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Stockholm Exergi Lands World's Largest Permanent Carbon Removal Deal With Microsoft: Swedish energy company Stockholm Exergi and Microsoft have announced a 10-year deal that will provide the tech giant with more than 3.3 million tons of carbon removal certificates through bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. While the value of the deal was not disclosed, it stands as the largest of its kind globally. Carbon Herald reports: Scheduled to commence in 2028 and span a decade, the agreement underscores a pivotal moment in combatting climate change. Anders Egelrud, CEO of Stockholm Exergi, lauded the deal as a "huge step" for the company and its BECCS project, emphasizing its profound implications for climate action. "I believe the agreement will inspire corporations with ambitious climate objectives, and we target to announce more deals with other pioneering companies over the coming months," he said. Recognizing the imperative of permanent carbon removals in limiting global warming to 1.5C or below, the deal aligns with Microsoft's ambitious goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030. "Leveraging existing biomass power plants is a crucial first step to building worldwide carbon removal capacity," Brian Marrs, Microsoft's Senior Director of Energy & Carbon Removal, said, highlighting the importance of sustainable biomass sourcing for BECCS projects, as is the case with Stockholm Exergi. The partners will adhere to stringent quality standards, ensuring transparent reporting and adherence to sustainability criteria. The BECCS facility, once operational, will remove up to 800,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, contributing significantly to atmospheric carbon reduction. With environmental permits secured and construction set to commence in 2025, Stockholm Exergi plans to reach the final investment decision by the end of the year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stockholm Exergi Lands World's Largest Permanent Carbon Removal Deal With Microsoft: Swedish energy company Stockholm Exergi and Microsoft have announced a 10-year deal that will provide the tech giant with more than 3.3 million tons of carbon removal certificates through bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. While the value of the deal was not disclosed, it stands as the largest of its kind globally. Carbon Herald reports: Scheduled to commence in 2028 and span a decade, the agreement underscores a pivotal moment in combatting climate change. Anders Egelrud, CEO of Stockholm Exergi, lauded the deal as a "huge step" for the company and its BECCS project, emphasizing its profound implications for climate action. "I believe the agreement will inspire corporations with ambitious climate objectives, and we target to announce more deals with other pioneering companies over the coming months," he said. Recognizing the imperative of permanent carbon removals in limiting global warming to 1.5C or below, the deal aligns with Microsoft's ambitious goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030. "Leveraging existing biomass power plants is a crucial first step to building worldwide carbon removal capacity," Brian Marrs, Microsoft's Senior Director of Energy & Carbon Removal, said, highlighting the importance of sustainable biomass sourcing for BECCS projects, as is the case with Stockholm Exergi. The partners will adhere to stringent quality standards, ensuring transparent reporting and adherence to sustainability criteria. The BECCS facility, once operational, will remove up to 800,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, contributing significantly to atmospheric carbon reduction. With environmental permits secured and construction set to commence in 2025, Stockholm Exergi plans to reach the final investment decision by the end of the year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Great to see the #green metal company Element Zero named as one of BloombergNEF's Climate Pioneers. These guys are transforming #WesternAustralia from the world's mine into the world's #foundry by producing valuable metals from #renewables and novel #electrochemistry while keeping the #carbon in the ground where it belongs. #climatechange #innovation #australia

Another huge step forward towards Project Execution

Stockholm Exergi announces permanent carbon removal agreement with Microsoft, world’s largest to date .      Stockholm Exergi is excited to unveil that we have entered an off-take agreement with Microsoft on the sale of 3.33 million tons of permanent carbon removals from our BECCS project. The agreement is the largest permanent removals off-take agreement to date and represents a significant milestone for climate change mitigation.      ”The agreement with Microsoft is a huge step forward for our BECCS project, for Stockholm Exergi as a company and for the climate. It is the strongest possible recognition of the significance, quality and sustainability of our project and takes us an important step closer to a final investment decision in Q4 2024”, says Anders Egelrud, CEO of Stockholm Exergi.      By demonstrating commitment to ambitious, voluntary corporate climate objectives, Microsoft and Stockholm Exergi hope to contribute to the much-needed growth of the industry, to allow corporates to meet their net-zero targets and nations to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.      ”We are extremely proud to announce this carbon removal offtake with Stockholm Exergi from its pioneering Värtan BECCS project. Leveraging existing biomass power plants is a crucial first step to building worldwide carbon removal capacity”, says Brian Marrs, Senior Director, Energy & Carbon Removal at Microsoft.  

WWF EPO is participating in a global wave of action against large-scale #biomass energy, to tell world leaders at #COP16 that bioenergy destroys #Biodiversity. In Europe, when it comes to wood, our legislation treats pretty much everything equally, from large tree trunks to sawdust. Even though the climate impacts are radically different. More and more trees are being burnt for energy in the name of #ClimateAction. In reality, the climate impacts of burning wood are substantial: 🔥Burning wood creates more #emissions than #FossilFuels. 🌳 It takes a long time for trees to grow back, and recapture the carbon from the atmosphere. 🪵Even dead trees would take a long time to rot (and release carbon) if they were left in the forest. Our myth buster document counters the forest biomass industry’s most common arguments. Find out how we debunk them here 👇 https://lnkd.in/ezQC4jtV Want to know more about the International Day of Action on Big Biomass? 👇 https://lnkd.in/ewMWMw6B

