"Microsoft Goes Big In Brazil’s Voluntary Carbon Credit Market"
Karl Danz
51 Posts

Microsoft has committed to be carbon negative by 2030 and then remove the equivalent of their historical emissions by 2050. This is extraordinary.

They have built a team and are doing the work, helping to stimulate what the IPCC says is the required growth in capacity across a diverse portfolio of carbon removal methods. In September they signed a long-term contract to purchase hundreds of kilotons of CO2 removal over a multi-year period from Heirloom – a Direct Air Capture startup based in California.  I had the good fortune to attend the launch event and chat with Brian Marrs, the person leading the effort at Microsoft—he's the real deal.

At the other end of the continuum of CDR solutions, this recent commitment by Microsoft to drive massive reforestation in the Amazon will have significant co-benefits in addition to carbon removal, all of which is highly aligned with our Healthy Forests policy area.

Microsoft’s agreement is part of a project to grow more than 30 million trees in Para state in the Amazon basin. The forests will cover about 70,000 acres, or five times the size of Manhattan

Also, I know from working on state-level carbon removal policy that Microsoft's demonstrated progress towards making good on their commitment is influencing lawmakers to pursue similar objectives in the public sector. This feels like an opportunity for CCLers to engage and help drive this sort of innovative policy at all levels of government!
 

1 Replies
Dick Smith
180 Posts

@Karl Danz  Terrific news!.  Let's hope Microsoft is just the first of many companies, states and nations willing to be held accountable for their “legacy GHG emissions” that are up there warming the planet, and to get their share removed from the atmosphere by 2050.  

Net Zero by 2050 will NOT stabilize our climate.  

A stable climate depends on removing the “legacy emissions” of the “forever gas” CO2.  We've warmed the planet 1.2C since the start of the Industrial Revolution primarily because too much CO2 stays up there for too long.  How long is too long?  Paleo-climatologist David Archer opened his 2009 book, The Long Thaw, by pointing out that some of the CO2 we put up there today will still be warming the planet after today's nuclear waste is no longer radioactive.

A stable climate means we need to drive down atmospheric CO2 from today's 421 ppm CO2 (and tomorrow's 500 or 600 ppm CO2 by the time we reach NET-ZERO) to pre-industrial levels--350 ppm?…300 ppm?…280 ppm?…you pick it.  

Kudo's to MIcrosoft for leading the way.  Whether you're a company or a country…

  1. Accept your individual responsibility for removing your legacy CO2 emissions.  It's called accountability.
  2. Calculate your share of legacy emissions and commit to a timeframe for removal. 
  3. Invest in the research, development, and deployment of the Carbon-Dioxide Removal (CDR) technology, and commit to pay any CDR company at minimum fixed price for each ton of CO2 that they can verifiably remove by a date certain from the atmosphere, and permanently and safely store.  


 

Forum help

Select a question below

CCL Community's Sitewide Forums are an easy and exciting way to interact with other members on CCL Community.  The Sitewide Forums are focused on subjects and areas of general interest to members.  Each forum consists of topics that members have posted, along with replies from other members. Some forums are divided into categories to group similar topics together. 

Any members can post a topic or reply to a topic.

The Sitewide Forums are open to the entire CCL community to create, comment on, and view online discussions.  Posts and comments should address the subject or focus of the selected forum. 

Note: Categories can only be created by community administrators.

Guidelines for posting: (also see general Community Guidelines)

  • Don’t see your question or topic? Post it.
  • Be thoughtful, considerate (nonpartisan) and complete. The more information you supply, the better the better and more engaging the conversation will be. 
  • Feel like cursing? Please don’t.
  • Ask yourself, “Would my topic post reveal sensitive or confidential information?” If so, please don't post!

Flag/report any offending comments, and then move on. In the rare instance of a comment containing a potentially credible threat, escalate that immediately to CCL.

If the Sitewide Forum has no categories, select the "Add Topic" button at the top of topics window. 

If the forum has categories, when you click on "Add Topic," a dropdown list of the categories appears. Select the desired category and then "Add Topic."
In either case this brings up a box to enter both the topic subject and topic text.

If you have questions or wish to add comments on a posted forum topic, open the post and click the blue “Add Reply” button at top. You can also click on the “Reply” link at the bottom of the original topic posting.

This opens a text box. Add your reply. You can also add documents by dragging a file into the text box. Click “Post” at the bottom of the reply window This will add your reply to other replies (if there are any), sorted by oldest on top. 

If, however, you want to reply directly to someone else’s reply, click on the “Reply” link at the bottom of their reply. 

When replying to a topic post or a topic reply it may be helpful to quote the original text, or the part that your reply is referring to. To quote a topic or reply, click on the "Quote" link at bottom of post. 

When you do this the full text of either the post or reply will be pulled into a reply text box. If desired, you can remove parts of the quoted text in order to get the portion you are interested in quoting.

You can subscribe to notifications of new postings from any of the Sitewide Forums or forum categories. To subscribe, select the green “Subscribe” button at the top of the forum. Click on dropdown arrow to select frequency of notification.

If you are already subscribed, the button will display “Unsubscribe.”  Select it to unsubscribe or select the dropdown arrow to modify frequency of notification. 

Note: If you subscribe to a Sitewide Forum, such as "Media Relations" that has categories (such as "LTEs and Op-Eds"), you will also be subscribed to all the categories. If you wish to subscribe to only one or more of the categories, unsubscribe to the parent forum and subscribe individually to desired categories.

.

If you see a topic post or reply that interests you or that you like, you can click the “Like” icon at the bottom of the topic post or the reply. This lets the poster know that the topic was helpful. It also contributes to the topic’s popularity, which influences where it is listed in the "Popular" forum tab. There are also additional reactions available for members to use. Mouseover the "Like" icon to choose one of these options: Love, Clap, Celebrate, Insightful, or Interesting.

CCL Community Guidelines

  • Discuss, ask and share
  • Be respectful
  • Respect confidentiality
  • Protect privacy

More guidelines
 

CCL Blog Policy Area Categories