Shopify Purchases Carbon Removal Credits from CarbonBuilt
Multi-year purchase agreement, including upfront payment, signals confidence in the quality of CarbonBuilt’s credits and guarantees additional revenue to producers of low-carbon concrete
CarbonBuilt announced it has entered into a carbon removal purchase agreement with Shopify, a leading provider of essential internet infrastructure for commerce. Shopify’s purchase will be used by CarbonBuilt to sequester 5,200 metric tonnes of CO2 in concrete blocks produced with CarbonBuilt’s technology.
“This selection by Shopify, after evaluating hundreds of potential solutions, is a powerful signal for the quality of our technology, team and approach to the market,” said Cindy McLaughlin, Head of Product at CarbonBuilt. “The revenue certainty provided by multiyear contracts like this will accelerate adoption of our technology by concrete manufacturers.”
Shopify’s purchase is supported through the company’s Sustainability Fund, which contributes a minimum of $5 million annually to support tech-driven entrepreneurs and their solutions to reverse climate change.
“When we learned how important the carbon credit revenue stream is for driving adoption of CarbonBuilt’s technology in this traditionally risk-averse industry, it was clear we had to create a strong demand signal, both to concrete producers and to other credit buyers,” said Stacy Kauk, Shopify’s Head of Sustainability. “This is a technology that needs to scale quickly in order to reverse climate change because of the carbon-intensity of concrete, and we’re thrilled to be part of CarbonBuilt’s journey.”
Enabled by capital-light technology that won the 2021 NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, CarbonBuilt reduces embodied carbon in concrete products by 70 to 100 percent (and potentially more). CarbonBuilt’s patented process brings together widely available, low-cost and low-carbon materials (replacing traditional carbon-intensive Portland cement) with CO2 taken directly from industrial, biomass or direct air capture sources.
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The CO2 chemically reacts with the mixture and becomes permanently stored in the resulting concrete. Each 30-pound concrete block made with CarbonBuilt technology stores more than 1/2 pound (.27 kg) of CO2 while another 2.5 to 3 pounds (1.1 – 1.3 kg) of CO2 emissions are avoided because of the reduced use of cement.
“Concrete is one of the few industries that can truly play a significant role in carbon removal,” said Chris Neidl, co-founder of Open Air Collective, a volunteer-led network that aims to advance, accelerate and co-invent carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the real world. “Combine the chemistry of concrete, which allows it to effectively sequester carbon for millennia, with the sheer volume of concrete produced annually, and you get a gigatonne-sized carbon sink, which we can start filling today thanks to companies like Shopify and CarbonBuilt.”
