Sh!t Happens, So Microsoft Is Paying Biz To Flush Its Carbon Sins Underground

Microsoft has signed a contract with a company that will pump shit underground for it in exchange for carbon credits.

According to Vaulted Deep, a waste management biz headquartered in Houston, Texas, Microsoft has entered into an agreement for up to 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide removal over 12 years through 2038.

Financial terms have not been disclosed, though we asked both companies to comment.

The process involves removing carbon from the environment by storing it deep underground. Vaulted says it already works with organizations such as municipalities, industrial concerns, and agricultural businesses to manage any organic waste that can't be reused.

These waste streams include sludgy materials like biosolids, manure, paper sludge, and food and agricultural residues, all sent out of sight (and smell, hopefully) using deep well injection to place it thousands of feet underground into stable geologic formations sealed by impermeable rock layers – so the company claims.

Vaulted says it has been operating this kind of system safely since 2008, starting in Los Angeles, where it has handled 20 percent of the city's biosolids for the past 15 years.

Flush with success, it now also has a Great Plains facility in Kansas​ that's been operational since 2023, which manages 75 percent of the City of Derby's effluent and works with a dozen local farmers to manage excess manure, thereby protecting groundwater from contamination.

The business has disposed of more than 69,000 tonnes of organic waste to date, which it claims has sequestered nearly 18,000 tonnes of CO₂. Vaulted's technology and operations are certified by a carbon registry operation called Isometric, which says it issues "scientifically rigorous" carbon removal credits so that corporations can reliably meet their climate commitments.

Microsoft is one such firm struggling to meet its climate commitments due to the growing number of datacenters it is building and leasing to meet current demand for cloud services and expected demand for AI.

Last year the cloud and software megacorp said that its greenhouse gas emissions had increased by nearly 30 percent since 2020, the year it first talked up ambitions to become "carbon-negative" by 2030.

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In response, Microsoft has adopted various courses of action, such as buying carbon credits from operations to offset its own emissions. Some of those announced include a deal with Re.green to restore degraded farmland back to nature in Brazil, another with Stockholm Exergi to burn biomass, capturing the resulting CO₂ and permanently storing it underground, plus a carbon capture and sequestration deal with Occidental Petroleum.

Critics of these schemes, however, contend that they allow wealthy emitters to claim they are reducing emissions while largely carrying on with business as normal.

In a statement, Microsoft's senior director of energy and carbon removal, Brian Marrs, said that Vaulted Deep provides a scalable approach to permanent carbon removal with minimal risk.

"Its work delivers immediate climate benefits while stimulating local economies and addresses long-standing environmental challenges that communities face every day. We support this solution as part of our broader effort to accelerate durable, high-integrity carbon removal." ®