Verdane, a European specialist growth equity investor, has committed to neutralise all its future residual emissions with engineered, permanent carbon removals, essentially extracting CO2 out of the air and either storing it or converting it to naturally occurring materials such as stone.
As the first private equity investor globally to make this commitment, Verdane aims to catalyse demand for crucial net zero technologies that urgently need to be scaled and brought down the cost curve.
To accelerate the progression toward global net zero, Verdane is partnering with three highly respected carbon removal service providers: Climeworks, a Swiss firm operating the world’s first large-scale direct air capture and storage plant, called Orca, to turn CO2 to stone through rapid underground mineralisation with the help of its partner Carbfix; Heirloom, a San Francisco-based firm aiming to remove 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2035 using naturally occurring minerals; and neustark, a Swiss company operating the world’s first value chain for storage of biogenic CO2 in demolition concrete.
Verdane is starting with an initial purchase covering its 2022 and 2023 Scope 1-3 forecasted remaining emissions. As demand for carbon removal technologies is still developing and providers are ramping up neutralisation capabilities, the removal will be spread over several years, covering several thousand tonnes of CO2 at an average cost in the three-digit euro range per tonne.
