Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify are officially the first companies in the world to pay to filter their carbon dioxide emissions out of the air, store those emissions underground, and have that service verified by a third party. Climate tech company Climeworks announced yesterday that it had completed the service, and its third-party verification of the carbon removal marks a first for the emerging industry.

In 2021, Climeworks opened up the world’s largest direct air capture (DAC) plant, called Orca, which essentially filters carbon dioxide out of the ambient air. That captured carbon is then supposed to be trapped in basalt rock formations permanently, keeping the greenhouse gas from lingering in our atmosphere and heating up the planet.

The tech sort of mimics what forests and trees do naturally when they take in and store carbon dioxide, a process companies have attempted to exploit for years as a way to “offset” their carbon dioxide emissions. But forest offsets have a track record of failing to result in any real-world reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. That quality control problem makes verifying carbon removal from new direct air capture facilities crucial.

“We’ve been all reading about the market of carbon offsets and the shakiness,” says Julie Gosalvez, chief marketing officer at Climeworks. “We rely on people who trust that we’re building those [DAC] plants, and we’re effectively running them and delivering the service. And now, it’s not us saying we do but having third-party verification.”

Auditing company DNV certified the carbon removal for Climeworks following a years-long effort to develop criteria. Since this is an industry first, they had to craft a methodology for checking how much carbon dioxide has been pulled out of the atmosphere, transported, and permanently stored. The methodology is now publicly available and will be used to verify future “batches” of CO2 that’s been captured and stored for customers.

Climeworks declined to say how much captured CO2 was in this first batch, citing confidentiality agreements it has with its customers. Microsoft, for one, pledged in 2020 to eventually draw down all of its historic emissions. The company has contracts to remove at least 2.5 million metric tons of CO2 (about 18 percent of its total emissions in fiscal year 2021), according to its latest environmental sustainability report. That includes forestry projects and direct air capture.

To date, there are far from enough direct air capture plants online to meet Microsoft’s goal. Orca alone has the capacity to capture just 4,000 tons annually; all of the world’s operational DAC plants combined can capture 0.01  million metric tons of CO2 a year. Much larger facilities are currently under construction.

But the lack of capacity is one reason why some environmental advocates are concerned that carbon removal could give polluters a way to greenwash their operations. Companies might pledge to capture their emissions down the line, even as their pollution continues to grow now, advocates argue. Microsoft’s emissions actually increased by about 2.5 million metric tons in fiscal year 2021 compared to the year prior, which the company says is mostly a result of its growth in device sales and cloud services.

Tech companies have been early cheerleaders for carbon removal. A separate Big Tech-backed carbon removal initiative called Frontier announced this week that it has recruited more companies. Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey launched Frontier last April with the goal of scaling up carbon removal and making it more affordable. Carbon removal is still prohibitively expensive for many smaller companies. A single ton of carbon removed by Climeworks costs around $600 for a company like Microsoft, Climeworks told The Verge when Orca launched back in 2021. (It declined to share any updated figures today.)

Earlier this week, Frontier announced a new partnership with climate platform Watershed, which measures emissions and coaches other companies on their climate goals. The partnership allows smaller companies to aggregate their buying power, making it easier for them to buy into carbon removal schemes. The first new customers to jump aboard via Watershed include Canva, Zendesk, and aviation startup Boom Supersonic.

It’s no big surprise that tech companies have been pioneering customers for Climeworks, Gosalvez tells The Verge. “I think there are a couple of reasons for that: the first one being obviously the affinity to find tech as the solution to issues,” she says. “Second being the open-mindedness to new things.”

Environmental groups are pushing New York state to scrutinize a crypto mining company’s purchase of a gas-fired power plant, contending in a new lawsuit that turning the power plant into a crypto mine would go against the state’s climate goals and dump more pollution on nearby neighborhoods.

