JPMorgan Chase invests $200 mn on carbon removal

JPMorgan Chase invests $200 mn on carbon removal
by AFP Staff Writers
New York (AFP) May 23, 2023

JPMorgan Chase announced Tuesday it has signed long-term agreements to purchase $200 million worth of carbon dioxide removal, saying the investment would boost a key emerging climate change solution.

The agreements will lead to removal and storage of 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, enabling the bank to match its direct emissions by 2030, JPMorgan said in a news release.

Actions under the plan include a series of agreements with carbon removal companies, as well as financial commitments to carbon market intermediaries to bolster key technology investments.

"Financing promising technologies needed to help accelerate the low-carbon transition requires capital and expertise," said JPMorgan Chase President Daniel Pinto.

"We're working to drive scalable development of carbon removal and storage as commercial solutions and aim to send a strong market signal."

The initiative represents one of the larger commitments thus far by a large company on carbon removal. The biggest programs have been Microsoft's project to remove 2.8 million tons of carbon, followed by Airbus with 400,000 tons, according to cdr.fyi, a website that tracks the carbon removal market.

Under one of the projects announced Tuesday, JPMorgan signed a nine-year agreement with Climeworks to deliver 25,000 metric tons of carbon removal.

The agreement marks a milestone in promoting "the scale up on high-quality carbon removal solutions," said Christoph Gebald, co-CEO of Climeworks.

The announcement comes as JPMorgan and other giant firms also face calls for more aggressive efforts to address climate change, such as an immediate phase-down of fossil fuels.

At JPMorgan's annual meeting last week, the Sierra Club Foundation offered a resolution calling on the bank to establish "time-bound phase out" of lending to oil and gas projects and noting that JPMorgan provided over $382 billion in lending and underwriting between 2016 and 2021.

But JPMorgan said that while it supports clean energy solutions, "an abrupt withdrawal from financing new oil and natural gas projects would not be prudent," as it urged shareholders to reject the measure, citing the need to balance energy security, economic and environmental priorities.

The measure garnered just eight percent of the votes by shareholders.