carbon removal, making one of the biggest purchases so far in July of the Western oil giant’s carbon removal project in Texas. Microsoft committed in 2020 to achieving negative carbon emissions by the end of the decade, but its carbon footprint has grown by around 30% since making that commitment. So it’s not surprising that some environmental groups are concerned that carbon removal could be a red herring, allowing companies to say they are fighting climate change even though they are still producing a lot of pollution that is making the climate worse. crisis.

Khan says carbon removal needs to grow beyond being a tool that companies can use to try to offset their pollution. This means capturing carbon for the benefit of the climate, without necessarily having to sell credits to companies that have failed to reduce their emissions. They will need strong standards first.

“I think it’s a really promising conversation,” says Khan. “But for all of these policies, we need to make sure that they are actually consuming carbon in a measurable and quantifiable way.”