Star-studded buyers group funds project to capture emissions from burning trash

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🗞️ Driving the news: A buyers group led by Alphabet, Stripe, and others under the Frontier initiative has committed $31.6 million to retrofit Norway’s largest waste incineration plant with carbon capture technology
• Operated by Hafslund Celsio in Oslo, the facility burns 350,000 tonnes of residual waste annually and will capture the same amount of CO₂
• The captured carbon will be shipped to the Northern Lights storage site in Europe

🔭 The context: Frontier, a $1 billion carbon removal fund, supports early-stage technologies and has already committed over $550 million
• This marks one of the first large-scale retrofits of a waste-to-energy plant for carbon removal
• The project is co-financed by the city of Oslo and Norway’s Longship initiative

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: Capturing CO₂ from waste incineration is crucial for managing non-recyclable plastic and organic waste emissions
• With 500 similar plants in Europe, this model could enable up to 400 million tonnes of CO₂ capture by 2050
• It offers a scalable solution where recycling is not possible

⏭️ What's next: The project will deliver 100,000 tonnes of biogenic carbon removal credits between 2029 and 2030
• If successful, the model could be replicated across Europe’s district heating facilities
• The EU may also soon regulate waste incineration emissions under its carbon trading scheme

💬 One quote: “Frontier buyers are not only enabling this project... but also validating a model that could be replicated through Europe,” - Jannicke Gerner Bjerkås, Director of CCS at Hafslund Celsio

📈 One stat: Europe could capture up to 400 million tonnes of CO₂ annually by retrofitting 500 waste-to-energy plants by 2050

See here detailed sustainability performance of companies like Alphabet, Stripe, H&M, Autodesk, JPMorgan Chase, and Salesforce

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