Google, McKinsey strike Brazil carbon removal deal with silvopasture project
By Gabriel Araujo
SAO PAULO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Google and McKinsey have agreed to buy 320,000 metric tons of carbon removal credits over 10 years in its first-ever silvopasture project, as part of its commitments through the Symbiosis Coalition, in what is an emerging approach to climate mitigation.
The long-term purchase agreements announced on Monday will support an effort by Working Trees, a climate technology company, to convert degraded cattle pasture into mixed-species systems across Brazil's southeastern Amazon and Cerrado regions, the coalition said.
Silvopasture integrates trees into cattle pastures, allowing ranching to continue while boosting carbon sequestration and reducing pressure for deforestation.
The deal will help fund the restoration of 8,700 hectares (21,500 acres) of degraded and semi-degraded pastureland as part of a broader 50,000-hectare project and is one of the first attempts to deploy carbon-funded silvopasture at a larger scale.
"Silvopasture, within the various different approaches for sequestering carbon via natural systems, is one of the pathways with the most promising potential for scale. And carbon finance has a role to play in financing that solution," Julia Strong, executive director of the Symbiosis Coalition, told Reuters.
The coalition, whose members include Alphabet's GOOGL.O Google, Microsoft MSFT.O, Meta META.O and Salesforce CRM.N, focuses on long-term carbon offset contracts, with pledges for more than 20 million tons of offsets by 2030.
Working Trees plants rows of commercial timber and native tree species directly into existing cattle pasture, leaving space for grazing.
The company says the model improves cattle productivity while generating future timber revenue that encourages landowners to maintain the systems after carbon-credit income declines.
"This project and the potential to scale to millions of hectares in this part of Brazil is a really exciting opportunity to showcase what good looks like," Strong said, adding that Working Trees had demonstrated the model through a pilot project.
Working Trees Chief Executive Leif Gonzales-Kramer said the long-term purchase commitments were critical to unlocking investment for such projects.
"If you believe that the world will continue to eat beef and that the world will take climate action seriously, the only way that you can actually achieve both at the same time is through silvopasture," he said.
Brazil's nascent carbon market has attracted increased interest from investors and lenders as companies seek high-quality carbon-removal projects to meet climate goals.
Technology companies, in particular, are looking for ways to offset emissions linked to the rapid expansion of energy-intensive artificial intelligence infrastructure. Some critics, however, say the offsets allow polluters to avoid reducing their emissions.