Google announced Thursday that it will purchase 200,000 tons of carbon removal materials from Brazil-based reforestation company Mombak. The project involves purchasing farmland in the Amazon and reforesting it.
The deal was made through the Symbiosis Coalition, a pre-market commitment aimed at developing markets for nature-based carbon removal schemes backed by Google, McKinsey, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce. The Symbiosis Coalition is similar to Frontier, an advanced market commitment also backed by Google and others that supports direct air capture projects.
Nature-based carbon removal has shown great promise in reducing atmospheric CO2 levels, but project development and marketing have been challenging for a variety of reasons. Nature-based projects run the risk of not achieving their goals if damaged by wildfires or other disasters, and long-term viability may be difficult to ensure.
Still, forests have many benefits. Forests replenish aquifers and support biodiversity, but they cannot take in air directly, either. Google said it will use its DeepMind Perch AI to help quantify the biodiversity benefits of the project.
