Microsoft has teamed up with Vaulted Deep to eliminate millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), one of the largest deals made in the sector. They will use a special carbon removal technology that injects organic waste deep underground. This infrastructure approach seeks to store carbon permanently while also addressing waste management issues throughout the United States.
Let’s examine in depth how this technology offers a promising solution in tackling carbon emissions and what the details are involved in the partnership.
Beneath the Surface: Vaulted Deep’s Carbon Capture Tech
Vaulted Deep captures CO₂ by redirecting organic waste away from disposal methods. This includes landfilling, incineration, or land application. The waste is injected deep underground into basalt rock formations, where it breaks down slowly.
Carbon minerals form during this process and trap carbon for thousands of years. This effectively removes it from the atmosphere permanently.
To date, Vaulted has removed nearly 18,000 tonnes of CO₂ and diverted more than 69,000 tonnes of organic waste from surface disposal. Their carbon removal methodology is certified by the carbon registry Isometric.
The certification promises over 1,000 years of carbon storage durability. It ensures that every carbon credit issued stands for a scientifically validated tonne of permanent CO₂ removal.
For every tonne of CO₂ the company sequesters, it releases just 0.05 tonnes of CO₂. This efficiency rate, verified by Isometric, is among the best in the industry.
The company’s technology has been operating safely since 2008 and is approved and permitted in multiple U.S. states. For example, in Los Angeles, Vaulted has processed about 20% of the city’s biosolids for over 15 years. In Kansas, Vaulted oversees 75% of biosolids for Derby.
The company also works with local farmers to handle extra manure. This manure often causes nutrient runoff and odor. Plus, it helps sequester carbon underground.
Economic and Environmental Impact of Vaulted’s Technology
Vaulted’s Great Plains site in Kansas illustrates the combined environmental and economic benefits of this approach. Within its first 18 months, the facility created 18 full-time local jobs and generated more than $5 million in economic investment.
Vaulted’s technology turns tough organic waste into a resource for carbon capture. This process cuts down greenhouse gas emissions from regular waste management. At the same time, it helps solve environmental issues such as nutrient pollution and unpleasant odors associated with organic waste.
According to industry estimates, the U.S. produces about 200 million tons of organic waste every year. This includes food scraps, yard clippings, and paper products. Sadly, most of this waste ends up in landfills. Only around one-third is turned into useful compost or energy.
Reducing organic waste is important to protect the environment. This is a big opportunity to help fight climate change, and where Vaulted Deep technology comes in. Vaulted is looking for new waste partners in different sectors to expand its reach and boost carbon removal efforts.
Power Partnership: Microsoft’s Drive to Scale Impact
Microsoft’s recent investment supports Vaulted Deep in scaling operations with an ambitious goal to remove approximately 4.9 million tonnes of CO₂ over the next 12 years. The partnership will aim to expand site capabilities. It will also build new relationships with waste suppliers from agriculture, municipalities, and manufacturing.
Brian Marrs, Senior Director of Energy and Carbon Removal at Microsoft, noted:
“Vaulted Deep provides a differentiated, scalable approach to permanent carbon removal with low technology risk. Its work delivers immediate climate benefits while stimulating local economies and addresses long-standing environmental challenges that communities face every day. We support this solution as part of our broader effort to accelerate durable, high-integrity carbon removal.”
Microsoft’s Growing Commitment to Carbon Removal
Microsoft is working hard to grow its carbon dioxide removal options. The ech giant aims to be carbon negative by 2030. In 2024, the company secured long-term deals for almost 22 million metric tons of carbon removal credits. This amount surpasses the total from all prior years combined.
Their CDR contracts include various technologies. These include biochar, direct air capture, soil carbon sequestration, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
One of the biggest CDR deals Microsoft made is made Exomad Green. This agreement is the largest biochar carbon removal deal ever. It will last for over a decade. The plan aims to sequester at least 1.24 million tons of CO₂. They will do this by turning crop waste and woody debris into stable charcoal-like carbon.
Moreover, Microsoft signed a record contract with Fidelis’ company AtmosClear. They will remove 6.75 million metric tons of CO₂ over 15 years. This will use BECCS technology.
Microsoft also works with Carbon Direct, a science-based carbon management group. Together, they set strict quality standards for carbon removals. They released the 2025 Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal. This sets clear standards for various removal methods. The focus is on durability, social and environmental benefits, and transparency.
Microsoft follows a “do our best and remove the rest” approach. This means they aim for strong emissions cuts while also backing new, trustworthy carbon removal methods. The company is tackling rising energy demands from AI. It is investing a lot in carbon offset and removal to meet its net-zero goals.
