Amazon is making two significant investments into the carbon capture industry in order to accelerate the development of direct air capture.
The first investment is their agreement to purchase 250,000 metric tons of carbon removal credits from STRATOS over the next 10 years. STRATOS is 1PointFive’s first DAC plant and this is the company that they will purchase the credits through. The carbon purchased through this agreement will be stored in underground saline aquifers. In return to Amazon within this agreement, 1PointFive will use Amazon’s Web Services to analyse their performance data as it happens and use the data it gathers to improve its future developments for more plants around DAC.
The second focus is Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund investing in CarbonCapture Inc. who are a climate technology company known for their modular DAC systems. These systems are very clever as they are designed to be upgraded over time by including next-generation sorbents, which will enable cost reductions within the DAC industry as the sorbents become more available. This will mean that the more CarbonCapture optimize their sorbent performance within the DAC system, the more the cost of DAC will be reduced.
Similar to the agreement between 1PointFive and Amazon, in return for the investment, CarbonCapture will make 100,000 tons of carbon removal credits available to Amazon. Amazon then plans to make these credits available to the rest of their company and also available to their suppliers, selling partners and customers. This makes it clear that the investment into DAC which amazon has made will benefit many more companies than just those dedicated to DAC.