In a recent announcement, CO280 and Aker Carbon Capture are partnering with Microsoft to supply considerable amounts of cost-effective and high-quality Carbon Dioxide Removals (CDRs) to the market. This brand-new collaboration aims to expand the entire carbon removal value chain by capturing and permanently storing biogenic CO2 at pulp and paper mills.
Aker Carbon Capture, previously a division of Aker Solutions, carries all the 20 years of Aker Solutions’ CCUS experience, experts, technology and project references.
Microsoft-Aker Carbon Capture- CO280 Partnership: Leveraging Expertise for Efficient Carbon Removal
The three companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to investigate possibilities for boosting the “physical and digital value chain of carbon removal” in the US and Canada.
The trio will powerfully leverage their cutting-edge technologies, robust knowledge, and ample resources to accelerate the transition to global net zero.
Furthermore, they plan to ramp up the market by creating scalable models to implement large-scale carbon removal projects.
Notably, the main aim of the partnership is to utilize the advantages of each to uplift the carbon ecosystem. The joint effort would inevitably boost high-quality carbon credits in the voluntary carbon market.
The tri-party has signed a MoU agreement that defines the significant elements related to the development and execution of carbon projects.
Supporting this landmark move, Egil Fagerland, CEO of Aker Carbon Capture, said,
“It’s time to move past the first-of-a-kind and the demonstration projects for carbon removal. The deployment rate needs to be accelerated by the hundreds to deliver the ‘net’ in net zero. We have demonstrated the strength of working together in the past, and we are excited to expand our collaboration with Microsoft and CO280 to further deliver impact.”
Unlocking the Key Areas of the Partnership as per the MoU
Aker Carbon Capture has rolled out the tri-party MoU that has highlighted the following areas they would be working on:
1. Exploring Biogenic Projects
Developing biogenic carbon capture projects, including projects currently in CO280’s development pipeline, as well as additional projects. Biogenic carbon projects include the C02 which is absorbed, stored, and emitted by organic matter like soil and trees. Hence, the pulp and paper industry is given priority.
2. Leveraging Joint Efforts of CO280 and ACC
CO280 will apply its expertise to develop a standard and efficient screening process for evaluating the technical and economic feasibility of carbon capture in pulp and paper mills. Subsequently, they will deploy Aker Carbon Capture’s hallmark “Just Catch” series.
Just Catch modular solutions facilitate rapid and large-scale deployment of capture technology. According to media reports, ACC currently delivers seven carbon capture units: five Just Catch 100 units to Ørsted, one Just Catch 100 unit to Twence and a Big Catch delivery to Heidelberg Materials at Brevik.
3. Utilizing Microsoft’s Premium Technology and Digital Solutions
Darryl Willis, Corporate Vice President of Energy and Resources Industry at Microsoft, noted,
“By leveraging the power of technology to create a digital value chain for carbon tracking and reporting, we can equip the market for high-integrity carbon removal credits and further enable the industrial sector to decarbonize.”
The collaboration aims to standardize lifecycle assessment (LCA) and measurement, verification, and reporting (MRV) systems for capture projects in pulp and paper.
It ambitiously seeks to leverage Microsoft’s digital capabilities, cloud computing platforms, services, and solutions. The MoU also defines creating a digital tool to compare CO280’s planned projects against Microsoft’s Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Removal.
4. Driving the Change through Leadership
Microsoft, the tech giant, along with ACC and CO280, the pioneers of carbon capture, have immense potential to kickstart this massive project.
The initiative promotes policies and displays bold leadership to boost the carbon capture market in the pulp and paper industry. This would automatically help create and utilize high-integrity carbon removal credits.
- MUST READ: Microsoft to Purchase 95,000 Biochar Carbon Removal Credits from The Next 150 • Carbon Credits
Harnessing North America’s Paper and Pulp Industry for CDR Projects
The pulp and paper industry in North America holds significant potential for carbon removal. It opens a window to remove up to 130 MT of CO2 annually. Furthermore, the paper and pulp industry has a unique emissions profile, where the average mill emits CO2 that is 80-90% biogenic in nature.
Biogenic CO2 emissions, originating from organic materials like wood, fiber, etc. offer a distinct advantage in carbon removal efforts.
By capturing and permanently storing these emissions, the industry can achieve negative emissions. This means that more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere than is being emitted during the production process.
This opportunity for negative emissions presents a pivotal pathway in combating climate change. Through advanced CCS technologies, the pulp and paper sector can play a crucial role in mitigating GHG emissions and contributing to global efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
Pulp and paper emissions intensity in the Net Zero Scenario, 2018-2030
NZE= Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario.
source: International Energy Agency (IEA)
Partnership Commitments: A Call to Action for Net-Zero Transition
Microsoft’s Ambition
In 2020, Microsoft announced ambitious carbon goals: to become carbon negativity by 2030 and eliminate its carbon footprint by 2050. The journey began with minimizing carbon emissions, transitioning to carbon-free energy, and actively removing remaining emissions. Since then, the company has been dedicated to establishing a robust market for carbon dioxide removals. Being powered by a digital value chain, it can accurately track carbon and generate credits efficiently.
source: Microsoft
CO280’s CDR Initiatives
CO280, the Vancouver-based company is a top developer of CDR projects within the pulp and paper sector. Through strategic partnerships within this industry, CO280 leads the development, financing, ownership, and operation of large-scale CDR initiatives.
Currently, the company boasts a robust pipeline of projects, with more than 10 million tons per year of permanent CDR under development. These projects signify a step forward to carbon neutrality and bring a meaningful change within the pulp and paper industry.
Jonathan Rhone, Chief Executive Officer of CO280, said,
“This commitment on the part of three best-in-class companies is exactly the kind of bold move the industry needs to unlock the enormous removal opportunity in the pulp and paper industry and scale up the CDR market. Together, we are developing the largest scale, lowest cost, permanent carbon removal projects in the world.”
ACC’s Unique CC technology
On the other side, Aker Carbon Capture (ACC), the Norway-based company offers its blueprint carbon capture (CC) technology to reduce and remove CO2 emissions from industrial plants. Their solution uses a mixture of water and organic amine solvents to absorb CO2. It is useful for various sectors such as gas, coal, cement, refineries, bio- and waste-to-energy, and hydrogen. Notably, this technology would be immensely beneficial in decarbonizing the paper and pulp industry.
To keep a strong foothold in the decarbonization race, Microsoft believes in collaborating with like-minded companies. All considered, this partnership with Aker Carbon Capture and CO280 holds great significance in realizing their vision of a net-zero future.
The post Microsoft Teams Up with Aker Carbon Capture and CO280 to Boost CDRs appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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