CO280, Aker Carbon Capture, and Microsoft Forge Alliance to Scale Carbon Removal in North America

CO280 and Aker Carbon Capture have partnered with Microsoft in a strategic initiative aimed at enhancing the carbon removal capacity in North America’s pulp and paper industry. This collaboration, formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), seeks to harness the biogenic CO2 emissions from this sector by implementing large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.

The alliance will explore developing projects that leverage CO280’s expertise and Aker Carbon Capture’s modular Just Catch series technology, alongside Microsoft’s digital and cloud computing capabilities. This partnership aims to standardize the lifecycle assessment (LCA) and establish rigorous measurement, verification, and reporting (MRV) systems to ensure the traceability and integrity of carbon removal credits.

Jonathan Rhone, CEO of CO280, highlighted the collaboration’s potential: “This commitment from three leading companies is exactly what the industry needs to unlock the significant carbon removal opportunities in the pulp and paper industry and scale up the Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) market to supply permanent, verifiable, and affordable CDRs to the voluntary market.”

Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Energy and Resources Industry, Darryl Willis, emphasized the technological aspect: “By leveraging technology to create a digital value chain for carbon tracking and reporting, we can equip the market for high-integrity carbon removal credits and further enable the industrial sector to decarbonize.”

The North American pulp and paper industry represents a considerable carbon removal opportunity, potentially offsetting up to 130 million tons of CO2 annually, primarily due to its 80-90% biogenic CO2 emissions profile. Capturing and securely storing these emissions could deliver negative emissions—removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than is emitted during the production process.

This initiative aligns with Microsoft’s ambitious carbon-negative goals set for 2030 and aims to remove the company’s historical aggregated emissions by 2050. It represents a critical step towards accelerating the deployment of carbon removal technologies necessary to achieve global net-zero emissions targets.

Aker Carbon Capture’s CEO, Egil Fagerland, also noted the significance of scaling efforts: “It’s time to move past first-of-a-kind and demonstration projects. We need to accelerate deployment by the hundreds to deliver the ‘net’ in net zero.”

The collaboration was officially announced at a launch event at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, coinciding with the official visit of the Crown Prince of Norway to the US, underscoring the international commitment to tackling climate change through innovative carbon removal solutions.