Dive Brief:

• Microsoft has signed a deal with climate tech company UNDO which aims to permanently remove 28,900 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2036, the companies announced last week.
• The agreement will rely on enhanced rock weathering, which is a nature-based climate solution that accelerates the process of rock deterioration for the purpose of carbon dioxide sequestration. The arrangement entails UNDO spreading 90,000 metric tons of wollastonite, a finely crushed silicate rock, across a vast area of farmland in Canada which will then capture and store CO2 as it naturally erodes.
• This marks the third and biggest carbon removal agreement between the tech giant and the climate tech company. In 2024, Microsoft signed a deal with UNDO to remove 15,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide and fund research on enhanced rock weathering, building on a 2023 deal it signed to remove around 5,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Dive Insight:

The latest agreement between Microsoft and UNDO brings the total amount of carbon dioxide removal committed to almost 49,000 metric tons, per an Oct. 21 release.

The deal also builds on Microsoft’s goals of becoming carbon negative by 2030 and removing all the carbon the company has emitted into the environment since it was founded, either directly or from electrical consumption, by 2050.

“Enhanced rock weathering is a promising pathway to gigatonne-scale carbon removal,” Microsoft’s Carbon Removal Portfolio Director Phillip Goodman said in the release. “UNDO’s commitment to scientific rigor gives us confidence in both the durability of these credits and their role in helping Microsoft achieve its goal of being carbon negative by 2030.”

Canada-based climate fund Inlandsis will provide debt financing to support the enhanced rock weathering project, according to the release. Inlandsis said the funding would also provide capital to scale such carbon removal ventures globally.

UNDO’s deal with Microsoft comes nearly a month after the climate tech company announced an offtake agreement with Barclays, which marked the British bank’s first carbon removal agreement. Per the arrangement, UNDO will aim to permanently remove 6,538 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for the bank through enhanced rock weathering.