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Climate Tech Firms Receive $80 Million to Capture Carbon from Paper Mills and Sewage Plants

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A group of climate-focused companies, including Google, H&M, and Stripe, are set to purchase $80 million worth of carbon credits from companies using innovative technologies to capture carbon emissions. These technologies target two industries: paper mills and municipal sewage treatment plants.

Carbon Capture Technologies in Action

The deals, facilitated by the Frontier coalition, involve the purchase of carbon credits from CO280 and CREW, two firms utilizing oil industry technology and natural processes to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

  • CO280 is using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology developed by SLB, a major oil field services company, to capture carbon emissions from paper mills. This process captures carbon initially absorbed by trees and emitted during paper production.
  • CREW, a startup from New Haven, Connecticut, employs a limestone-based method to capture carbon from wastewater at municipal sewage plants. By adding carbon-attracting limestone to water, CREW can calculate the amount of CO2 it traps as the water goes through treatment.

Financial Commitments for Carbon Removal

The Frontier coalition, which is composed of major players in the tech and finance sectors, including Google, H&M, and Stripe, aims to support emerging carbon capture technologies by purchasing carbon credits from firms that show promise in reducing atmospheric CO2.

  • The coalition has agreed to pay $48 million for 224,500 metric tons of emissions reductions from CO280, at a cost of $214 per metric ton.
  • Additionally, they will pay $32.1 million for 71,878 metric tons of emissions reductions from CREW, at a higher cost of $447 per ton.

These investments reflect the growing commitment of companies to support climate tech and scale carbon removal technologies, with the hope that costs will decrease over time, eventually making carbon capture more accessible.

A Push for Cost-Effective Carbon Removal

Although carbon removal technologies are still in the early stages, the Frontier coalition is betting on their potential to lower costs to $100 per ton or less in the future. Hannah Bebbington, Head of Deployment at Frontier, emphasized that the deals are part of efforts to retrofit older industries with newer carbon technologies. She expressed excitement about the possibility of scaling these technologies to make carbon removal more cost-effective and impactful.

The growing interest from major tech and finance companies is a signal of confidence in the potential of such technologies, even as the world grapples with the challenges of large-scale carbon emissions reduction.

 

Google Announces 5 Years of OS Updates for Pixel Fold, Pixel 6, and Select Other Models

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Google has quietly confirmed an extension of software support for several of its devices, including the Pixel Fold and Pixel 6 series. These models will now receive a total of five years of operating system (OS) and security updates, starting from their initial availability on the Google Store in the US. This marks a significant upgrade from the previous three-year support window. In addition to this extended coverage, newer models like the Pixel 9 series are expected to receive even more comprehensive support, with up to seven years of OS updates.

The change was recently reflected on Google’s software support page, which now details the updated timelines for Pixel devices. The Pixel 6 series, Pixel 7 series, and select other models will benefit from five years of OS and security updates, providing users with longer-lasting support and improved longevity for their smartphones. This extended update period is expected to enhance the user experience, ensuring devices remain secure and up-to-date for a more extended period.

In addition to the OS and security updates, users with these devices may also gain access to new features and enhancements introduced through Google’s Pixel Drops. These updates are designed to bring new functionalities to Pixel smartphones, further improving the overall user experience with each release. With this extended commitment, Google is positioning itself as a leader in software support, competing with other major smartphone manufacturers.

This move to extend the update cycle underscores Google’s growing focus on customer satisfaction and product longevity. By offering longer-term software support, the company ensures that its devices stay relevant and functional for a more extended period, reducing the need for frequent replacements and encouraging users to keep their phones for longer.

Google Unveils PaliGemma 2: A New Family of Open-Source AI Vision-Language Models

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Google unveiled the next generation of its PaliGemma AI vision-language model, introducing the PaliGemma 2 family. This new model builds upon the capabilities of its predecessor, enhancing the ability to process and understand visual content like images and other visual assets. The PaliGemma 2 is powered by the Gemma 2 small language models (SLM), which were first released in August. A notable feature of PaliGemma 2 is its ability to analyze emotions within the images it processes, offering a more nuanced understanding of visual data.

In a detailed blog post, Google explained how the PaliGemma 2 model fits into the broader landscape of vision-language models. Unlike traditional large language models (LLMs), vision-language models are equipped with specialized encoders that allow them to process and interpret visual content. This makes them capable of “seeing” and understanding the external world in a way that traditional models, focused on text, cannot. By combining visual and language data, PaliGemma 2 can offer a deeper and more accurate understanding of multimodal inputs.

One of the key advantages of PaliGemma 2 is its smaller size, which optimizes the model for both speed and accuracy. Smaller models are particularly valuable for a wide range of applications because they can be deployed more efficiently without compromising on performance. The PaliGemma 2 is open-sourced, allowing developers to integrate its advanced capabilities into their own applications, making it a versatile tool for a variety of use cases in AI-powered image analysis, emotion recognition, and beyond.

By releasing PaliGemma 2 as open-source, Google aims to empower the developer community to leverage this cutting-edge technology. The open-source nature of the model means that developers can experiment with its capabilities, adapt it for different projects, and contribute to its ongoing improvement. With its ability to interpret both text and visual data, PaliGemma 2 is poised to become a powerful resource for building more interactive, intelligent applications that bridge the gap between language and vision in AI.