Microsoft Signs Deal With Startup CarbonCapture to Store More of its CO2 Underground

Microsoft has established itself as one of the biggest supporters of new technologies, particularly those focused on reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This effort to lower its carbon footprint led the American multinational company to strike a strategic partnership with CarbonCapture, a Los Angeles-based startup, to purchase carbon removal credits.

CarbonCapture has tapped the latest modular technology with the ability to capture CO2 present in the ambient for safe storage underground as a way of reducing the impact of greenhouse gases on planet earth—and preventing climate change.

The startup boasts a colossal facility referred to as direct air capture (DAC) plant under construction in Wyoming. This endeavor, dubbed Project Bison, is expected to start operating toward the end of 2024.

Microsoft Moving Closer To Its “Carbon-Negative” Goal by 2030

Microsoft is racing after its mission of becoming “carbon negative” by 2030. This means it has to get rid of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than what it gives out across all its operations when using fossil fuels.

The bold goal doesn’t end there; Microsoft aims to remove its entire carbon footprint from the atmosphere by 2050, since the company was established. This is quite a challenge, given that current technologies for CO2 removal are insufficient and probably won’t satisfy Microsoft’s requirements.

“This agreement with CarbonCapture helps us move toward our carbon-negative goal, while also helping to catalyze the growth of the direct air capture industry as a whole,” Phillip Goodman the director of Microsoft’s carbon removal portfolio said in a statement accompanying the announcement.

Microsoft outlines in its recently released carbon removal update how it intends to bring down its pollution levels in the first place. At the same time, working out the precise amounts of CO2 it needs to remove from the atmosphere.
Despite experiencing a decline in previous years, the corporation’s carbon emissions started rising again during the fiscal year of 2021, as stated in their most recent sustainability report.

In that particular year, Microsoft’s CO2 emissions amounted to approximately 14 million metric tons, which is equivalent to the amount generated by 35 gas-fired power plants annually.

The strategic partnership with CarbonCapture is going to cater to a fraction of the corporation’s emissions. In the early years of deploying Project Bison’s initial modules in Wyoming, Carbon Capture will target 10,000 metric tons of C02 removed from the atmosphere and stored underground annually.

How CarbonCapture’s Technology Works

Project Bison modules resemble vented shipping containers loaded on top of each other. The decision to make a modular design according to CarbonCapture is to make the project easy to scale up.

In the early stages of the project, the modules would be produced at the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles. Approximately 25 modules would be deployed in the Wyoming plant in the latter half of next year.

The modules would have a combined capacity of removing 10,000 metric tons of CO2 per year from the atmosphere amid plans to launch more modules in the following years—in addition to manufacturing them in Wyoming.

“It’s just this idea of being able to build something off-site, ship it easily on-site, and then assemble them kind of like a Lego system on the site itself,” Adrian Corless, the CEO, and CTO of CarbonCapture said.

In every 40-foot module are roughly 16 “reactors” equipped with “sorbent cartridges” which in their rudimentary form function as filters that attract CO2. About 75% of all the CO2 that passes through the containers is captured by the first filters.

Immediately after the filters become saturated, the reactors have been designed to go offline to allow for the next process which entails heating the filters to separate CO from the air to start.

"A livable future will depend on removing C02, and Wyoming has positioned itself as a leader in the growing carbon capture and storage industry through the establishment of the largest carbon removal facility in the world."@thewyomingtruth on #ProjectBison https://t.co/QzkFeuTUk6

— CarbonCapture Inc. (@CarbonCaptureUS) February 17, 2023

One module consists of numerous reactors operating at varying speeds to continuously gather CO2. Combined, the reactors produce streams of CO2 that are then compressed and directed into underground wells (12,000 feet deep) for storage.

Frontier Carbon Solutions, a company headquartered in Dallas, has been contracted by CarbonCapture to provide underground storage facilities for the concentrated CO on-site.

What Does The Deal With Microsoft Mean For Carbon Capture

Corless, the CEO believes the partnership with Microsoft “is a big deal” for CarbonCapture because it is the biggest it has ever signed – larger than all the deals the company currently has with its other smaller clients combined. “This is just an important, you know, validating step for our business,” Corless told The Verge.

Despite the deal with Microsoft, DAC is an expensive project, with costs expected to reach $600 for a ton of CO2 captured. CarbonCapture expects this figure to reduce as the project grows. However, the operation of DAC facilities demands a significant amount of energy, thereby adding to the substantial expense.

CarbonCapture will in the beginning tap energy from natural gas, which complicates matters more because it has to capture enough CO to cancel out Bison’s carbon footprint before advancing to the commercial phase.

Neither Microsoft nor CarbonCapture has shared the details of their groundbreaking deal, not even regarding the amount of CO2 the corporation wants to capture and at what cost. The Los Angeles-based company is not the first partner Microsoft has signed to buy carbon credits from, it is said to have entered into a similar deal with Climeworks, a Swiss company.

CarbonCapture’s ambitious goal is to remove 5 million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year by 2030 while tapping Project Bison’s plant in Sweetwater Country, Wyoming.

That in itself is a tall order, currently, the worldwide capacity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is just 10,000 metric tons per year. The cost of getting rid of CO2 from the air keeps out many interested companies from different industries.

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