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Michael Okoroafor will end a decade-long career at the spice and herb maker McCormick when he retires as chief sustainability officer on July 1. Okoroafor will be replaced by his colleague Kathy Rostkowski, currently the company’s vice president of global sustainability.

Okoroafor departs with McCormick showing good progress on some if not all of the climate goals he helped oversee during his tenure. 

Climate progress

The company, which is headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, has committed to reducing Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 43 percent by 2030, relative to a 2020 baseline. It’s also aiming to hit net zero by 2050. Both goals have been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

In 2023, the most recent year for which it has released data, McCormick reported a 40 percent reduction in Scopes 1 and 2 alongside an 11 percent drop in Scope 3. It’s also making strong progress toward goals for sustainable sourcing of ingredients and recycling, but is off course on a commitment to reduce water use.

Rostkowski joined McCormick in 2021 to lead the company’s ESG efforts, known as its Purpose-led Performance Program. She previously spent eight years working in projects, partnerships and engagement roles at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Rostkowski holds three environmental engineering degrees: a Bachelor of Science from Yale and a Master of Science and PhD from Stanford. She also recently completed the Strategic Chief Sustainability Officer Program at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

McCormick has close to $7 billion in sales and employs 14,000 people in 29 countries.

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It often feels like there’s no area of business that artificial intelligence isn’t about to disrupt. But for those interested in focusing attention on where the technology might have particular impact, a slew of grants from the Bezos Earth Fund provides useful pointers.

The fund has allocated up to $100 million to its AI Grand Challenge for Climate and Nature, designed to identify and accelerate projects that leverage artificial intelligence to tackle pressing environmental challenges. The first recipients, 24 of which received $50,000 each, were announced last week in the areas of sustainable proteins, biodiversity and power grid optimization. 

Moving the needle

The philanthropy, founded by Jeff Bezos in 2020 with a remit to distribute $10 billion in a decade, had previously worked with academic experts to select the three focus areas. Among the selection criteria was the requirement that AI had been applied to create initial prototypes in the domain, explained Amen Ra Mashariki, the fund’s director of AI data and strategies, who added that “a nice nudge with investment and engagement would really scale and move the needle.”

The projects are early-stage by the standards of corporate partnerships, but they signpost future developments worth tracking. Among the successful applicants were:

• A tool being developed by the University of Leeds in the U.K. that will aid in the transformation of food waste into protein by identifying ideal microbes and fermentation settings. 
• OLiMPuS, a project from Wageningen University in the Netherlands to build an open-source AI platform to discover plant and fermented proteins that mimic the texture of milk and meat. The platform is designed to accelerate the development of animal-free alternatives and replace trial-and-error approaches with data-driven design.
• A drone imagery tool that deploys AI to monitor over 500 threatened timber species and detect illegal logging. The system, known as BGCI-US, will offer real-time enforcement data to protect global forests.
• Simulations of carbon removal strategies, including ocean alkalinity enhancement, developed by Yale University. By speeding up site selection and impact modeling, the simulations have the potential to accelerate deployment of these climate solutions.
• A Cornell University AI platform that manages electric vehicle charging and discharging in real time, transforming vehicles into a distributed energy storage system. The tool aims to align EV use with grid demand to scale storage of renewable energy.
• Livestock GPT, a generative AI system to support methane reduction on dairy farms, starting with an open methane data platform. The system, also developed by Cornell University, includes a chatbot that will provide feed and management advice to farmers, particularly in emerging economies.

The organizations will now work with outside experts to develop more detailed proposals for how they will use AI, which must be submitted next month. “We will then select up to 15 to receive $2 million to implement that work,” said Ra Mashiriki.

The full list of grants for the AI Grand Challenge, together with other recipients of the $2.7 billion disbursed so far by the fund, is available on the organization’s programs page.

[Join a vibrant community of leaders and innovators driving cutting-edge tools, business strategies, and partnerships to protect and regenerate nature at Bloom, Oct. 28-30, San Jose.]

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The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) is in the midst of updating its corporate net-zero standard. This might sound like an arcane technical exercise, but what’s decided here will have major consequences for how companies shape, deliver and communicate their climate strategies for the next decade.

