Google’s latest commitment in the climate change battle involves a new partnership with Vaulted Deep, a CO2 removal company that specializes in eliminating methane emissions from waste. According to Google, the collaboration focuses on two key outcomes for the atmosphere: permanently removing carbon dioxide and eliminating methane.
This partnership involves a purchase agreement for Google to remove 50,000 tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The agreement is certified by the registry Osometric. Google says it will work with Vaulted Deep to quantify the methane emissions eliminated. This step is important because methane warms the planet 80 times more than CO2 in the near term.
Removing Carbon and Methane
Vaulted Deep uses slurry injection technology. The process that uses this technology was originally commercialized in the oil and gas industry in the 1980s.
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The company applies this technology to carbon removal by injecting non-hazardous organic waste deep underground, where it is permanently stored in natural formations. According to Vaulted Deep, the formations are nearly a mile beneath the surface and safely store hydrocarbons for millions of years.
The company uses a reinforced pipe-in-pipe design to ensure containment and protect groundwater. Vaulted Deep makes its facilities compact to reduce infrastructure needs and simplify deployment. Additionally, the facilities require minimal equipment.
The partnership is part of Google’s broader effort to eliminate carbon and superpollutants. It builds on its ongoing carbon removal initiatives, which include collaborations with Recoolit and Cool Effect to eliminate 25,000 tons of superpollutants by 2030.
Ultimately, these partnerships aim to eliminate fluorinated gases from Indonesia’s residential and commercial cooling systems and methane from Brazil’s landfills.
According to Google leaders, these partnerships are key steps toward limiting near-term warming. In a statement, Google said, “If we use the credits from these purchases to help neutralize Google’s emissions, we’ll either match them against shorter-lived emissions in our own footprint or replace them with longer-lived credits as their atmospheric impact expires.”