Sierra Club and the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York filed a suit on Friday that challenges the New York Public Service Commission’s (PSC) approval of the sale. Under state law, the commission has to give the green light before the transfer of ownership of a power plant can take place. Until now, the commission has mostly focused on whether such a sale would affect residents’ electricity rates or create a monopoly. The commission needs to start taking climate change and environmental injustice into consideration because of a sweeping climate law passed in 2019, the new lawsuit argues.

“The law says you can’t just ignore these really serious consequences,” says Dror Ladin, senior attorney at Earthjustice, the nonprofit environmental law group representing the plaintiffs. “Running the plant 24 hours a day to mine crypto is going to be very bad both for the climate and for and for people in the area.”

The power plant, called Fortistar, is in the small city of North Tonawanda, located between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Typically, Fortistar is used as a so-called “peaker plant,” firing up infrequently to meet peak electricity demand during an energy crunch. The plant has only been in operation between 10 and 25 days a year since 2017, according to Environmental Protection Agency records cited in the complaint. That schedule is expected to change drastically if Canadian crypto mining company Digihost moves in, which is why some residents are worried about their potential new neighbor.

Digihost petitioned the PSC to approve the purchase of Fortistar back in April 2021. It planned to run the plant “24/7” to power its crypto mining rigs, according to an environmental assessment form the company filed to North Tonawanda later that year. Crypto companies burn through enormous amounts of electricity to mine Bitcoin, more than many small countries use in a single year. To validate new transactions on Bitcoin’s blockchain and earn new tokens in return, “miners” have to solve difficult computational puzzles using specialized hardware. The more hardware you have and energy you use, the better your chances of earning new tokens.

That happens to produce a lot of pollution in the process — especially for operations that get all their electricity from a gas-fired plant like Fortistar. So some nearby residents worry that if Fortistar starts running 24/7, that would increase its environmental footprint.

“My oldest son has asthma and I worry about how the pollution will affect him,” one resident who lives about a quarter mile from the gas plant writes in an affidavit accompanying the environmental groups’ complaint. “I have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and I’m also worried that increased pollution will worsen my condition.”

New York also has its climate goals to consider. The state has committed to slashing its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 85 percent by 2050. To achieve that goal, the climate law it passed in 2019 mandates that state agencies consider whether its decisions would endanger those goals or disproportionately burden “disadvantaged communities.” While the state is still finalizing criteria for what makes a community “disadvantaged,” some census tracts near Fortistar have already been found to cope with more pollution than 90 percent of the state.

Nevertheless, New York’s Public Service Commission approved Digihost’s petition to purchase the plant in September 2022. “While numerous commenters raise significant environmental concerns … these matters are beyond the scope of the limited review undertaken in this proceeding,” the PSC wrote in its decision.

The suit filed Friday is the first to push the PSC to broaden the scope of its decision-making, citing New York’s climate law. If the environmental groups are successful, the commission would have to rethink its approval of Digihost’s planned takeover of the plant. At that point, Digihost could have a tough time convincing the state that its new crypto mine wouldn’t imperil climate goals.

In a similar fight over a crypto-mining power plant in New York called Greenidge, the state’s Department of Conservation denied air permits because its operations “would be inconsistent with the statewide greenhouse gas emission limits established in the Climate Act.” In November, Governor Kathy Hochul signed a two-year moratorium on new permits for fossil fuel power plants seeking to mine Bitcoin. That gives the state time to conduct an environmental impact review of crypto mining more broadly.

Both Greenidge and Fortisar are excluded from that moratorium because they had applied for air permits before the law was passed. Greenidge is still up and running as it appeals the state’s decision on its air permit. But environmental advocates are optimistic they might be able to keep a crypto mine at Fortistar from getting off the ground at all.

Neither Digihost nor Fortistar responded to a request for comment from The Verge, while the PSC said in an email that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Digihost, of course, still has to contend with the ongoing crypto winter that’s made it less profitable to mine Bitcoin. But in a January press release, the company touted a 60 percent year-on-year increase of its Bitcoin production in 2022. The announcement also says that Digihost has already installed “mining infrastructure” at North Tonawanda and “expects the acquisition to close” during the first quarter of 2023.