Google buys carbon credits from massive Amazon reforestation project

Google announced Thursday that it has purchased 200,000 metric tons of carbon removal from Mombak, a forest restoration company based in Brazil. The project will purchase agricultural land in the Amazon and reforest it.

The deal was made through the Symbiosis Alliance, a pre-market commitment aimed at developing a market for nature-based decarbonisation plans backed by Google, McKinsey, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce. The Symbiosis Coalition is similar to Frontier, an advanced market commitment also backed by Google and others that support live-air capture projects.

Nature-based carbon removal shows great promise in reducing carbon dioxide₂ Atmospheric levels, but the projects were difficult to develop and sell for a variety of reasons. Nature-based projects risk failing to achieve their goals if they are damaged by wildfires or other disasters, and their long-term viability can be difficult to ensure.

However, they come with several positives: forests can replenish aquifers and support biodiversity, and direct air capture can do neither. Google said it will use DeepMind PerchAI to help determine the biodiversity benefits of the project.