Stripe Climate increases carbon removal commitments

The purchase cover a wide range of technologies including permanent geologic storage, ocean alkalinity enhancement, enhanced weathering and direct air capture

John Collison, president and co-founder of Stripe Inc, left, and Patrick Collison, chief executive officer and co-founder of Stripe Inc.

Digital payments company Stripe is making $6m (€5.32m) in carbon removal purchases from four new companies.

The purchases and upfront financial support for the firms forms part of Stripe Climate, a product that allows a business to automatically direct a fraction of its revenue toward these carbon removal technologies.

The purchases by Stripe, led by Limerick brothers John and Patrick Collison, cover a wide range of technologies including permanent geologic storage, ocean alkalinity enhancement, enhanced weathering, and direct air capture. 

One of the companies, Sustaera is a startup that sucks carbon dioxide out of the air. The company has raised $10m (€8.87m) in a recent funding round led by climate funds backed by Bill Gates and billionaire investor, Jeremy Grantham.

Stripe has signed up to purchase carbon captured by Sustaera’s first machine, set to be completed in 2023 and remove 10 tons of CO₂ a day, at $700 (€620) a ton. 

The firm is looking at sites for its machines in Florida, Texas, California, Wyoming, North Dakota, as well as Spain and Oman.

Sustaera plans to build a unit in 2027 that can remove one million tons a year, requiring about 100 acres of land.

Sustaera is trying to solve one of the biggest hurdles in carbon removal: scaling the technology which remains expensive and challenging to deploy. 

The company’s machine is built in a modular fashion, with single units that can be put together “like Lego blocks,” according to chief executive officer Shantanu Agarwal.

It also “leverages existing systems, existing supply chains, existing manufacturing, rather than creating everything from scratch,” Agarwal said.

That’s very important when you’re trying to tackle something like carbon capture which needs to be done at scale.

Other companies that Stripe is purchasing carbon removal from are 44.01 that turns CO₂ into rock; Ebb Carbon that removes acid from the ocean; and Eion which accelerates mineral weathering by mixing silicate rocks into soil.

“If we want any chance of achieving gigaton-scale carbon removal by 2050, we need many more shots on goal,” said Nan Ransohoff, head of Climate at Stripe.

“We’re thrilled to purchase carbon removal from four promising new companies, and to be the first customer for three of them. 

"Our goal is to help a portfolio of promising approaches get to the starting line, and then to help them scale quickly.”

• Additional reporting Bloomberg