Screenshot of The Economist article with a headline can the can the voluntary carbon market save the amazon Screenshot - The Economist

This paragraph caught my eye in a recent article in The Economist about the voluntary carbon market:

"Microsoft enjoys monopsony* power in carbon removal. The firm, which has bought credits to remove at least 5m tonnes of carbon dioxide, has a department dedicated to finding projects. Smaller companies, by contrast, will struggle to do the same."

The Economist - Can the voluntary carbon market save the amazon

The article highlights one of the reasons we’re building Glad:

Carbon removal should not be the sole domain of big corporations with “dedicated departments sourcing projects”

There’s nothing wrong them doing so of course, it’s great that they are using their heft to actively help stimulate and grow the carbon removal market.

But we need to remove gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. Not millions of tonnes.

To scale the demand for carbon removal to the level of gigatonnes we need more than just the odd mega-corp doing their bit.

We need all businesses of all sizes.

That’s were Glad comes in.

We help businesses that don’t have their own “departments dedicated to finding carbon removal projects”, but who do want to play their part in fixing climate change. We help by giving these businesses a simple way to access the carbon removal market.

Businesses join Glad and make monthly contributions. We pool those contributions and buy carbon removal from carefully selected suppliers as part of a blended portfolio.

Glad members get a simple way to have a positive impact, access to increased buying power (thanks to pooling resources), a way to reduce purchasing risk, and a sharable “Glad Impact Record” that shows their company’s impact in realtime.

The carbon removal market gets a boost from another source of funds and - most importantly! - the planet gets cleaner.

Win. Win. Win.

Where Microsoft are leading the way, we need others to follow - in their droves - to break their “monopsony power”.

What are your thoughts on this? How do we get more businesses contributing to carbon removal? Join the conversation on LinkedIn

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*I had to look up the word “monopsony”; “A market situation where there is only one buyer”.