Meta to Buy Certificates for 200,000 Tons of Low-Carbon Cement
Meta will buy certificates from startup Fortera, which plans a 300,000-ton plant in Missouri to turn captured CO2 into cement.
Meta said on Thursday that it will buy environmental attribute certificates from the startup Fortera. The certificates represent about 200,000 tons of cement from a plant Fortera is preparing to build in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. The companies did not disclose financial terms.
Meta aims to help Fortera attract the funding it needs to construct the facility. The certificates also let Meta claim the green credentials regardless of where its data centers are built, since cement does not usually travel far from where it is made. The physical product will be sold to customers near the plant at market rates, without the extra costs of cleaner cement-making.
"A multiyear commitment is what gets a cement plant financed," said Devon Lake, Meta's head of net-zero strategy. Ryan Gilliam, CEO of the San Jose-based startup, called the deal "really the catalyst the industry needs to move from pilots to true commercial production". Fortera also plans to sell certificates to Microsoft, which invested in the company last year.
How the cement is made
Fortera captures carbon dioxide emitted during other companies' industrial processes and chemically bonds it into cement. At its pilot plant in Redding, California, the gas is piped in from a neighbouring cement plant owned by CalPortland. The result is what the company calls ReAct cement, which it says has 70% fewer emissions than ordinary Portland cement.
The pilot, which opened in April 2024, can make about 15,000 tons a year. Its cement has gone into projects with the cities of Berkeley and Santa Cruz, the California Department of Transportation and Simpson University.
The Missouri plant
Fortera plans to build an adjacent plant next to a facility run by MLC, which turns limestone into lime, and to use that company's waste CO2. The plant is planned to produce 300,000 tons of cement a year. A standard plant makes 1 million tons.
Gilliam expects the build to cost roughly $150 million. Fortera aims to bring it online in 2028. The building materials company Ozinga plans to use material from the plant across the Midwest.
Certificates are a niche but growing strategy for heavy industry. Google and Microsoft have deals to procure them from the Swedish steelmaker Stegra, which is building a hydrogen-based steel mill. World Energy, which makes alternative jet fuel, and Envision Energy, a producer of low-carbon ammonia, also issue them.
Source: Canary Media