For many corporates, version 1.0 of the standard was a helpful reference point. It gave form and discipline to emerging climate strategies and helped boost ambition. But it also had major gaps, particularly around Scope 3 emissions, the role of carbon credits and how to deal with emissions that can’t yet be reduced.

That’s where version 2.0 comes in. The draft proposals are extensive and rightly so. Getting to net zero requires a credible, science-based framework that sets expectations for companies while also giving them the tools to succeed. But as it stands, the draft could improve in three important areas. Here’s why they matter and what needs to change.

Make room for realism when targets are missed

It’s inevitable that some companies will fall short of their near-term targets. This isn’t a smear, but rather an acknowledgement that emissions reduction is challenging and many businesses are working in uncharted waters. Decarbonizing supply chains and operations is complex, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors and setbacks will happen.

What businesses need is a pathway to stay aligned with the SBTi standard when they underperform without letting ambition slip. The draft standard allows this in limited circumstances, but only for Scope 1 emissions. That’s too narrow; Scope 2 and 3 underperformance must be addressed too, with consistent rules and safeguards.

Corrective measures shouldn’t lower the bar. Companies must explain underperformance, show how they’re addressing it and compensate transparently where needed. The use of high-quality carbon credits, whether for reductions or removals, can be part of that toolbox. Not every company needs the same route, but all should be held to the same standard of integrity.

Mandate interim removal targets

One of the most debated parts of the draft is whether to require companies to start purchasing carbon removals before 2050. In climate and business terms, this is a no-brainer. If residual emissions need to be neutralized in the net-zero year and every year after, companies should be building capacity and momentum now. It’s also essential for scaling the market for removals, which are needed to neutralize residual emissions.

What’s proposed in the draft is a halfway step: interim targets that companies can opt into, rather than being required to set. That creates uncertainty for investors and delays the demand signal needed to scale the market.

What’s needed is a clear requirement for companies across all sectors to set annual interim removal targets for Scope 1 and ideally Scope 2 emissions. These shouldn’t be cumulative, but progressive: building year by year, signalling steady investment and delivery.

Furthermore, nature-based removals must be explicitly included. Forests, grasslands and soils have been sequestering carbon for millennia and keeping global temperatures in check. Recognizing their role isn’t just a nod to tradition — it’s a matter of practical sense. They’re scalable, available now and often directly linked to companies’ sourcing landscapes. Their inclusion would make interim targets more feasible and cost-effective, especially for smaller businesses and those in emerging markets.

Take responsibility for ongoing emissions

The third area that needs more work is what to do about ongoing emissions that fall outside targets or yearly emissions while decarbonization is underway.

Here, the draft proposes that companies opt into recognition for taking “beyond value chain mitigation.” In practice, this means that if a company chooses to invest in mitigation outside its footprint, for example, in forest protection or clean energy elsewhere, it can be recognized for doing so.

But recognition alone won’t cut it. All companies should take some level of responsibility for their ongoing emissions, even if it’s modest at first. And reporting on those plans should be mandatory, not optional. SBTi could align with frameworks such as the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Initiative on how claims are made.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, but there is a need to make sure companies can’t hide in the gaps.

Why this matters now

For companies, the new SBTi standard will set expectations not just for target-setting, but for disclosure, procurement, claims and investor engagement. It will affect how climate leadership is perceived, rewarded and regulated.

And for the rest of us, it will shape whether the private sector helps close the emissions gap in the decisive years between now and 2030, or whether it continues to overpromise and underdeliver.

This isn’t a debate about the fine print. It’s about whether we treat net zero as a long-term badge or a real-time discipline. Whether we build the carbon removal sector with integrity and demand. Whether companies are empowered — and expected—to act beyond their direct footprint.

There’s still time to get this right. The SBTi consultation is open until June 1. If you’re a company with a net-zero target, or thinking of setting one, this is your chance to help shape a more effective, credible and inclusive standard.

[Join a vibrant community of leaders and innovators driving cutting-edge tools, business strategies, and partnerships to protect and regenerate nature at Bloom, Oct. 28-30, San Jose.]

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Purchasing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) just got a little easier, thanks to the release of an online platform that allows buyers to quickly compare price and other attributes of different fuels. 

