Many ecommerce giants have been boasting their sustainability achievements as of late but Shopify recently announced that they have purchased more Direct Air Capture carbon removal than any other company in history. This milestone comes with their agreement to purchase 10,000 tonnes of removal from Carbon Engineering, adding to a previous 5,000-tonne commitment to Climeworks.
Direct Air Capture
Shopify’s Sustainability Fund invests a minimum of $5 million annually to fight climate change. Their goal is to spur market demand for the highest-potential, most innovative technologies and projects discovered. One of these leading technologies is DAC, which pulls in atmospheric air and extracts carbon dioxide (CO₂) using simple chemical reactions.
Carbon Engineering’s new CO₂ removal service extends DAC’s impact by allowing customers to pay to safely and permanently lock away captured carbon at massive scale—a powerful tool to address the fact that there’s too much carbon in the air. Carbon Engineering’s US-based partner 1PointFive will deliver Shopify’s carbon removal using Carbon Engineering’s DAC technology. The two companies are jointly engineering their first industrial-scale facility, which is expected to be operational in 2024 and capture up to one million tonnes of CO₂ each year. Shopify has agreed to purchase 10,000 tonnes of permanent carbon dioxide removal through this service.
“Climate scientists tell us that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is no longer an option—it’s an urgent necessity. More and more leading organizations like Shopify are taking bold action and including permanent carbon removal in their sustainability toolkits. But what had been missing was a way to purchase carbon removal at large scale. Our new service provides that mechanism and makes it easy for organizations and governments to include large-scale carbon removal in their net zero plans. We’re excited to offer this new product and to welcome Shopify as our first customer.”
– Steve Oldham, CEO, Carbon Engineering
