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LONDON – Insurance company Swiss Ray and banking giant UBS are among five founding buyers of credit from a project set up by a Swiss company to reduce the cost of emitting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Even with the promise of massive reductions in emissions, many scientists believe that it would be necessary to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using forestry and technology to meet the global goals set out under the Paris Climate Agreement to combat climate change.
The developer of the Swiss carbon project NextGen facility in the South Pole has committed to purchase 1 million carbon removal credits from various projects by 2025 to provide them with a safe revenue stream and reduce the cost of technology.
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“With this we can begin to take these technologies below the cost curve, ideally the price levels you see today will be similar to what we saw with Solar PV,” South Pole CEO Renat Huberger told Reuters in an interview.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, with the development of technology and supply chains, the cost of solar PV modules for renewable solar energy has decreased by almost 90% since the end of 2009.
The cost of current carbon removal technology can be around $ 50 to $ 400 per ton, depending on the type of project.
Among the founding buyers of NextGen were Boston Consulting Group, private banking firm LGT, shipping company Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL), Swiss Ray and UBS, South Pole, without mentioning how much credit each company was committed to or at what price.
Many companies have set emissions reduction targets for which they must purchase carbon offset or removal credit so that they can compensate for emissions that they cannot deduct themselves.
“This effort is part of MOL’s broader goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050,” Takeshi Hashimoto, president and CEO of Mitsui OSK Lines, Ltd., said in a statement. (Reporting by Susanna Tweedel, edited by Mark Potter)