Carbon Removal Isn't Just for Corporations. Individuals Are Paying For It, Too
A growing number of people are buying the services of companies that promise to suck carbon pollution from the air.
A man tends to vegetables in a field as emissions rise from nearby cooling towers of a coal-fired power station in Tongling, Anhui province, China.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergAlban Wesly drives an electric car and eats a vegetarian diet in an effort to live a climate-friendly lifestyle. This month, the bassoonist in Amsterdam completed another task on his greener living to-do list: Paying to have carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere.
Wesly is among a small but growing number of individuals that are bankrolling a crucial climate technology that has grand designs of scaling up. While corporate buyers and governments are pouring billions into the carbon removal industry, individuals like Wesly have opened their wallet, too. Though the payments are relatively small, startups working on pulling CO2 from the air are using sales to individuals as a way to build support for their grander ambitions.