(Credit: Pixabay)Shopify, a global commerce company, has signed on as the first customer for Carbon Engineering’s new carbon capture service, reserving 10,000 tonnes of permanent carbon removal capacity from a large-scale DAC project. The carbon dioxide removal will be achieved through CE’s plant development partner, 1PointFive — the US development company currently engineering CE’s first industrial-scale facility that is expected to be operational in 2024.
Shopify’s commitment — the largest publicly-announced corporate purchase of DAC-based carbon removal — reflects a growing awareness of the need to include large-scale carbon dioxide removal as part of the climate solution. DAC removes carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, enabling it to be permanently, securely, and measurably put back underground. This process entirely reverses any carbon dioxide emission, providing a solution for hard-to-decarbonize industries and processes, as well as providing customers with a reliable way to remove their emissions from the past. CE says this service makes it easy for companies and governments to include permanent carbon removal in their net-zero plans.
CE’s new service allows customers to purchase carbon removal units in quantities as small as 100 units. Each unit represents one metric tonne of carbon dioxide captured and permanently removed from the atmosphere, offsetting emissions from the past, the present day, or the future. Customers pre-pay a deposit for their carbon removal units, with the remainder due only once the carbon dioxide has been physically removed and independently verified. Customers will receive discounts for purchasing higher volumes.
Shopify says that DAC, combined with permanent storage, through standalone sequestration, will play a critical role in reversing climate change.
Carbon removal unit purchases will be fulfilled by large-scale DAC facilities that will be deployed by 1PointFive. In the US, 1PointFive is already underway with its first industrial-scale DAC plant. CE also has a partnership with Pale Blue Dot Energy to deploy DAC in the UK. Projects will deliver permanent carbon removal by pairing CE’s large-scale DAC technology with secure geological storage of the carbon dioxide. The projects will adhere to stringent permanence standards with the end-to-end lifecycle analysis monitored, reported, and verified. Customers will receive full transparency so they can unambiguously verify the environmental benefit of their purchase.
