Google Backs Brazil Terradot Deal in Largest Carbon Removal Pact

Google has partnered with developer Terradot on its largest carbon-removal and methane-abatement initiative to date, backing an agricultural project spanning over 200,000 hectares of rice paddies in Brazil. The agreement combines short-term methane reductions with long-term carbon capture, marking a shift for corporate sustainability procurement as tech companies grapple with rising power demands from data centers.

"We need to do 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," said a Google executive regarding the dual-track strategy detailed in a Reuters report.

Scale of the Rio Grande do Sul Project

The initiative targets more than 200,000 hectares in Brazil's southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, establishing what developers describe as the largest enhanced rock-weathering project to date. Rice paddies are agricultural sources of methane, a greenhouse gas with a warming impact far higher than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timescale.

The project is structured to generate 1 million metric tons of methane-abatement credits by 2030, alongside 1 million metric tons of carbon-removal credits by 2040. These two categories of environmental credits will be generated and verified separately to maintain accounting transparency.

Prior Investment and Commercial Timeline

This new commercial offtake agreement builds upon an existing financial relationship between the two entities. Google previously took an equity stake in Terradot in 2024, signaling early corporate venture support for the developer's mineral-weathering technology.

Terradot plans to launch international pilots across multiple countries in 2026, with full commercial scale-up slated for 2028. Executives involved in the rollout have characterized the Brazil agreement as a big step toward that commercial milestone.

What Is at Stake for Corporate Buyers

The arrangement highlights how major technology companies are moving beyond simple offsets to directly finance geological and agricultural removal techniques. As corporate emissions face scrutiny alongside surging artificial intelligence electricity consumption, securing verifiable gigaton-scale solutions remains a core pillar of corporate net-zero pledges.