Shopify’s commitment to support carbon removal companies has now reached $32 million.
Shopify added nine new companies to its Sustainability Fund. This latest purchases strengthens the company’s position as the biggest carbon removal credits purchaser.
Each of the firms that Shopify had purchased from is working towards a common goal. That’s creating solutions that can make a significant contribution in reversing climate change impact.
Shopify’s new partners are from various industries. These include the following from each respective segment:
- Direct Air Capture:Â Noya and Sustaera
- Forest: DroneSeed
- Mineralization: Carbin Minerals
- Product: CarbonBuilt
- Soil: Loam
- Storage: 44.01
- Transportation: Twelve and Remora
They’re now joining 13 other companies that Shopify’s Sustainability Fund has been supporting.
Shopify’s Carbon Removal and Reduction Portfolios
The firm’s Sustainability Fund is split into two key portfolios. These are the Frontier Portfolio and Evergreen Portfolio.
The Frontier Portfolio supports firms that remove carbon from the air and store it for the long term. Shopify is one of the large companies that’s part of the almost $1 billion Frontier fund. It has the same goal of speeding up carbon removal technologies.
While the Evergreen Portfolio funds temporary solutions like nature-based approaches and renewable power.
Here’s the breakdown of Shopify’s Sustainability Fund per carbon removal or reduction category:
Shopify had shown demand for carbon removal where there’s none before within 3 years after the creation of the Fund. More buyers are now entering the market.
Also, carbon removal companies have been scaling their development through Shopify’s funding support. In fact, they are growing their carbon removal capacity by up to 80x and increasing customers by 40x more.
Shopify’s approach on carbon removal purchases through its Sustainability Fund seems to work. It’s doubling down both current carbon reductions and permanent carbon removal initiatives.
But the company acknowledges that it can’t scale up its efforts alone. And so, its recent support of nine new companies is critical to its mission to ramp up carbon removal.
Shopify’s New Carbon Removal Partners
Here’s a sneak peek of each of the climate, tech-driven carbon removal enterprises that Shopify supports.
New partners under Frontier Portfolio:
44.01 (2,882 tons). Injects CO2 into peridotite rock where it mineralizes and stores there for good. Shopify covers the mineralization costs.
Carbin Minerals (200 tons). Optimizes carbon removal in mine tailings for net-negative emissions and metals vital for clean energy. Shopify’s funding supports expensive early testing.
CarbonBuilt (5,200 tons). Creates technology for low-cost, low-carbon concrete products like blocks. Shopify’s multi-year purchase gives a guaranteed revenue stream for concrete producers.
Noya (1,445 tons). Captures CO2 from air moved by existing cooling towers. Shopify’s funding helps Noya to scale up its technology and get more buy-in from others.
Sustaera (5,000 tons). Will create modular direct air capture tech that uses natural materials to suck in CO2. Shopify supports to hasten carbon removal technology deployment.
New partners under Evergreen Portfolio:
DroneSeed (50,000 tons). Reforests 300 acres of land ruined by wildfires in Oregon using drones. Shopify purchased DroneSeed’s biggest Climate Action Reserve-certified carbon offsets.
Loam (7,901 tons). Develops a microbial seed coating that increases carbon in soils for big CO2 removal. Shopify’s purchases help scale up technology and boost trust in soil carbon credits.
Remora (23,166 tons). Captures CO2 from semi-truck tailpipes as they drive and store it for long term. Shopify’s fund helps speed up tech adoption to decarbonize land shipping.
Twelve ($2.5M of E-Jet). Transforms captured CO2 to make E-Jet that uses fuel with an 80%+ lower carbon than fossil fuel jet. Shopify helps E-Jet adoption by commercial airlines and freight carriers.
Shopify chose these carbon removal companies using a set of criteria. These include technology and process, plans to scale, and purchases’ impact.
The company’s purchases will help those startups to speed up adoption of their technological solutions.
Stacy Kauk, Shopify Head of Sustainability, said that purchasing carbon removal credits from startups with new approaches is very essential. It’s as important as buying carbon removal from leading companies with proven technologies.
She further noted that,
“Our dollars will allow them to scale up so they can provide customers with effective and affordable carbon removal solutions… We need as many innovative companies to remove over 200 years of emissions to save our planet.”