Fuels derived from waste cooking oil and other sustainable sources are at the heart of the aviation industry’s efforts to decarbonize, but purchasing SAF is nothing like booking a flight. Buyers, working individually or through the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA), generally begin by asking SAF suppliers to submit proposals for vetting.

“Those are fairly time-consuming efforts,” said Andre de Fontaine, a managing director at the Center for Green Market Activation, one of the non-profits that runs SABA. “They take somewhere between 18 and 24 months to run.”

Members only

The alliance has moved to streamline the process with today’s launch of SAFc Connect, a platform containing information on carbon intensity, pricing, feedstock and other attributes of SAF certificates for fuels pre-vetted by SABA. The platform is open to alliance members, which include Amazon, Deloitte, Netflix among 32 other companies.

“Instead of running an RFP every year whenever they want to buy SAF certificates, they can now go into a managed database confident that the fuel has been vetted for quality criteria,” said de Fontaine. 

At least five SAF providers — Alaska Air, Future Energy Global, International Airlines Group, Targray and Valero — will be part of SAFc Connect at launch. SABA expects up to double that number to come on board in coming months.

Book and claim

The scheme operates on a book-and-claim basis, meaning that buyers can use the certificates to offset Scope 3 aviation emissions without actually flying planes that burn SAF. This approach, also being used in maritime shipping and for rail freight, allows buyers to support sellers even if they cannot directly access the low-carbon transport on offer.

Although de Fontaine would not disclose likely prices, he noted that SABA’s last RFP, while not necessarily predictive of future prices, produced certificates in the range of $300 to $500 per metric ton of carbon dioxide. An economy-class round trip from New York to London creates around 0.6 tons of CO₂, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization.

SABA has worked with corporate buyers to aggregate demand for over $400 million in SAF certificates since launching in 2021 and expects members using SAFc Connect to have immediate demand for around $30 million in certificates.

The alliance also recently released an RFP for next-generation sustainable fuels, including “e-fuels,” which can be synthesized from CO₂ and water in a reaction powered by renewable energy. The move comes as some environmental groups continue to question the sustainability of fuels made from crops, a class of SAF that is expected to play an important role in the short-term growth of the market.

This story was updated on May 28, 2025 to more accurately reflect the price of certificates in SABA’s earlier RFP.

[Connect with more than 3,500 professionals decarbonizing and future-proofing their organizations and supply chains through climate technologies at VERGE, Oct. 28-30, San Jose.]

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For much of the past two decades, the loudest voices in the debate over carbon capture and storage (CCS) were often the critics: The equipment was too expensive or too prone to breaking down. Perhaps most damning was the accusation that the technology would extend the life of fossil fuels and delay cleaner, longer-term solutions.

Now the dynamics have shifted. CCS projects are growing at record rates. The technology continues to improve, economic incentives have aligned and the growth of AI and data centers has increased demand. The critics have not been mollified, but the momentum is with the industry — suggesting that any company with hard-to-abate emissions in its supply chain should engage with the arguments.

“It’s been like a snowball rolling down a hill in terms of corporate interest and investment in the sector,” said Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, an industry group.

Global growth

CCS offers a seemingly simple decarbonization solution: Rather than replace coal power stations, steel plants and other facilities that rely on fossil fuels, why not capture and store the carbon dioxide that the infrastructure emits? In many cases, this involves pushing the gas over an absorbent material, compressing the captured CO2 and piping it to a geological reservoir for permanent storage.

The idea is simple, but during the first half of the 2010s high costs and technological setbacks led to a decline in the capacity of projects in development. Then the tide turned. A federal CCS tax credit, known as 45Q, was made more valuable in 2018 and more valuable still, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, in 2022. The number of projects operational or in development globally grew from 392 to 628 between 2023 and 2024, according to the Carbon Capture Coalition. The U.S. is the leader, with more projects than the next four countries — the U.K., Canada, Norway and China — combined.

The Louisiana Clean Energy Complex, a hydrogen production facility under construction in Ascension Parish, illustrates the trend. Air Products, the industrial giant behind the project, says that 95 percent of the 5 million tons of CO2 emitted annually by the facility will be captured and stored, which the company claims makes it the world’s largest capture and permanent sequestration project. 

