On Thursday, Google revealed plans to purchase 200,000 metric tons of carbon removal from Mombak, a Brazilian company focused on restoring forests. The initiative involves acquiring land in the Amazon to plant new forests.
This agreement was facilitated by the Symbiosis Coalition, an advance market commitment designed to foster a market for nature-based carbon removal solutions, with support from Google, McKinsey, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce. The Symbiosis Coalition operates in a manner similar to Frontier, another advance market commitment backed by Google and others, which funds direct air capture initiatives.
Nature-based carbon removal holds significant potential for reducing atmospheric CO2, but these projects face a range of obstacles in both development and commercialization. Such initiatives may not achieve their intended outcomes if affected by events like wildfires or other catastrophes, and ensuring their sustainability over time can be difficult.
Nevertheless, these projects offer several advantages: forests help restore groundwater supplies and promote biodiversity, benefits that direct air capture cannot provide. Google mentioned it will leverage its DeepMind Perch AI to measure the project's positive impact on biodiversity.
