Microsoft Signs Deal To Remove Carbon Using Wastewater Technology

Water-tech startup Crew Carbon announced today that it has signed an offtake agreement with Microsoft (MSFT) for the delivery of up to 23,602 carbon removal units (CRUs) from the company’s wastewater alkalinity enhancement (WAE) technology.

Launched in 2022 as a Yale University spinout, Connecticut-based Crew Carbon develops carbon removal technology that integrates into wastewater treatment facilities to accelerate mineral weathering processes that permanently store atmospheric CO2.

The company’s technology uses strategically sourced alkaline minerals, including calcium carbonate, to optimize conditions such as pH and alkalinity within wastewater treatment systems. According to Crew, the process improves biological treatment performance while permanently removing CO2 and other superpollutant emissions in a measurable form, leveraging existing industrial infrastructure without requiring the extensive permitting and federal support often associated with other carbon removal approaches.

The company said that wastewater treatment plants working with Crew process billions of gallons of water globally each day, providing a pathway to gigaton-scale carbon removal.

Dr. Joachim Katchinoff, CEO and co-founder of Crew Carbon, said:

“This agreement with Microsoft is a major milestone for CREW and further validates our approach to delivering high-quality, durable carbon credits while we optimize wastewater treatment performance.”

The agreement marks the latest in a series of carbon removal purchases to be announced by Microsoft since reports emerged in April indicating that the tech giant has informed carbon credit suppliers that it is pausing its carbon removal purchases.

In its recent Environmental Sustainability Report, Microsoft said that it has adapted its carbon dioxide removal (CDR) due diligence and contracting approach based on the type of CDR, its relative maturity, and its potential to scale, with the company now following a multi-approach strategy that includes pursuing long-term agreements for engineered and nature-based solutions, in addition to investing in emerging, early-stage pathways with smaller purchases to assess viability, scalability, and environmental and community impacts, while helping to de-risk the emerging technologies and to mature the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) protocols.

Philip Goodman, Carbon Removal Portfolio Director at Microsoft, said:

“Microsoft’s offtake agreement with CREW supports the advancement of a novel, wastewater-based approach that is highly durable and measurable. CREW has shown that carbon removal in the wastewater sector is implementable and scalable with high Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) certainty.”