A few weeks ago, Robinson Meyer started hearing about a huge story on his beat.

The news that Microsoft was pulling back from the carbon removal business.

You know, sometimes you just get a call or a text as a journalist,

and then you make some other calls and you find out.

Robinson is the founding executive editor of HeatMap News.

He's been covering climate and energy for a long time.

Once he had nailed down his scoop, he published.

You know, it was a big deal in the carbon removal community, such as it is, and we could talk about that. It came out late on a Friday, and I heard about it that Friday morning. We had our editorial meeting, and I actually didn't even know we were going to do the story that when we had our 11 a.m. editorial meeting, and the story was up by 5.30. So this was a big enough deal that you guys moved fast?

Yeah, in our little world, which has big implications, yes, it was a big enough deal that I moved pretty fast, yeah.

If this all sounds a little academic, I need you to understand that Microsoft, the giant tech company,

is perhaps the biggest player in the carbon removal market.

That's the business of getting carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it.

It's a key part of climate change mitigation.

Microsoft has purchased 75 million tons of carbon removal.

Yeah, 75 million tons.

The next biggest buyer of carbon removal globally is a coalition of companies that includes McKinsey and Google and for a time meta and the payments processing firm Stripe called

Frontier.

And Frontier a few years ago decided they were going to support

carbon removal as a field. They've purchased 1.8 million tons. So they bought 1.8 million tons

and they are the second largest buyer. Microsoft has bought 75 million tons and they are the largest

buyer. Microsoft has bought, you know, 40 times, 50 times more of this stuff than anyone

else. So what happens now? Today on the show, Microsoft is backing away from carbon removal.

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