New deal demonstrates opportunity to scale finance for carbon removals

• Standard Chartered, British Airways, CUR8, CFC and WTW have delivered a global first transaction to unlock finance for UNDO, a UK-founded carbon removal project developer. 
• This breakthrough transaction creates a bridge to bankability for credible climate technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere, paving the way to scale finance for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) projects elsewhere.
• Alongside emissions reductions, carbon removals have a critical role to play in efforts to achieve net zero. The IPCC has outlined that all pathways that limit global warming to 1.5 degrees will require carbon dioxide removals at a massive scale.
• Standard Chartered, British Airways, CUR8, CFC, WTW and UNDO now call for a step-change in efforts to scale the market for carbon removals, which requires billions of dollars of private capital to flow towards high-quality projects.

London – Standard Chartered, British Airways, CUR8, CFC and WTW today announce the completion of a global first transaction to unlock finance for UNDO, a UK-founded carbon removal project developer specialising in enhanced rock weathering. The breakthrough transaction, which specifically provides debt financing for UNDO, now paves the way to scale finance for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) projects elsewhere.

The precise and novel structure of the transaction helps to overcome significant barriers when providing finance to carbon removal project developers like UNDO. It separates the cost of a project from the sale of its credits, giving the project developer financial flexibility, while reducing risks relating to delivery. In developing this financing solution, Standard Chartered, British Airways and CUR8, alongside CFC and WTW, as specialist insurance providers, have procured a multi-year removals offtake, with Standard Chartered providing the debt financing needed to help UNDO scale up its activities.

The approach shows significant potential for scale across removal methods by unlocking the smaller amounts of finance needed for projects, and helping to de-risk finance through guaranteed offtake agreements that deliver the upfront capital required to scale supply. It paves the way for an increase in carbon removal sales, by lowering the barriers to entry for buyers.

Marisa Drew, Chief Sustainability Officer, Standard Chartered, said: “In the field of sustainability, we will need innovation and experimentation to be applied toward our hardest to abate sectors.  In these spaces, novel financial solutions and partnerships are key to unlocking opportunities that have scale potential. This transaction provides a bridge to bankability for high quality carbon removal projects and creates a solution that can be replicated across the airline industry to help ramp up a robust carbon removals market and accelerate ambition to achieve net zero.”

CDR refers to technologies and practices that remove and durably store CO₂ from the atmosphere. These solutions are needed to neutralise residual and historic emissions and do not substitute emissions reductions. Today, roughly 3% of credits on the carbon market are classified as removals.[1]

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we need to be capable of annually removing upwards of up to 10 billion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere every year to reach net zero by 2050.[2] Conventional CDR methods currently remove 2 billion metric tonnes of CO₂ per year, pointing to an urgent need to scale durable and novel CDR methods. This scale up will require billions of dollars of private capital to flow towards high-quality projects and so testing bankable models is a critical unlock for the industry overall.

Marta Krupinska, CEO and Co-Founder, CUR8, said: “Building a trillion-dollar carbon removals market requires fit-for-purpose financial infrastructure, and we’re delighted to have created a mechanism to unlock finance at scale for carbon removals. We hope that this deal creates a flywheel effect whereby buyers can access highest quality carbon removals, de-risked by CUR8’s due diligence, with low upfront costs. With this first-of-a-kind transaction, we want to demonstrate that financing not only makes carbon removal more affordable, but also reduces buyer delivery risk, which stands to drive demand and scale this industry at the rate that it needs to.”

Carrie Harris, Director of Sustainability, British Airways, said: “Carbon removals are vital for urgently reducing the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and meeting global net zero emissions. At British Airways, they form a key part of our roadmap to reach our climate goals. We’re therefore delighted that this pilot has succeeded and whilst our initial purchase was relatively small, the partnership hopes to demonstrate the art of the possible and unlock future investment in carbon removals to help accelerate the scale-up of carbon removals solutions.”

George Beattie, Head of Innovation, CFC, said: “It is clear that the private sector has a vital role to play in helping achieve our climate goals, with the IMF estimating the world will need to invest $2 trillion annually into carbon removal to reach net zero by 2050. CFC has been delighted to collaborate with Standard Chartered and key partners on this transaction. The closure of this groundbreaking deal paves the way for one of the biggest lending opportunities for banks and financial institutions in history in the global drive to address climate change. Insurance can play an essential role in helping banks and institutions to de-risk these financing activities, and in the process drive more lending and finance to the high-quality carbon removal projects.”