Air Products did not return a request for more information, but an analysis published this month by the capture coalition puts capture and storage costs at between $100 and $200 per ton of CO2. The exact price depends on the maturity of the technology used and the concentration of the gas in the waste stream, with higher concentration streams — which includes hydrogen facilities — tending to have lower costs.

More million-ton projects

Other huge projects are coming soon. In early April, a consortium of companies announced plans for an ammonia plant, also in Ascension Parish, that will capture and store more than 2 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. (The parish is part of “Cancer Alley,” a heavily industrialized area with elevated rates of the disease.) Two weeks later, ExxonMobil revealed plans to capture 2 million tons of CO2 from a natural gas power plant near Houston, Texas. 

The bullishness of CCS investors is also evident at the 140,000 square-foot factory opened in Burnaby, British Columbia earlier this month by Svante, a manufacturer of filters that capture carbon dioxide from industrial emissions. 

The factory can produce enough filters to capture 10 million tons of CO2 annually and its opening follows a $145 million investment round for the company.  A confluence of factors is driving the industry forward, said Claude Letourneau, Svante’s CEO, including tax credits and the green premium that some manufacturers can charge for low-carbon commodities, such as hydrogen. 

Smaller companies with innovative solutions are waiting in the wings, hoping to ride the industry’s momentum. Carbon Clean, a London-based startup, has designed a capture unit that fits into a shipping container, which it says is half the size of conventional systems. 

“The biggest challenge for implementing carbon capture is the real estate,” said Aniruddha Sharma, Carbon Clean’s CEO “Nobody has any space.” Following a successful test at a fertilizer plant in Abu Dhabi, the company is now working on further tests in Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Companies that have emissions from hard-to-abate sources — fertilizer, steel, cement — in their Scope 3 inventory stand to benefit from the reductions that CCS brings. And there are other reasons for sustainability professionals to track the technology, noted Sangeet Nepal, a technology specialist at the Carbon Capture Coalition.

The rising demand for uninterrupted supplies of low-carbon electricity can be met by gas power plants with CCS attached, for example. In December, ExxonMobil announced plans to build a gas and CCS facility in Texas to supply low-carbon electricity to nearby data centers.

CCS technology is also opening up new classes of carbon credits.

Svante is targeting its technology at pulp and paper facilities, some of which are using credit revenue to fund the installation of carbon capture. One recent project was funded by a purchase by Microsoft of credits covering 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide over 12 years.

Criticisms linger

This progress has changed the narrative around CCS, but it has not altered the opinions of critics. They continue to question the calculations that underlie the claimed climate benefits of CCS, notably around the issue of where to draw boundaries when assessing the impact of the technology. 

CCS equipment requires energy, for instance. Most developers hope to use renewables, thus avoiding additional emissions. But there’s an opportunity cost in doing so because those renewables could be used to replace fossil power plants, argued Mark Jacobson, an energy systems expert at Stanford University. 

“You can’t just add things to the grid willy nilly,” said Jacobson. “There’s a queue. If you’re adding stuff and using it for carbon capture, you’re not replacing fossils on the grid.”

In one recent study, Jacobson and colleagues compared global decarbonization scenarios in which renewables were used to power either CCS or electrified versions of industrial facilities. After accounting for health costs due to air pollution from continued use of fossil fuels, along with other factors, they found that annual costs in the CCS scenario were at least nine times greater than the electrification alternative. Because CCS systems do not capture all the carbon dioxide that passes through them, atmospheric levels of the gas were also much higher.

Jacobson’s study is global in scope, but individual projects have also been criticized, including Air Products’ hydrogen facility in Louisiana. In a study published in March, researchers at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think tank, claimed that the benefits of the project rest on faulty assumptions about the amount of carbon that will be captured, leak rates of the methane feedstock and other factors. Once the assumptions are corrected, claims the institute, the project becomes a heavy emitter.

Just 10 years ago, debate of this nature played a role in slowing the deployment of CCS. But there is a sense among industry insiders that things have changed. The financial case for the technology has been rewritten. And while the Trump administration appears to have no interest in tackling climate change, backing from oil majors and GOP members in states that house capture projects means that CCS might be one decarbonization technology it can get behind.

“We are making the case,” said Stolark, “and we feel that carbon management squarely fits within this administration’s energy dominance framework.”

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