- Microsoft pays billions to inject manure underground to cancel out AI carbon emissions
- Vaulted Deep turns sewage and manure into a climate fix buried 5,000 feet down
- Carbon offset prices may drop, but right now, each ton costs around $350
Microsoft is once again spending heavily on carbon removal – but this time, the strategy is not based on futuristic machinery or carbon-scrubbing forests, but instead involves waste, specifically human and animal excrement, manure, and agricultural byproducts.
The company has entered into a multi-year agreement with Vaulted Deep to dispose of this organic material by injecting it underground.
The method is designed to prevent decomposition from releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.
An underground solution to an atmospheric problem
According to Inc., Vaulted Deep will handle the burial of 4.9 million metric tons of waste over the next 12 years.
While the company reportedly charges $350 per ton for carbon removal, CEO Julia Reichelstein clarified, “the mentioned price isn’t the actual sum that the tech giant paid” and added that costs are expected to drop over time.
Still, if the listed price were accurate, the deal could exceed $1.7 billion in value, but at the moment, no exact figure has been disclosed by either side.
The rationale behind this method is rooted in preventing the harmful effects of current waste disposal practices.
“Generally, what happens to these wastes today is they go to a landfill, they get dumped in a waterway, or they’re just spread on land for the purpose of disposal. In all of those cases, they’re decomposing into CO2 and methane,” said Reichelstein.
“That’s contributing to climate change. And then oftentimes, especially when it’s spread on land, all those pathogens are going directly into people’s groundwater.”
Vaulted Deep’s process involves converting waste into a dense slurry and then pumping it more than 5,000 feet below the surface.
This approach not only locks the material away from the atmosphere but also bypasses the ecological risks associated with surface-level disposal.
The idea may seem unconventional, but it fits into a broader pattern of tech companies scrambling for scalable carbon offset strategies.
Microsoft, along with other cloud giants like Google and Amazon, is confronting the environmental cost of data centers, facilities that require massive energy input, often from fossil-fuel sources.
With AI workloads intensifying this demand, the need to find creative mitigation solutions has grown urgent.
Earlier in 2025, Microsoft also partnered with AtmosClear to sequester 6.75 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, showing its willingness to explore different strategies.
That said, it is unclear how scalable or sustainable the waste-to-carbon-offset method will be in the long term, especially if costs remain high and public perception turns critical.
Via TomsHardware
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