Microsoft announced on Thursday that it buys over 7 million tons of carbon loans from Chestnut Carbon.
The 25-year-old deal would enable Chestnut Carbon Re -form 60,000 acres of land in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, Axios reported. Lately, the technology company has had difficulty capturing its CO2 emissions because the AI has operated the construction and use of data centers.
Last year Microsoft reported that his emissions have risen by 29% since 2020 due to the boom in AI and cloud computing and that his goal of 2030 was more carbon than generated. In 2023 the company reported generated 17.1 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions before offsets.
Carbon loans are included in a number of flavors. Chestnut carbon focuses on the reforestation, in which the company enables the planting of tree and then monitored the new forests to ensure that they grow as planned and are not reduced. The company currently has eight projects in the southeast of the United States, which were previously worked as farms or pastures.
Trees naturally lower the carbon when they grow, although not all forest carbon credits are the same. Credits of projects that do not plant locals, rapidly growing trees, generally become lower quality and sell for less because they do not support that much biological diversity, and the trees do not live for so long. Projects that support various local plantings usually sell to a bonus, since the consequences of the consequences of ecosystems are tended to be more resistant over time.
Even Premium -Co2 credits from reforestation, reforestation and avoided deforestation are a relative offer compared to some alternatives. Chestnut Carbon sold credits last year for 34 US dollars per tonne, while Direct Air Capture uses fans and chemical sorbents to draw CO2 From the atmosphere, around 600 to 1,000 US dollars per ton is costs today. Despite the cost difference, Microsoft also bought carbon credits from Direct startups of the aerial recording.
With all their strengths, natural -based carbon loans are not always perfect. Verra, which has the largest natural -based carbon loan portfolio, was the subject of one Extensive studies In 2023, the organization reported the climate part of its projects. The scandal led to CEO of the fall And had the industry re -evaluated the standards it used. Chestnut Carbon, which previously used Verra to certify its carbon credits, today uses gold standard.
