Although the primary drivers to meet the 1.5-degree pathway set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are carbon emissions avoidance and emissions reductions to a near-zero level, carbon removal is increasingly being identified as a crucial part of the equation in limiting global warming. Carbon removal entails removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it somewhere environmentally safe, such as in rocks, in oceans, or underground.
Frontier is the $925 million advance market commitment (AMC) to purchase permanent carbon removal before 2030, by McKinsey Sustainability in partnership with fellow founders Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify and Meta.
Frontier aims to accelerate the development of permanent carbon removal technologies and expand the global supply of carbon removal, by guaranteeing future demand. The initiative intends to send a strong signal to researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors that there is a market for carbon removal and to begin building now.
Frontier can play an important role in helping scale the technologies needed to remove carbon from the atmosphere, which, in combination with significant emissions reduction, is crucial to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C.