A recent purchase of CDR credits has been made by Microsoft and Direct Air Capture (DAC) approved the purchase. Statistics state that this is the largest single purchase of CDR credits to be bought and enable by DAC, to date.

The plan is for these credits to be officially enabled by STRATOS, which is 1PointFive’s first industrial-scale DAC facility. At the moment this facility is under construction in Texas. Direct Air Capture is an excellent approach to this issue, as it is a transparent and durable strategy to address emissions of a large scale. This is particularly important and useful for hard-to-abate industries.

Microsoft has made their commitment to becoming carbon negative by 2030 clear and it is this goal which has pushed them to create the agreement around this purchase. This agreement, includes terms such as, the captured carbon dioxide underlying the credits going onto become securely stored through subsurface saline sequestrations. The agreement also outlines that the specified CO2 should not be used to produce oil and gas.

President and General Manager of 1PointFive, Michael Avery, commented, “We are excited about this landmark agreement for Direct Air Capture, which is a result of Microsoft’s leadership in carbon removal and focus on building a more sustainable future. A commitment of this magnitude further demonstrates how one of the world’s largest corporations is integrating scalable Direct Air Capture into its net zero strategy. Energy demand across the technology industry is increasing and we believe Direct Air Capture is uniquely suited to remove residual emissions and further climate goals.”