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Frontier buys credits for Google, Stripe, Shopify ( SHOP )

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Projects aiming to lock carbon away in oceans, minerals

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To spend $1.7 million with three US, Canadian, Italian

firms

By Simon Jessop and Virginia Furness

LONDON, July 14 (Reuters) -

A coalition backed by Google, Stripe and Shopify ( SHOP )

will spend $1.7 million to buy carbon removal credits

from three early stage firms on behalf of the tech giants to

help scale up the nascent markets, an executive told Reuters.

The world is expected to need to suck between five and 10

billion tons a year of carbon emissions out of the atmosphere by

mid-century to reach its climate goals, yet at the moment most

technologies are small scale.

The coalition, called Frontier, is also backed by Meta

, H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase ( JPM ) and

Salesforce ( CRM ), among others.

The group, which aggregates demand from its members,

will spend $1.7 million to buy credits from U.S.-firm

Karbonetiq, Italy-based Limenet and Canadian firm pHathom.

By contracting to buy early, the firms are better able to

hire, raise finance and get the technologies off the ground,

said Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier.

"It allows companies to demonstrate commercial viability,"

she said.

Frontier's support for these early stage firms, which aim to

lock emissions away in the ocean or in rocks and industrial

waste, marks its fifth series of commitments.

Frontier, which was set up in 2022, aims to invest at least

$1 billion in carbon removal credits between 2022 and 2030. It

has already committed $600 million, some on the series of

pre-purchases and the bulk on a series of off-take agreements

with larger firms. Last week, it agreed to pay $41 million for

116,000 tons from waste biomass firm Arbor.

For oceans, the aim is to increase the alkalinity of the

water, helping it to lock away more carbon emissions. This is

often done by adding "quicklime", made from limestone.

For the mineralisation technologies, meanwhile, projects

attempt to speed up the process whereby rocks and industrial

waste naturally absorb carbon dioxide, for example by crushing

up the material to create a larger surface area.

Bebbington said both technologies had the potential to be

impactful because they could be scaled quickly and cheaply.

"We think (they) are extremely compelling from that really

cheap at really large scale perspective."