Carbon Credits and Market Boom: The CDR Opportunity
The market for carbon dioxide removal is growing fast. Governments and businesses are pushing for net-zero emissions targets. Durable carbon removal methods are gaining interest, and Vaulted Deep’s underground storage is one example. These methods have a lasting impact.
Analysts say the durable CDR credit market will grow at a rate of 38% each year from 2025 to 2035. By 2035, it could reach around $14 billion. Other research forecasts the broader CDR industry could generate between $650 million and $3 billion by 2034.
This growth shows that more people want verified carbon credits. These credits promise permanent removal and follow strict environmental standards.
Microsoft and other big companies are investing in carbon removal technologies. These include direct air capture and reforestation, but solutions that use natural waste streams are seen as very promising.
Challenges in Scaling and the Road Ahead for CDR
Although promising, carbon removal at scale comes with challenges. Infrastructure investments are significant. Monitoring carbon permanence for centuries needs advanced technology and clear reporting. Moreover, collecting organic waste from different sources is tricky. It also involves transporting it to sequestration sites.
However, Vaulted Deep’s proven track record and ongoing expansion provide a positive blueprint for growth. Partnering with big companies like Microsoft gives them the cash and market access to speed up deployment.
In response to the CarbonCredits team queries, Bryan Epps, Head of Commercialization at Vaulted, shared the following:
Q: Given that Vaulted Deep’s process involves injecting organic waste deep underground for carbon sequestration, how do you ensure the long-term monitoring and verification of carbon permanence over the 1,000+ year timescale you mention, and how might this scalability model differ as you expand to new U.S. sites under the Microsoft agreement?
A: “Vaulted Deep’s permanence is independently verified by Isometric, our third-party carbon registry and MRV partner. Isometric’s Biomass Geological Storage protocol is purpose-built to evaluate geologic storage durability, and it requires rigorous site-specific modeling and lifecycle emissions accounting for every tonne of removal.
All of Vaulted’s sites are engineered for long-term containment based on each area’s unique geology, drawing on decades of best practices from industrial underground injection.
As we scale under the Microsoft agreement, these protocols carry forward. Each new site undergoes its own geologic validation, regulatory review, and third-party audit to ensure durable, verifiable sequestration.
Across all site types, Vaulted mitigates key risks to permanence (e.g., wellbore failure, migration through confining layers, methane re-emissions) through conservative injection design, site-specific modeling, and continuous subsurface monitoring.”
Q: Microsoft’s investment supports the removal of nearly 4.9 million tonnes of CO2 over 12 years—what are the key challenges Vaulted Deep anticipates in integrating your carbon removal solution across diverse waste streams from municipalities, industry, and agriculture, and how do you see this infrastructure-based approach complementing emerging technologies like direct air capture in the broader carbon removal ecosystem?
A: “Vaulted’s model is built around flexible waste management infrastructure. Our patented slurry injection technology can accept a wide range of organic wastes—from biosolids and manure to paper sludge and ag residues—many of which are too wet, contaminated, or variable for most other BiCRS or BECCS systems to handle.
The core challenge is ensuring each stream meets our standards for safety, flowability, and carbon density. To manage that, we’ve developed a rigorous waste qualification protocol, informed by real-world R&D at our Kansas site. Every waste stream is tested and optimized for injection performance, emissions profile, and net carbon value. This allows us to expand across industries and geographies while keeping MRV and environmental safety fully intact.
Our infrastructure-based approach doesn’t compete with direct air capture; it complements it. Vaulted addresses a different part of the problem: capturing and permanently storing biogenic carbon that’s already circulating in the economy, while eliminating pollutants in the process.
As the CDR ecosystem matures, we’ll need a portfolio of solutions: some pulling carbon from the atmosphere, others preventing it from ever reaching it. Our work focuses on the latter, with the added benefit of solving urgent waste and contaminant challenges for communities today.”
By combining climate impact with economic benefits for local communities, Vaulted Deep is positioned to be a key player in building an effective, durable carbon removal infrastructure in the United States.
FURTHER READING: Carbon Removal in 2025: Are You Investing in the Right Climate Credits?
The post Microsoft (MSFT Stock) and Vaulted Deep Team Up to Unlock Almost 5M Ton of Carbon Removal from Organic Waste appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
Net zero is often described as a balancing act: cut what you can, account for the rest, and reach zero on the ledger. That framing is useful, but it leaves something out. It treats every tonne of carbon as interchangeable and every route to zero as equally sound, while the science tells a more specific story.
Malawi has lost a striking share of its forests over the past three decades. Woodlands that once covered well over a third of the country now cover less than a quarter, and the pressure on what remains is increasing. Behind those figures sit two practical questions: what is driving the loss, and what reverses it?
-
Climate Change1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy10 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits