Microsoft's carbon retreat

Microsoft’s halt on new carbon removal purchases shakes the young carbon market as AI growth and regulation reshape future demand

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Microsoft $MSFT, the company that almost single-handedly built the modern carbon removal market, told some suppliers last month it would be pausing new purchases of removal credits.

For an industry in which one buyer accounts for nearly $12 billion of the roughly $15 billion ever spent on these credits, that is the kind of news that rattles a sector.

Carbon removal credits, the unit of trade here, are sold by companies that pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it. Buyers use them to offset their own emissions and back up corporate climate pledges.

Microsoft's pledge, made in 2020, is to be carbon negative by 2030 and to remove all the carbon it has ever emitted by 2050. It became the anchor customer that helped bring much of the market into existence.

Hundreds of startups have raised billions chasing that demand. Some build giant machines that filter CO2 out of the sky.........

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