Oliver Colman, Director, Financial Solutions, WTW, said: “Carbon removal methods play a pivotal role in combatting climate change, which need to scale at pace to support global climate commitments. These groundbreaking projects require equally innovative financing and insurance solutions to match. WTW is proud to have worked with all key stakeholders in this achievement to help inventive climate technologies and concepts become reality, in turn driving the development of sustainable solutions into the future.”

Jim Mann, Founder and CEO, UNDO, said: “Enhanced rock weathering represents one of the most robust carbon dioxide removal solutions available today because it is permanent, highly scalable, and provides a host of co-benefits. Sectors like the aviation industry will require large amounts of high-quality carbon removal to meet their net zero commitments. UNDO and the carbon removal market need many more progressive partnerships like this to scale and meet the IPCC’s carbon removal goal of 10 billion tonnes a year by 2050.”

A CDR industry capable of delivering gigaton-scale removals could be worth up to $1.2 trillion by 2050.[3] To meet this potential, intervention is needed from investors, suppliers, buyers, traders, and other stakeholders, to help identify solutions that will help to scale the market.

–ENDS–

Notes to editors

For further information please contact:

Charlotte Love
Director, Sustainability Communications
Standard Chartered
charlotte.love@sc.com

About CUR8

Founded by serial fintech entrepreneur Marta Krupinska, renowned climate scientist Dr. Gabrielle Walker and systems change expert Mark Stevenson, CUR8 is the market maker for carbon removals. CUR8’s due diligence and monitoring underpins its ability to provide high-quality carbon removals portfolios that allow organisations to plot a path to genuine net zero. By carefully procuring projects from selected global suppliers across the spectrum of nature and technology, including high-quality afforestation, durable soil carbon, biochar, enhanced weathering and direct air capture, CUR8 is supporting new startups and methods that will make a difference to the climate crisis. CUR8 is on a mission to facilitate 1 billion tonnes of carbon removals annually by 2050. Notable clients that CUR8 have worked with so far include London Marathon Events, The O2 Arena, Levy UK, All Points East Festival and British Summer Time, as well as Royal events such as The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant and The Queen’s Funeral. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About British Airways

British Airways recognises that flying comes at an environmental cost and acknowledges the need for urgent action to tackle the impact flying currently has on the planet. The airline was part of the first airline group to commit to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The airline is committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions through a series of short-, medium- and long-term initiatives. In the short-term this includes improving operational efficiency, introducing new fuel efficient aircraft, and progressively introducing sustainable aviation fuels using waste feedstocks, while in the medium to longer term this includes continuing to invest in the development and scale up of sustainable aviation fuel and looking at accelerating the growth of new technologies such as zero emissions hydrogen-powered aircraft and carbon capture technology. More details on British Airways’ sustainability programme, BA Better World can be found here. British Airways’ sustainability factsheet can be found here.

About UNDO

UNDO is a pioneering nature-based carbon dioxide removal company with an ambition to remove over one billion tonnes of atmospheric CO₂ in accessible, affordable, nature-friendly ways. Since 2022, UNDO has worked at the cutting edge of science alongside experts in the climate, carbon and agricultural sectors to develop an enhanced rock weathering technology which accelerates natural weathering processes to remove carbon from the atmosphere while bringing soil and crop benefits to agricultural communities. The UNDO operational, scientific and technical model leverages existing infrastructure, with a carbon efficiency of greater than 90 percent, allowing UNDO to quickly scale operations whilst offering carbon removal at competitive prices.

About CFC

CFC is a specialist insurance provider, pioneer in emerging risk and market leader in cyber. Our global insurance platform uses cutting-edge technology and data science to deliver smarter, faster underwriting and protect customers from today’s most critical business risks.

Headquartered in London with offices in New York, San Francisco, Austin, Toronto, Brussels, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, CFC has over 1000 employees and is trusted by more than 150,000 businesses in 90 countries. Learn more at cfc.com and LinkedIn.

About WTW

At WTW (NASDAQ: WTW), we provide data-driven, insight-led solutions in the areas of people, risk and capital. Leveraging the global view and local expertise of our colleagues serving 140 countries and markets, we help organizations sharpen their strategy, enhance organizational resilience, motivate their workforce and maximize performance.

Working shoulder to shoulder with our clients, we uncover opportunities for sustainable success—and provide perspective that moves you. Learn more at wtwco.com.

[1] Carbon Direct (2023), Removal, reduction, and avoidance credits explained

[2] IPCC (2018), Summary for Policymakers, Global Warming of 1.5 ºC — (ipcc.ch)

[3] McKinsey (2023), Carbon removals: How to scale a new gigaton industry: Carbon removals: How to scale a new gigaton industry | McKinsey