Google, Amazon, others team to cut climate "superpollutants"
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Corporate giants on Thursday unveiled a $100 million effort to stake projects that cut climate "superpollutants" like methane, black carbon and refrigerant gases.
Why it matters: These substances are "responsible for roughly half of all climate warming to date and can contribute to harmful air pollution," per the Superpollutant Action Initiative.
- Superpollutants are shorter-lived in the atmosphere than CO2 but have powerful near-term effects.
Driving the news: Participants include Amazon, Autodesk, Figma, Google, JPMorganChase, Salesforce, and Workday.
- The goal is $100 million in new finance through 2030, and the group is working with an array of outside partners.
- It's organized through the Beyond Alliance, an existing coalition of businesses and NGOs.
State of play: Randy Spock, Google's carbon credits and removals lead, cited potential project areas like cutting landfill methane and stemming the release of refrigerant gases when HVAC systems are replaced.
- He said corporate support can help facilitate significantly higher funding, and that the new initiative can go beyond Google's work on its own emissions.
"The goal is to be the most catalytic force we can in pinpointing and eliminating superpollutants around the world," he told Axios.
- "That means listening to a range of scientific experts about what is the right way to leverage this sort of catalytic initial contribution of these companies into change that can really make a difference on an atmospheric scale," he said.
What we're watching: The Beyond Alliance plans to work with the Carbon Containment Lab and other scientists to help guide corporate efforts. The nonprofit research lab was founded at Yale in 2020 and spun out in 2024.
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