Today, Watershed is expanding our partnership with Frontier, a $1B+ advance market commitment to buy permanent carbon removal. Our partnership, first announced in January, broadens access to climate-critical permanent carbon removal technologies by enabling buy-in for Watershed customers at a wider range of commitment sizes.
Joining the first group of Watershed customers to participate—Boom Supersonic, Canva, SKIMS, and Zendesk—are Aledade, a company that helps primary care practices join and lead accountable care organizations, and Wise, a London-based global technology company focused on moving and managing money.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of experts convened by the United Nations, has estimated that the world will need around 3.8 billion tons of carbon removal annually by 2050 to reach net zero targets. Frontier’s goal is to send a strong demand signal to researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors that there is a growing market for permanent carbon removal. It was founded by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey Sustainability.
“We’re delighted to expand our partnership with Frontier to allow more companies to support the most promising carbon removal technologies,” said Watershed co-founder Christian Anderson. “In addition to reducing emissions, removing carbon from the Earth's atmosphere is critical to meeting our climate goals, and we commend these customers on taking action to help grow the vital carbon removal field.”
“We know the health of our environment is inextricably linked to the health of our society," said Farzad Mostashari, CEO and Co-Founder of Aledade. "Becoming carbon neutral as a company was an important first step, and now we are excited to further build on our leading ESG strategy by investing in long-term, strategic and innovative organizations committed to carbon removal. This is critical to our mission and core to our values. We're thrilled to advance our commitment alongside Watershed and Frontier."
“Wise is proud to be furthering our partnership with Watershed by participating in Frontier as it helps to accelerate permanent carbon removal," said Harsh Sinha, Chief Technology Officer at Wise. "As a mission driven company, we are guided by the needs of our customers and know climate action is important to them. We look forward to supporting the transformative climate technologies Frontier is spearheading.”
Also today, Autodesk, H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase, and Workday announced today that they are joining Frontier. The new members will commit to purchase a combined $100M of permanent, high-quality carbon removal over the next eight years, bringing Frontier’s total advance market commitment to over $1B.
Frontier’s team of technical and commercial experts facilitates purchases from high-potential carbon removal companies on behalf of buyers. Frontier’s supplier companies leverage technologies including biomass burial, direct air capture, enhanced weathering, and more. Frontier has a rigorous, science-backed vetting process for their suppliers. They control for length of carbon storage, physical footprint, cost, scalability and capacity, net carbon negativity, additionality, scientific verifiability, environmental justice concerns, and safety and legality.
