Today Shopify announced a planned commitment for carbon dioxide to be permanently removed from the atmosphere on Shopify’s behalf using technology from Squamish, B.C.
Carbon Engineering‘s groundbreaking Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology can be used to create large-scale carbon removal from the atmosphere.
Shopify is the first organization to plan to purchase permanent carbon dioxide removal from one of Carbon Engineering’s early commercial DAC plants, once constructed and operational in the coming years.
This planned commitment includes an investment by Shopify in the demonstration of carbon removal from CE’s Innovation Centre in Squamish B.C.
The Innovation Centre, which is currently under construction, will be CE’s permanent business and advanced development headquarters where the company will continue to optimize and innovate its technologies, with operations expected to commence in the fourth quarter of 2021.
The news is part of Shopify’s Sustainability Fund which was launched one year ago and commits the company to invest a minimum of $5 million annually in the most promising climate solutions and technologies. The planned commitment offers critical support to CE’s scaling and commercialization efforts and demonstrates the vital role of corporate climate leadership in helping to drive forward the carbon removal industry.
Speaking on the announcement, Stacy Kauk, Director of Shopify’s Sustainability Fund, said, “For the first year of Shopify’s Sustainability Fund, we chose to invest in companies with innovative ideas that we believe have the highest potential to reverse climate change. The world needs ambitious entrepreneurs like those at Carbon Engineering to continue pushing the carbon removal frontier, and chart the course for those who will follow in what is shaping up to be humanity’s most important industry yet.
Carbon Engineering raised a US $68 million equity round in 2019 from investors including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Chevron Technology Ventures and Murray Edwards, executive chairman of Canadian Natural Resources Limited. The round was the largest private investment made into a Direct Air Capture company to date.