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Salesforce backs eight pioneering carbon removal projects through Milkywire
Milkywire has completed a new round of Salesforce-backed pre-purchases of durable carbon removal, covering more than 3,600 tonnes from eight suppliers, spanning ocean alkalinity enhancement, direct air capture, and biomass storage.
The purchases are part of Salesforce's pledge as a founding member of the First Movers Coalition to contract USD 100 million in durable carbon removal by 2030, and follow the Salesforce-backed purchases from 19 suppliers announced in January.
Taking a catalytic approach, these suppliers were selected to move promising carbon removal pathways forward at the moments where a buyer makes the biggest difference: first-of-a-kind deployments, novel geographies, and technical steps that the rest of the field can learn from.
The portfolio
Four purchases back direct air capture at different stages of development. Sirona Technologies will build the world's first heat pump integration on a commercial DACCS project, a test in energy efficiency with sector-wide learning value. Yama runs France's first operating DAC pilot and is now building a 365 t/yr demonstration facility. Brineworks pairs electrochemical DAC with green hydrogen co-production in the Netherlands, and Deep Sky is developing a DAC-with-mineralization storage project at Thetford Mines in Quebec.
Two purchases bring ocean alkalinity enhancement into new settings. PRONOE operates the EU's first land-based OAE system integrated with an industrial desalination plant, and Alkamy Carbon enhances alkalinity in existing wastewater treatment infrastructure in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, which will generate the first wastewater alkalinity dataset from tropical conditions.
The final two suppliers store biomass underground in different ways. Carba converts waste biomass to stable biocarbon and buries it in landfills, and Cowboy Clean Fuels injects agricultural processing residues into unmineable Wyoming coal seams, where native subsurface microbes convert the biomass into CO2 that permanently binds to the coal.
“Buying tomorrow's carbon removal solutions today is how we bring down costs and build a sector that can scale. There is a need for more buyers to take a long-term view and support a broad range of removal approaches at different maturity levels,” says Aidan Preston, PhD, Senior Impact Manager at Milkywire.
“We want to see more promising carbon removal methods proven in practice. We backed these eight suppliers because each contract will help a pilot or demonstration unit get built, and each project will generate learnings that will inform future deployments across the industry,” says Jamila Yamani, PhD, Director of Climate and Energy at Salesforce.
The full list of suppliers and number of contracted volumes:
Supplier | Tonnes |
|---|---|
Alkamy Carbon | 667 |
Brineworks | 500 |
Carba | 816 |
Cowboy Clean Fuels | 500 |
Deep Sky | 394 |
PRONOE | 131 |
Sirona Technologies | 390 |
Yama | 263 |
Total | 3,661 |
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Milkywire is an impact firm with eight years of experience helping companies deliver on their climate and nature targets, creating ambitious climate strategies and channeling funding to durable carbon removal and other critical solutions that global climate targets depend on.
Milkywire has facilitated purchases of more than $12 million of durable carbon removal across 45+ projects in more than 20 countries, and is a top-three global carbon removal buyer by project diversity.
For questions contact:
Aidan Preston, PhD | aidan.preston@milkywire.com
