A coalition backed by Big Tech companies including Google and Meta has agreed to pay $44.2 million for carbon credits from a Canadian company that aims to remove carbon dioxide from biowaste, the coalition's head of deployment told Reuters.

Frontier, launched in 2022 by Stripe, Google, Meta, Shopify and McKinsey, aims to help scale carbon removal technologies by committing to buy credits in advance, thereby derisking the projects and helping them grow more quickly. The group plans to spend $1 billion on credits between 2022 and 2030.

Its latest deal covers 122,000 metric tons of CO2 to be locked away between 2026 and 2030 by NULIFE GreenTech, which converts agricultural and industrial waste - including grease from food processing - into bio-oil. The credits were purchased at an average weighted price of $362 per ton.

NULIFE uses high-pressure cooking to break down waste into substances such as bio-oil, which is injected into salt caverns more than 1,000 metres underground for permanent storage. Frontier estimates the technology could scale to 1.5 gigatons of carbon removal annually by 2040.

"The goal at Frontier is really to create a portfolio of solutions that we think are most likely to go the distance to a gigaton scale future," Hannah Bebbington Valori, Frontier’s head of deployment, said in an interview.

Scientists say carbon removal projects are critical to offset emissions from sectors that continue to rely on fossil fuels.