Product
Democratizing Access to Cutting Edge Carbon Removal
Steve Siger
November 30, 2023

We are proud to announce that we are a launch user of Stripe’s Climate Orders, which enables us to give CNaught customers access to the cutting edge Frontier Offtake Portfolio. The Frontier Offtake Portfolio includes some of the world’s most promising carbon removal technologies–those that have the potential to reach gigatonne scale at an affordable price. In just a few clicks, CNaught enables our customers to support the leading global effort to scale carbon removal as part of the diversified array of high-impact carbon credit projects that make up CNaught’s science-backed portfolio.

To avoid the worst effects of climate change, most climate models agree we need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on the scale of 5-10 gigatonnes per year by 2050. Existing solutions such as planting trees and soil carbon storage, will be part of the global portfolio of solutions. But these solutions by themselves are unlikely to scale to the size of the problem, as we’ll run out of arable land. That is why the Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Offsetting states that “[a] net zero aligned portfolio of [carbon] offsets” like CNaught’s “must increase the portion of carbon removals over emission reductions, and the portion of long-lived storage over short-lived storage, over time.”

Unfortunately, there is not a simple way to turn on permanent carbon removal. As CNBC reported in May 2023, there have been fewer than 12,000 tonnes of engineered carbon removal–ever. What’s more, those 12,000 tonnes can sell for north of $1,000 each, pushing them out of reach for all but the narrowest set of buyers. As a world, we need to invest in technologies that can drive large-scale, affordable, and permanent carbon removal, but the scale of investment needed is massive and the technologies are uncertain. It feels like too much for any single buyer to take on.

Frontier is an effort to meet the scale of the challenge. Founded in 2022 by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey and now including Autodesk, H&M, JPMorgan Chase and Workday, Frontier is an advance market commitment to purchase more than $1 Billion in permanent carbon removal by 2030. Frontier portfolio companies are vetted against target criteria, including the ability to store removed carbon for more than a thousand years and the potential to be low-cost and high-volume in the future, in line with 2050 climate goals.

Unfortunately, there still was not a solution for buyers beyond the world’s largest companies. Until now. Today, CNaught is proud to be a launch user of Stripe’s Climate Orders, meaning that CNaught’s diversified Impact Portfolio of science-backed carbon credits now includes the Frontier Offtake Portfolio. That means that every CNaught customer gets access to offtake carbon removal units from a diverse portfolio of the most promising carbon removal technologies, vetted by industry experts and Frontier’s in-house team of scientists. It’s one more way that CNaught enables companies of every size to drive real climate impact with ease.

If you’re excited about the Frontier Offtake Portfolio or think CNaught might be a good fit for your company, sign up for an account at CNaught.com or reach out to us at info@cnaught.com. Your first tonne is free!