Boston Consulting teams up with carbon capture technology company

ZURICH (Reuters) - Boston Consulting Group has teamed up with carbon capture technology company Climeworks to help to develop its business, which focuses on capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air.

Under the agreement, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) will provide consulting services focused on helping the firm to scale up its activities and reach more customers.

It will also purchase services from the group to help to offset its own emissions by 2030.

"Not only will we leverage Climeworks' services to achieve our own net-zero target by 2030, but we will also have a far greater impact by acting as Climeworks' advisory partner to accelerate the broader adoption and scaling of their services globally," Joachim Stephan, BCG's head of Switzerland, said in a statement.

Swiss start-up Climeworks AG in September opened the world's largest plant that sucks carbon dioxide directly from the air and deposits it underground.

It partnered with Icelandic carbon storage firm Carbfix to develop the plant that can suck 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air every year.

Direct air capture is still a fledgling and costly technology, but developers hope to drive down prices by scaling up as more companies and consumers look to reduce their carbon footprint.

Environmental activists have warned further knock-on impacts to the environment and broader ecosystem must also be assessed.

BCG said recent research showed direct air capture technology had the potential to capture and permanently remove 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2050, adding it aimed to help to expand the market through such partnerships.

(Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi. Editing by Jane Merriman)