💸🔦 This week’s corporate CDR buyer spotlight: Shopify 💸🔦

Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce platform, is investing in #renewable energy and supporting carbon dioxide removal (#CDR) efforts as a crucial strategy to reach #netzero emissions. The company has made significant investments in carbon removal projects, totaling 46,000 tonnes of high-quality CDR.

What are Shopify’s climate commitments?

☁️ Shopify has transitioned its data centers to #GoogleCloud, which matches 100% of the energy consumed with renewable energy. This move allows Shopify to run its platform on a completely carbon-neutral infrastructure, reducing the emissions associated with data center operations.

🏡 Since 2019, Shopify has been sourcing renewable power for heating, cooling, and powering its buildings and employee home offices. For example, Shopify has signed a power purchase agreement (#PPA) to power 100% of its employee home offices across North America with wind energy.

✈️ To address the emissions generated from travel, which can be significant compared to operational footprints, Shopify purchases verified carbon offsets.

What is Shopify’s carbon removals procurement strategy?

💸 In 2019, Shopify launched the Shopify Sustainability Fund, which includes an annual commitment to supporting projects that combat climate change. The fund aims to generate demand for carbon removal, enable new companies to make an impact and scale, and spend millions per year to drive down future prices.

✔️ Shopify has made substantial carbon removal purchases to support various projects. In 2020, the company made its first big purchase of 5,000 tonnes of direct air capture (#DAC). In subsequent years, Shopify continued to invest, and by March 2022 its total CDR purchases reached $32 million. These include technologies focused on atmospheric carbon removal, long-term storage, and avoided and reduced emissions offsets.

💥 Shopify founded #Frontier in collaboration with Stripe, Alphabet Inc., Meta, and McKinsey & Company. Frontier is an advance market commitment (#AMC) that commits a combined $925 million to spend on #carbonremoval. This initiative aims to accelerate the development and deployment of CDR technologies.

Shopify has shown remarkable commitments to renewable energy and CDR. It is quickly becoming a leader in this space, publishing a "Carbon Removal Buyer Guide" encouraging businesses of any size and in any industry to get involved in buying carbon removal credits. As the guide states, it will take collective efforts from businesses to accelerate the growth of the CDR industry and address the challenges posed by climate change.

📢 Shoutout to Tobias Lütke, Stacy Kauk, P.Eng., and all the sustainability leaders at Shopify pushing forward CDR commitments.

What do you think about Shopify’s commitments? What can other companies learn from its CDR procurement strategy?

#carbonremoval#carbonmarkets