Microsoft has signed a six-year offtake agreement with Catona Climate, a climate finance company, to buy 350,000 tons of carbon removal credits generated by an agroforestry project in Kenya, as reported by ESG Today on February 22. The project involves collaborating with 15,000 local farmers at Kenya’s Home Bay on sustainable agroforestry practices. These practices include developing forest gardens comprised of multi-tiered combinations of trees, shrubs, and crops to transform mono-cropped land into nature-based carbon sinks. In addition, the farmers will learn agricultural techniques for improving yields without the use of fertilizers or pesticides, preventing deforestation and biodiversity loss, and mitigating the adverse effects of drought and soil runoff through integrated water and soil conservation methods. Catona Climate and the nonprofit Trees for the Future will fund, design, and manage the project.

The project follows Microsoft’s active participation in various nature-based carbon removal throughout 2023. In December, the tech giant signed an offtake agreement with Carbonfuture to buy biochar carbon removal (BCR) credits from a Bolivian project, which transforms forestry waste into biochar to promote soil fertility and reduce carbon emissions. In the same month, Microsoft also inked a 15-year agreement with Chestnut Carbon, a carbon offset startup, to remove up to 2.7 million tons of carbon by growing new trees. Notably, the figure exceeded Microsoft’s entire carbon removal credit purchases during the whole year of 2022, which amounted to 1.4 million tons. By expanding and diversifying carbon removal investments, Microsoft aims to achieve carbon negative by 2030.

Sources:****

https://www.esgtoday.com/microsoft-signs-350000-tonne-nature-based-carbon-removal-deal-with-catona-climate/

https://carbonherald.com/microsoft-buys-350000-nature-based-carbon-credits-from-kenyan-agroforestry-project/

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/microsoft-inks-carbon-removal-deal-with-offsets-startup-chestnut-2023-12-20/