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Carbon Removal

Rock diggers and the X Prize logo.
Carbon Removal

And the Winner of Elon Musk’s Carbon Removal XPRIZE Is ...

Congratulations to Mati Carbon, an enhanced rock weathering startup that works with farmers in India.

Politics

The Politics of Carbon Capture Are Getting Weirder

The culture wars are threatening one of the few bipartisan areas of climate policy.

Politics

AM Briefing: A Letter from EPA Staff

On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits

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Carbon Removal

New Net Zero Standard Leaves Key Carbon Removal Questions Unanswered

The Science Based Targets initiative released long-awaited guidance that doesn’t exactly clarify matters.

Direct air capture.

The Government’s Carbon Removal Team Has Been Hollowed Out

Widespread federal layoffs bring even more uncertainty to the DAC hubs program.

Green
The Greens Go to Court

AM Briefing: Greens Go to Court

On congestion pricing, carbon capture progress, and Tim Kaine.

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Carbon Removal

Forest Carbon Removal Gets a $160 Million Vote of Confidence

Chestnut Carbon announces a major new funding round on the heels of its deal with Microsoft.

A forest.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

The embattled nature-based carbon removal market got a significant show of support today as Chestnut Carbon announced a whopping $160 million Series B funding round, led by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The startup focuses on planting trees and vegetation as well as on improving forest management practices to better remove carbon from the atmosphere.

This announcement comes on the heels of the company’s recent deal with Microsoft to remove over 7 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over a 25-year period. That involves planting about 35 million native trees over about 60,000 acres. It’s Microsoft’s largest carbon removal contract in the U.S., and one of the largest domestic carbon removal projects period — including those that rely on engineered solutions such as direct air capture.

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Carbon Removal

The Carbon Removal Industry’s Trump Playbook

Three tactics from Erin Burns, executive director of Carbon180, on how the industry can use this time wisely.

Smokestacks.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

Erin Burns has been here before. The executive director of Carbon180, a carbon removal research and policy nonprofit, joined the organization as its first policy director in 2018, partway through Donald Trump’s first term as president. It was under that administration that she helped win the first ever dedicated federal research and development funding for carbon removal, a modest $60 million in 2019.

It’s a very different world today than it was then, so she wasn’t exactly here. There’s now billions of dollars in federal funding appropriated to pull carbon from the atmosphere — not just for research and development, but also for building commercial-scale projects and purchasing carbon removal services. At the same time, this new Trump administration is moving more quickly and aggressively than the last one to undo anything resembling climate policy, and future attempts to re-allocate some of that money are not out of the question.

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