US banking giant announces plans to invest in carbon removal technologies with a view to removing and storing 800,000 tonnes of atmospheric CO2

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase has become the latest major brand to announce a series of carbon removal investments, confirming yesterday it has signed long-term agreements to purchase more than $200m of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credits.

The US bank revealed the new deals include a nine-year agreement with Climeworks to deliver carbon removal services for 25,000 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (mtCO2e) and a long-term agreement with CO280 Solutions to purchase up to 30,000 mtCO?e of CDR credits a year for up to 15 years, totalling 450,000 mtCO?e of carbon removals.

JPMorgan also confirmed it has made a $75m funding pledge to the Frontier initiative - the coalition of leading tech and finance firms working to accelerate the development of the fledgling carbon removals market by guaranteeing future demand. It said it has committed to purchase $50m of durable, high-quality CDR credits to offset its own operational emissions and will provide its clients with access to $25m of credits to help them meet their own climate targets.

In addition, the bank announced it has agreed to purchase bio-oil credits from US-based CDR group Charm for the removal and storage of approximately 28,585 mtCO?e over five years.

JPMorgan estimated that the various agreements could remove and store as much as 800,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (mtCO?e) from the atmosphere, hailing the deals as one of the largest carbon removal purchases to date.

In addition the bank said the agreements would enable it to match every ton of its unabated direct operational emissions with durable carbon removal credits by 2030, in conjunction with its wider operational sustainability efforts to cut its emissions at source.

"These agreements reflect our ambition to support scale, innovation and evolution in these technologies," said Ashley Bacon, chief risk officer at JPMorgan Chase. "Alongside reducing emissions, the world needs significant investment in durable carbon removal solutions with gigaton-scale potential."

Daniel Pinto, president and chief operating officer at the bank, said the deals were also designed to have a catalysing impact on the nascent carbon removals industry.

"Financing promising technologies needed to help accelerate the low-carbon transition requires capital and expertise," he said. "We're working to drive scalable development of carbon removal and storage as commercial solutions and aim to send a strong market signal."

JPMorgan Chase also published a new white paper alongside the announcement of its CDR deals, which summarises its perspective on the role the voluntary market can play in the net zero transition, as well as current market challenges, and how it plans to support and leverage a more effective carbon market.

"The voluntary carbon market needs science-based and equitable criteria to ensure carbon credits represent genuine emissions reduction or removal," said Taylor Wright, head of strategy, operational sustainability and carbon management at JPMorgan Chase.

"That is why we support the transparency efforts of organisations like the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets and are working with Carbon Direct, as we seek to deliver on a science-driven strategy for carbon management."

JPMorgan added that it has an overall goal of targeting to finance and facilitate $1tr for green initiatives by 2030 to reduce the environmental impact of its operations as well as support its clients' transition to a lower carbon economy.

The bank's announcements represent the latest in a string of investments in the carbon removals market - in the last week alone both Microsoft and Frontier have confirmed major new investments in negative emissions projects.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned it is highly likely that negative emissions capacity will be essential if the global climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement are to be met.

But some environmental campaigners remain wary about the emergence of the carbon removal sector, questioning its scalability, efficacy, and the risk of its distracting from the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions at source.