Google have announced that they’re co-founding Symbiosis, a new coalition of corporate buyers committed to following the latest science to scale high-quality, nature-based carbon removal.
Nature-based carbon removal projects, like the restoration of trees and mangroves in damaged ecosystems, are an important tool to mitigate climate change and a scalable way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But nature is complex and dynamic, and it’s full of interdependent ecological and economic systems. This means the climate impact of these projects can be hard to measure and verify, which in turn makes it difficult to scale these projects to their full potential.
Symbiosis will work to solve this by setting a new benchmark for best-in-class nature restoration projects that have a high certainty of positive climate impact. We’ll develop shared criteria for project design and measurement, update these criteria based on the latest science, and pool demand for carbon removal credits that meet our high bar. We’ll also share our project criteria publicly, helping other companies to adopt best practices and increase their confidence in high-quality, nature-based carbon removal projects.
Google will also bring focus to other factors that make nature restoration projects so compelling — from restoring native species and wildlife biodiversity to equitably involving and compensating Indigenous and other local communities.
Symbiosis draws from their experience co-founding Frontier, which has successfully deployed an advanced market commitment to accelerate breakthrough human-made technologies that can store carbon for over 1,000 years. Symbiosis will take a similar approach to the carbon-capturing abilities of nature itself. Both coalitions are an important part of our goal to reach net zero by 2030.
Fellow members of this initiative include Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce — with more companies expected to join over time. We’re excited to help kickstart solutions that will help us and others reach net zero.