Google has signed its largest carbon-removal deal with Terradot in Brazil, covering over 200,000 hectares and aiming to cut methane emissions from rice farming while capturing atmospheric CO₂ through enhanced rock weathering. This project is set to produce one million metric tonnes of methane-abatement credits by 2030 and the same amount of carbon-removal credits by 2040. Google views this as a scalable model for future projects, addressing both short-term methane emissions and long-term CO₂ removal simultaneously.
Written by the local model on 2026-09-16,
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Story summary
Google has agreed to its largest carbon-removal deal yet with Terradot, a project in Brazil that aims to reduce methane emissions from rice farming and capture CO2. Spanning over 200,000 hectares in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, it is the biggest enhanced rock-weathering project to date, accelerating natural processes where rocks absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Google’s head of carbon removal, Randy Spock, stated this initiative combines methane abatement and carbon capture on a large scale for the first time, serving as a template for future projects. The deal involves capturing 90,000 tonnes of CO2 at an estimated cost of roughly US$300 per tonne, well above the industry target of US$100 per tonne to stimulate broader demand. This project tackles both short-term methane and long-term carbon dioxide emissions, addressing immediate warming impacts while also dealing with accumulated historical emissions.
Written for “Google Carbon Removal Deal” on 2026-09-17,
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Google agrees biggest carbon-removal deal yet, aims to scale new model
AI generated
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Google → agree → model
Google has agreed its biggest carbon-removal deal yet, backing a project in Brazil run by developer Terradot that aims to both cut methane emissions from rice farming and capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, executives told Reuters.
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executives → agree → Reuters
Spanning more than 200,000ha in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, it is the largest enhanced rock-weathering project to date, aiming to accelerate a natural process where certain rocks absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
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rocks → span → atmosphere
The initiative, which Google said it hopes will serve as a template for future projects, is the first at such a scale to combine methane abatement and carbon removal, said Randy Spock, the company’s head of carbon removal.
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Spock → say → removal
Tackling methane, a ‘super-pollutant’ greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere more quickly than carbon dioxide, helps slow global warming, but carbon dioxide removal is still needed over time to address centuries of accumulated emissions.
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removal → tackle → emissions
“We need to do both.
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We → need → both
We do not have the luxury of focusing all of our resources on going after short-lived super-pollutants, or all of our resources purely scaling long-term carbon removal,” Spock said.
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Spock → have → removal
The project will generate one million metric tonnes of methane-abatement credits by 2030 and one million tonnes of carbon-removal credits by 2040, generated and verified separately.
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project → generate → 2040
The carbon-removal portion of the deal is 10 times larger than previous rock-weathering projects.
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portion → weather → projects
Rice paddies account for 10-12 per cent of global methane emissions, according to a 2021 assessment by the UN Environment Programme.
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paddies → account → Programme
Accelerating action on methane is expected to be central to the COP31 climate talks in Turkey later in 2026.
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Accelerating → accelerate → 2026
Big Tech companies are under pressure to ramp up clean energy and carbon-removal investments to counter emissions from AI-driven data centres.
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companies → ramp → centres
Google is an investor in Terradot, after taking an equity stake in 2024.
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Google → take → 2024
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said removal is needed to help hit the world’s climate goals, although critics argue it can allow companies to continue polluting now.
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companies → say → goals
The companies said the model could eventually be expanded across Brazil’s 1.5 million hectares of rice fields and replicated in other rice-growing regions such as India and Vietnam.
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model → say → India
Terradot plans to launch pilots across multiple countries in 2026, with commercial scale-up slated for 2028.
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up → plan → 2028
Google and Terradot did not disclose the price of the credits, but a publicly disclosed 2024 deal for 90,000 tonnes of carbon removal from Terradot implied a price of roughly US$300 (S$380) a tonne – some way above the US$100 a tonne threshold many developers are targeting to stimulate broader demand.
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developers → disclose → demand
CEO James Kanoff said the new project would be cheaper than previous deals and, while not yet at US$100 per tonne, represented “a big step toward that”.
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project → say → that
Terradot said as verification can add more than US$100 per tonne to enhanced rock-weathering costs, allowing carbon removal to accumulate for longer before third-party verification would help reduce that in the new project.
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verification → say → project
The Aporia
