Microsoft Is Supercharging the Carbon-Removals Market. Amazon Thinks We Should Take It Slow.

When it comes to buying carbon removals, the market has an undisputed heavyweight champion: Microsoft. But one of its main rivals thinks there is a better way to do it—by slowing down.

- Yusuf Khan

"It's strange to say we can be strategically patient in the midst of a climate crisis, but we really have a responsibility to make sure we get things right," said Jamey Mulligan, head of carbon neutralization science and strategy at Amazon.

For Mulligan, building a marketplace where many buyers can buy carbon-removal credits is more important than having one that is accessible to only a handful of deep-pocketed buyers. He also wants to see more efforts to ensure the quality of the credits that fund projects aimed at reducing carbon in the atmosphere to fight global warming.

The Amazon carbon-credit czar likened building the carbon-removal market to running an ultra marathon with your family and pet dog, saying that it was no use to finish the race on your own if your teammates are still on mile one.

"If we're really good at decarbonizing just our own operations and buying a lot of carbon credits for the residual emissions of just our own operations, and we have a value chain that's bloated from a carbon standpoint, that's going to slow us down in that low-carbon future," Mulligan said. "What we want to avoid is standing at the finish line by ourselves."

Technologies like carbon capture, biochar and enhanced rock weathering have emerged as ways to mitigate climate change. At the moment, demand for credits that fund these projects mostly comes from technology firms, especially Microsoft.

Of the 37 million tons of durable carbon credits purchased since 2019, 30 million of those have gone to Microsoft, according to CDR.fyi, a carbon removal database which doesn't include nature-based solutions. Amazon meanwhile has snapped up 250,000 tons. Other major buyers include Google, Stripe and Meta under an umbrella buying group called Frontier.