BMO Financial Group committed to purchase carbon credits over five years representing 5,750 metric tons of carbon dioxide removal and reductions via an agreement with Halifax, NS-based CarbonCure Technologies, a climate technology company supporting the decarbonization of the global concrete industry. The credits are expected to be delivered every September from 2022 to 2026.

Carbon neutral since 2010, BMO is the first North American bank to purchase CarbonCure carbon credits and the first purchaser of carbon credits supporting CarbonCure’s full suite of carbon mineralization technologies, delivering permanent storage of CO₂ across the concrete manufacturing process.

This announcement builds on BMO’s purchase of direct air capture carbon removals using carbon engineering technology from Canada’s Carbon Engineering. Carbon removal projects, including engineered solutions that store carbon for more than 100 years, are part of BMO’s strategy to diversify its offset portfolio to meet its net zero goals by 2050.

“As part of our climate ambition and our purpose to boldly grow the good in business and life, BMO is focused on how we can support innovation through our carbon neutrality program. To achieve net zero, we will need a lot of innovation and new technologies, including the solutions being developed by CarbonCure,” Michael Torrance, chief sustainability officer for BMO Financial Group, said. “Since 2010, BMO has been carbon neutral in its own operations through a combination of reducing energy use, purchasing renewable energy certificates to match 100% of our electricity use and offsetting remaining emissions. Our agreement with CarbonCure is an exciting opportunity for BMO to support new technology that will advance net zero aligned innovation in the decades ahead.”

“We’re excited to embark on this agreement with BMO,” Robert Niven, chair and CEO of CarbonCure Technologies, said. “BMO’s first-of-its-kind commitment to purchase carbon credits supporting the full suite of our technologies represents the kind of investment that is vital to tackling the climate crisis. We need to leverage every tool in our toolbox and bring innovations to scale quickly. CarbonCure’s technologies have reduced and removed more than 210,000 metric tons of CO₂ to date; with BMO’s valuable support, we look forward to accelerating even faster our global growth and impact.”

CarbonCure’s systems inject captured CO₂ into ready mix concrete, reclaimed plant water and recycled concrete aggregates where the CO₂ is safely and permanently stored. In 2021, a CarbonCure methodology for calculating carbon credits was verified by Verra, a voluntary greenhouse gas crediting program.