If we want to spare the Earth of runaway climate change, we must not only dramatically cut down on emissions, but also remove greenhouse gasses that already exist within our atmosphere. And while carbon capture technologies could play a big role in this, many of these technologies have yet to be proven.
In order to promote and further develop carbon capture technologies, the online payment platform Stripe has created a new service that will allow US businesses to invest a small portion of their revenue from each sale into projects that will remove planet-heating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The service, which Stripe will not earn anything from, lets Stripe’s customers contribute to the same four projects that Stripe decided to support earlier this year. As reported by The Verge, that includes a project that traps carbon dioxide in concrete, another that pulls it from the air and then buries it in basaltic rock formations, a third that buries the carbon in the form of bio-oil, and a final project that tries to boost the ocean’s natural ability to store carbon dioxide.
At the moment, the technologies are still expensive to deploy, but by drumming up demand for carbon removal, Stripe hopes to help nascent carbon capture technologies advance more quickly. As for Stripe itself, the company has already committed to spending $1 million a year to support the emerging industry.