It's #WorldEnvironmentDay! When people see successful examples of climate action, they are more likely to support similar initiatives in their own communities. So here are some highlights from the last month! ⚡️ New research shows that 30% of the world's electricity came from renewable sources in 2023, including hydropower, solar, wind, biomass and waste, geothermal, wave, and tidal energy. 🦬 A herd of 170 free-roaming bison reintroduced in Romania’s Țarcu mountains are stimulating plant growth and securing 9.8x more carbon in the soil while grazing. 💨 Climeworks has opened the world’s largest operational direct air capture (DAC) plant in Iceland, with a capacity to capture 36K metric tons of CO₂ per year. 🌊 A global maritime court ruled that greenhouse gases are marine pollution, a major breakthrough for small island states facing global-warming-induced sea level rise. 🛢️ Orphaned oil wells across the United States are leaking hundreds of thousands of metric tons of methane—and now students, nonprofit groups, and others are fundraising to shut them down. ☀️ The USA announces $7B "Solar for All" grants to deliver residential solar, saving low-income Americans $350M annually. 🛻 By 2040, EU nations will mandate a 90% reduction in CO₂ emissions from new heavy-duty vehicles, requiring a shift to electric or hydrogen fuel. 🔋 Data shows that Africa has enough hydropower, solar, and wind projects in the works to transition from fossil fuels by 2050, with 76% of its energy coming from renewable sources by 2040.

A new Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) study reveals that the United Kingdom cannot reach its zero-carbon goal through the use of #bioenergy with #CCS (#BECCS). In fact, the study found that the technology would actually increase logging in forests and overall greenhouse gas (#GHG) emissions. The European Commission Carbon Removals Certification Framework Expert Group meets this week to discuss how to account for carbon removals from #BECCS and other technologies. The first step must be to ensure they don’t add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere!     Unfortunately, the methodologies for biomass-based removals presently being discussed in the group (BECCS and #biochar) stick to the discredited EU Renewable Energy Directive (#RED) framework which counts biomass emissions as zero in the energy sector, and ignores indirect land use change (ILUC) and biomass supply chain emissions. The credibility of the whole Carbon Removals Certification Framework (#CRCF), and with it that of the EU’s climate policy, is at stake. #BigBadBiomass #ForestsAreNotFuel #InternationalDayOfAction Christian Holzleitner Fabien Ramos Wopke Hoekstra Dan Jørgensen Ursula von der Leyen Peter Van Kemseke Chris Malins Tiemo Wölken 

"Carbon in the atmosphere is a major driver of climate change. Now researchers from McGill University have designed a new catalyst for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane—a cleaner source of energy—using tiny bits of copper called nanoclusters. While the traditional method of producing methane from fossil fuels introduces more CO2 into the atmosphere, the new process, electrocatalysis, does not. "On sunny days you can use solar power, or when it's a windy day you can use that wind to produce renewable electricity, but as soon as you produce that electricity you need to use it," says Mahdi Salehi, Ph.D. candidate at the Electrocatalysis Lab at McGill University. "But in our case, we can use that renewable but intermittent electricity to store the energy in chemicals like methane."" #co2 #methane #energystorage

The Calculus of Carbon: Navigating the Math behind Decarbonization-Part I 1. In 2022, fossil fuels still dominated the world's energy and electricity, accounting for 82%, only a slight decrease from 1997, the year of the Kyoto Protocol, when the global community committed significantly to reducing carbon emissions and fossil fuel usage. This commitment continues to guide the journey towards a sustainable future. It's important to note that despite this commitment, the use of fossil fuels in exajoules (EJ) increased by 180 EJ from 1997 to 2022, primarily due to the higher use of crude by developing nations. 2. To achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the world needs to discontinue the use of fossil fuels. This requires eliminating 500 exajoules (EJ) of energy from fossil fuels and replacing them with non-carbon, new energy sources. To put this into perspective, it's equivalent to discontinuing the use of 12 billion tons of crude oil, a volume that could fill 1,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools—considering that 1 EJ equals 174 million barrels of crude oil, approximately 87 billion barrels need to be eliminated, a number that exceeds the total annual oil production of Saudi Arabia. 3. The initial global transition to modern energy sources began 200 years ago when people switched from wood and charcoal to fossil fuels. This transition is still in progress. Around 3 billion people rely on wood, charcoal, biomass, and dried dung for cooking and heating. 4. The current energy transition is monumental, necessitating 700 exajoules (EJ) of new non-carbon energies by 2050. It's crucial to note that one exajoule is equivalent to 174 million barrels of oil. This means we require a staggering 121,880,000,000 billion barrels of oil equivalent in the form of new energy. To put this into perspective, 700 EJ of new energy equals the energy produced by 38,000 projects the size of British Columbia's Site C, a significant hydroelectric power project. 5. McKinsey estimates the cost of this transition to be $275 trillion. Vaclav Smil's warning of potential delays and overruns that could cost an even higher $440 trillion underscores the need for careful planning and investment. He asserts that this transition will cost 20% to 25% of rich countries' GDP. For the US, the projected cost ranges between $5.4 and $6.75 trillion annually over the next 25 years. Vaclav Smil recently published his report, "Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Net Zero Carbon is a Highly Unlikely Outcome." My comments are taken from this report. I started a LinkedIn Group named Electricity Generation Worldwide. Your fact-based contributions are welcome. Join here: https://lnkd.in/graRy4uz.