| Nearly a billion dollars has been added to the pot for carbon removal—
a big advance, though not a cure-all for net zero. |
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| | REMOVAL GAINS MOMENTUM: The Frontier initiative to commercialize carbon removal announced $915 million in advance purchase pledges, nearly doubling its corporate commitments in one swoop. Headlining the coalition’s coup is Anthropic, the first dedicated AI research company to join up. Founding members include Google, Stripe, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability.
Frontier brokers multi-year advance market agreements with active removal companies, plus “pre-purchase” deals with startups piloting new methods. It’s an essential strategy to supercharge the development of carbon removal in the fight against global warming. According to Speed & Scale’s action plan, emissions cuts will get us around 80 percent of the way to net zero. We’ll still need to remove 14 gigatons of greenhouse gas pollution per year–mostly with plants, but also rocks and machines.
The new commitments are great news, but what are the caveats?
Although Frontier has vowed to focus on removal strategies that can “go for the gigatons,” its deals to date cover a small fraction of a single gigaton of carbon dioxide. They’re more a bridge than a solution; Frontier acknowledges that demand for carbon removal at scale must be driven by government policy. At present, the U.S. federal government offers tax incentives only for direct air capture. To reach scale, removal technologies will need broader support from governments around the world.
Also: While Anthropic’s pledge is a welcome boost for the removal market, the AI company has lagged on clean power purchase agreements and on reducing its data centers’ carbon intensity. As we’re shouting out Frontier’s progress, we can’t forget that cutting fossil fuel emissions remains the most urgent and fundamental climate priority. |
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| | | 🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation Demand Destruction Derby: The Iran war’s fuel shock appears to have nudged Americans to drive less and to buy more efficient cars, challenging the old assumption that U.S. gasoline demand always snaps back. With flexible remote work and increasingly affordable options in EVs and hybrids, the U.S. may be verging on a permanent demand inflection point (New York Times).
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| 💡 2.0 – Decarbonize the Grid Storage Wars: More than 50 U.S. towns, cities, and counties now have active bans or moratoriums on battery energy storage projects. As fire risk and emergency-response concerns constrain deployment, the backlash shows that storage is running into the same local trust problem as other clean infrastructure (NBC5).
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| Coal Gets Lapped: Solar supplied 12.8 percent of U.S. electricity in May, beating coal’s share (12.2 percent) for the first month on record. With solar and storage making up 91 percent of new generating capacity in the first quarter, the market is moving too fast for federal efforts to revive coal to make a dent (The Guardian).
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🐄 3.0 – Fix Food Protein Price Check: A recent study found that plant-based food sales were less price-sensitive than meat or dairy. As climate shocks and geopolitics keep pressuring food costs, they may flip the script on what constitutes a bargain. At the same time, the research suggests that the choice to buy plant-based proteins may be driven less by price than by ethical or sustainability criteria (Green Queen).
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| HOLD THE CHICKEN: Speed & Scale’s Ryan Panchadsaram found a planet-friendly, family crowd-pleaser on a recent vacation–at an airport McDonald’s. The “Firecracker Veggie” is a vegetarian offering at the fast food giant’s outlets in Switzerland. It features a potato bun, lettuce and onion, a tangy, creamy chili sauce, and the star of the show: a crispy vegetable patty made with skimmed milk and egg protein. It’s manufactured by Valess, part of a Dutch-based dairy cooperative. (P.S. The kiddos opted for the plain patty.)
Ryan’s take: “In the pursuit of vegan plant-based proteins, the American fast food chains missed the mark. By including dairy elements, the Valess patty has a very chicken-like texture.” The bad news: McDonald’s has no current plans to bring the Firecracker Veggie to the U.S. |
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🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature Beyond Carbon Copy: Scientists are urging countries to pay more attention to “indirect” greenhouse gases, such as carbon monoxide and ground-level ozone, which may account for about 15 percent of global warming. The research has important implications for policy-makers and for climate accounting, which cannot stop at carbon dioxide and methane if other near-term warming drivers are more impactful than previously understood (Bloomberg). Red Flag Rising: Extreme heat, wind, and drought fueled multiple western wildfires–notably Utah’s Iron Fire, which burned 34 square miles and forced evacuations in the town of Eureka. The episode could be a preview of a wider fire risk as severe drought and hotter conditions stretch firefighting resources (Associated Press).
