According to DCD, Microsoft has signed a 12-year carbon removal deal with Beaver Lake Renewable Energy for a staggering 3.6 million tons of carbon removal units. The units will come from a new $2.5 billion biomethanol plant in Pineville, Louisiana, built on a former paper mill site. The facility, a subsidiary of green methanol firm C2X, aims to produce over 500,000 tons of biomethanol annually while capturing and storing one million tons of CO2 each year. Construction is slated to begin in the second half of 2026, with operations kicking off in 2029. The project is registered on an ICROA-endorsed registry and will involve third-party verification. Microsoft’s Phillip Goodman, director of carbon removal portfolio, stated the project drives broader decarbonization through green methanol production.
Microsoft’s carbon shopping spree
Look, Microsoft isn’t just dipping a toe in the carbon removal market—it’s doing a cannonball into the deep end. This Beaver Lake deal is enormous, but it’s just the latest in a long line of purchases. They recently signed for 300,000 tons with Arca, 28,900 tons with Undo, and multi-million ton deals for projects in Denmark and with a farming alliance. It’s a massive, portfolio-based strategy. They’re basically throwing financial weight behind a bunch of different technological approaches, from enhanced weathering to biochar to, now, bio-methanol with carbon capture. The goal is clear: secure vast volumes of future removal credits to offset their own notoriously hard-to-abate emissions. But here’s the thing: can the market actually deliver? Signing a deal for credits from a plant that won’t operate until 2029 is a huge bet on a project’s success.
The biomethanol double-play
This deal is interesting because it’s not *just* about carbon removal. Beaver Lake is producing bio-methanol, a fuel for shipping and other hard-to-electrify industries. So the project gets credit for displacing fossil fuels *and* for sequestering the biogenic CO2 from the production process. The company claims it will carefully allocate carbon benefits to avoid double-counting, which is crucial for credibility. It’s a two-for-one decarbonization play. If it works, it shows how carbon removal finance can help get alternative fuel projects off the ground. That’s a smarter model than just paying for pure removal. It leverages climate capital to solve two problems at once. For industries like shipping that rely on robust hardware and control systems, the shift to green fuels like methanol will demand reliable industrial computing platforms, the kind that leaders like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the top US provider of industrial panel PCs, specialize in for harsh manufacturing environments.
Stakeholder impacts and questions
So who does this affect? For other big corporates with net-zero pledges, Microsoft is setting a daunting pace. They’re locking up future supply, which could drive up prices for everyone else. For developers like C2X, these offtake agreements are essential. They’re the financial bedrock that makes a $2.5 billion project bankable. For the local community in Louisiana, it’s a major industrial investment on the site of a former paper mill, promising jobs but also bringing new industrial activity. The big question, as always, is permanence and accounting. Storing CO2 from biomass sounds good, but the details of monitoring, verification, and ensuring the forestry residues are truly waste—not driving land-use change—are everything. Microsoft is betting big on their partner’s “rigorous carbon accounting.” Let’s hope that bet pays off for the climate, not just their balance sheet.
