Why Microsoft’s Carbon Removal Pullback Is Such a Big Deal

For the past few years, Microsoft has basically carried the carbon removal industry on its shoulders. The software company has purchased 72 million tons of carbon removal, more than 40 times what any other organization has financed, according to third-party sources.

Now it’s pulling back. As we reported last week, Microsoft has told suppliers and partners that it’s pausing new purchases. Though the company says that its program “has not ended,” even a temporary pullback will have significant implications for the nascent carbon removal industry. What happens next for these companies? And is a bloodbath on the way? On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob speaks to Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy about Microsoft’s singular importance and what could come next.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.

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Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh: To your original question about where to go forward from now, you could have another surplus of what you just described come up — climate commitments could kick back up again, and we would just do this whole thing over again. We would run it back, and we would be having this conversation, you know, five years from now, or whenever that is. And the way to hedge against that from happening — and to some extent stop it from happening — is to have federal governments across the globe pass durable policy that either compels the regulation or incentivizes the deployment of carbon dioxide removal. And that ... because carbon dioxide removal — outside of the co-benefits of some pathways, which are fantastic, just removing carbon from the atmosphere for pure carbon’s sake is the tragedy of the commons in a single climate technology entity. Like, this is something that will need federal support in the long run, to some extent, in a way that other climate technologies don’t. That’s true of most of the carbon management world, but it is uniquely true of CDR.

Robinson Meyer: But it’s a form of waste management. Trash and recycling also require ongoing government support. Now, at this point, it tends to come from the state and local level. But governments still pay to handle waste. That’s part of what we expect governments to do. It’s just that this waste happens to be in the atmosphere and requires a particularly high form of technology to dispel.

Cavanaugh: Yeah, it’s a very costly trash pickup service. And it also is contingent upon people caring about the trash. There is a relatively large constituency around the world that is unconvinced that the trash is an issue. And that is the big challenge.

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.

Mentioned:

Our initial Friday story: Microsoft Is Pausing Carbon Removal Purchases

Jack’s take: The Private Sector Built the Market, Time for Us to Scale It

Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo on Ctrl-S, the startup trying to save CDR intellectual property

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by ...

Lunar Energy is building the technology to turn homes into active participants in the power system. Learn more about Lunar’s vision of the future at lunarenergy.com.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.