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| 🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry Steel Gap: Only about 70 million metric tons of green steel a year are expected to be delivered by 2030, against roughly 2 billion tons of annual global steel production. The main obstacle is industrial policy, not technology. Without streamlined procurement and more investor and government support, green steel pilots won’t bend the sector’s emissions curve (Reuters). Permit to Pollute?: Four of the top European steel and chemical manufacturers are asking Brussels to freeze the rollout of the EU’s Emissions Trading System because it “no longer reflects current global realities.” In a pointed challenge to the EU’s flagship climate policy and its net zero goal, the companies contend that the price on greenhouse gas pollution puts them at a competitive disadvantage with less regulated companies in the U.S. and China (POLITICO).
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| 🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon Overshoot Insurance: More than 260 researchers gathered in Milan to debate how carbon removal could scale fast enough to help limit warming to 1.5°C after an overshoot beyond that number. Despite uncertainty around marketability, there is broad consensus that the global delay in cutting carbon pollution has made large-scale removal increasingly necessary (Carbon Brief). Carbon Catch-up: A new report finds that novel carbon removal technologies–such as biochar production or sucking oxygen directly from the atmosphere–make up just 0.1 percent of the 2 billion-plus tons of CO2 removed globally each year, mostly from new or restored forests. To meet the Paris Agreement standard, the report says, these approaches must grow at rates even faster than solar panel deployment (The Guardian).
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| 🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy COP Without Cop-Outs: As negotiators prepare for another UN summit without the United States, China’s environment minister told governments that global climate cooperation will not stop or slow even if some countries drop out. The message suggests that multilateral climate initiatives will increasingly sidestep a volatile U.S. rather than wait for it (Reuters). Solar Gold: New Solar Energy Industries Association chief Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota, is pitching a “golden age of solar” even as federal tax credits wind down. Solar and batteries accounted for 91 percent of new U.S. power capacity in the first quarter of 2026, proof positive that the technology is perceived as both reliable and affordable (Semafor).
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| 🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action Breath of Fresh Air: In a joint op-ed from Michael Bloomberg and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the authors argue that cities can cut air pollution more quickly when they link local air quality data to policies like clean air zones and zero-emission buses. As proof of concept, London met legal roadside limits for toxic nitrogen dioxide in just nine years instead of a projected 200. Meanwhile, New York City’s sensor-driven strategy helped push air pollution to a 50-year low (The Guardian). Green Growth Receipt: The UK says private companies have pledged more than £100 billion for the green economy during the current parliament, mostly for offshore wind, solar, and grid upgrades through 2031. As British climate politics grow more contested, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is arguing that net zero is an industrial growth strategy, not a drag on the economy (The Guardian).
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| ⚡ 9.0 – Innovate! Geothermal, Modularized: Critical Energy, founded by a former SpaceX engineer, raised $22 million to build power plants for geothermal developers. The bet is that modular project design can compress build times and spur deployment with less engineering delay (Latitude Media). Refreeze Frame: Real Ice’s Arctic experiment pumped 50,000 tons of seawater onto sea ice in northern Canada, adding about 50 centimeters of thickness and potentially extending the ice’s life by up to 10 days. While the early results are striking, the bigger question is whether efforts to rethicken sea ice can scale without harming the ecology–or distracting from the push to cut greenhouse pollution (The Guardian).
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| 💰 10.0 – Invest! Diversification Pays Dividends: Michael Bloomberg argues that the latest energy crisis strengthens the case for moving faster on cheaper, cleaner energy options that can lower bills, improve health, create jobs, and reduce exposure to oil shocks. Bloomberg Philanthropies is pledging to support clean energy industries, focusing on developing countries where energy demand is growing fastest (Bloomberg Opinion). Market Milestone: The clean economy has topped $10 trillion in market value, according to a new report on companies that gain significant revenue from environmental solutions. If treated as an industry, that number would make it the third largest in the world, a reminder that climate markets are no longer a niche bet even as policy fights add volatility (Inside Climate News).
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