Mercedes Expands Carbon Removal Strategy Ahead of the 2026 Season

Mercedes-AMG Petronas has announced a significant expansion of its carbon removals portfolio ahead of the 2026 season, investing across seven projects and six distinct removal technologies in a move the team is framing as a new benchmark for sustainable leadership in Formula 1. The announcement, made at Economist Impact’s Sustainability Week, covers roughly 18,900 tCO2e of removal activity and is curated through the CUR8 carbon marketplace. Read alongside the team’s 2025 sustainability data, the picture becomes more interesting than the headline suggests.

Key Points – Mercedes F1 carbon removals

• Mercedes has expanded its carbon removals portfolio to seven projects covering six technologies, including Direct Air Capture, Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement and Enhanced Rock Weathering.
• The portfolio is curated through CUR8 and built on Oxford Offsetting Principles, a framework that prioritises permanence and verifiability over cheap nature-based credits.
• This is an expansion of an existing strategy, not a new launch. Frontier (DAC), Blaston Farm and Chestnut Carbon were already in the portfolio.
• The headline 2030 target covers Race Team Control Net Zero only: factory operations at Brackley and Brixworth, not logistics or supply chain.
• The fuller commitment is Net Zero by 2040 across total emissions, signed under The Climate Pledge.
• Mercedes’ SAF programme saved 9,860 tCO2e in 2024, covering 68% of aviation emissions. The target was to quadruple that by end of 2025.
• 99% of European race trucks ran on HVO100 biofuel in 2025, saving over 410 tCO2e versus standard diesel.
• F1’s total sport-wide carbon footprint was 168,720 tCO2e in 2024, with logistics accounting for roughly half of that total.
• The timing of this announcement, days before Australia media day, is deliberate. ESG credentials are now a commercial procurement factor for major sponsors.
• The work is credible. The headline framing overstates what the 2030 milestone actually covers.

This Is an Expansion, Not a Launch

The new CUR8 portfolio sits on top of a carbon removal strategy that already existed. Mercedes’ programme already included Frontier, a portfolio of durable tech-led solutions including Direct Air Capture, Blaston Farm, a regenerative agriculture project with AI-driven soil carbon monitoring, and Chestnut Carbon, large-scale reforestation in the southeastern US. The team built that strategy around the Oxford Offsetting Principles, a framework that prioritises durability and verifiability and explicitly pushes back against cheap nature-based credits that cannot be properly accounted for.

The 2026 expansion adds Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE), Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), Biomass Storage and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BioCCS) to that existing base. OAE accelerates natural ocean chemistry to draw down carbon. ERW spreads crushed silicate rock on agricultural land to achieve the same effect through weathering. These technologies sit at the more permanent end of the removal spectrum, locking carbon away for geological timescales rather than decades.

The seven new projects are spread across Brazil, Canada, the US, the UK, Denmark and India, locations that broadly mirror the global footprint of the sport. On the mechanics and technology selection, this is a credible portfolio built on a solid foundation.

The Logistics Problem Is Real, and Mercedes Is Partially Addressing It

The most common critique of team-level sustainability commitments in F1 is that they ignore the part of the emissions picture that actually matters: moving people, cars and freight around the world across a 24-race calendar. That critique applies here, but less cleanly than it might look.

In 2024, Mercedes’ SAF programme saved 9,860 tCO2e through sustainable aviation fuel certificates covering 68% of their aviation emissions, with a target to quadruple that saving by end of 2025. On the road in Europe that same year, 98% of race and marketing trucks ran on HVO100 biofuel, saving more than 449 tCO2e.

By 2025 those numbers had moved further. HVO100 coverage expanded to 99%, avoiding over 410 tCO2e, and Mercedes transported the W16 to the Dutch Grand Prix using an all-electric Mercedes-Benz Trucks eActros 600, the first F1 team to use electric power for car transport to a European race weekend. Heading into 2026, that trajectory is the backdrop against which the new CUR8 removal portfolio sits.

These are not small numbers relative to what an individual team can control. The structural problem remains. F1’s total sport-wide footprint was 168,720 tCO2e in 2024, with logistics accounting for roughly half of that total. What one team does with its own freight contracts cannot fix that at a system level. But Mercedes is addressing logistics emissions directly, not just the factory, and that is worth being accurate about.

The Scope Question

The headline target in the press release is Race Team Control Net Zero by 2030. That phrase covers the operational footprint Mercedes directly controls at Brackley and Brixworth: factory energy, company cars, commuting and on-site operations. It is a meaningful internal milestone. It is not the full emissions picture.

The fuller commitment is buried further down the communications. Mercedes signed The Climate Pledge, which commits to Net Zero by 2040 across their total emissions. That includes supply chain, logistics, aviation and everything outside direct operational control. The 2030 Race Team Control target is a waypoint on that journey, not the destination. That context matters and it is not prominent in the press release announcing the carbon removal expansion.

The distinction between the 2030 milestone and the 2040 total commitment is not a technicality. Scope 3 emissions, the supply chain and logistics categories that sit outside direct operational control, are the hardest to abate and typically the largest share of any organisation’s total footprint. Mercedes acknowledges this in their own reporting. Hosting their first supplier sustainability event in 2024 and developing a new supplier screening tool are early steps in engaging that problem. They are early steps.

Carbon Removal vs Carbon Offsetting: Why the Language Matters

The consistent use of “removals” rather than “offsets” throughout this announcement is deliberate and worth understanding. Traditional carbon offsetting funds activities elsewhere that theoretically prevent equivalent emissions. The problem is additionality. Demonstrating that the funded activity would not have happened without the offset payment is notoriously difficult to verify, and voluntary carbon markets have been repeatedly exposed for overstating impact.

Carbon removals physically extract CO2 from the atmosphere or ocean system and store it. The accounting is cleaner. The permanence, particularly for DAC and mineralisation-based approaches, is far better than forestry credits. The Oxford Offsetting Principles that underpin Mercedes’ strategy explicitly favour this approach.

By investing in DAC, OAE and ERW alongside nature-based approaches, Mercedes is building a portfolio that should hold up to scrutiny in a way a forestry-credit-heavy strategy would not. CUR8 as a marketplace has a reasonable reputation for quality curation in this space. The methodology is sound.

What It Means at Australia

The timing, days before the Australian Grand Prix media day, is not accidental. Sustainability is part of the paddock conversation at the start of every season, and the FIA’s updated sustainability reporting requirements are active from 2026. Mercedes has given their communications team something substantive to point to before the cameras arrive in Melbourne.

It is also a commercial signal. Signify, UBS and Nasdaq are listed as partners in the programme. ESG commitments are now a procurement consideration for major corporate sponsors, and a credible, third-party-curated carbon removal portfolio is a commercial asset.

The bio-based carbon fibre composite that debuted on the W16 at the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, and subsequently completed over 7,000km of racing, fits the same pattern: demonstrable, verifiable progress that serves both sustainability and commercial positioning simultaneously.

Coffee Corner Take

The full picture here is more substantial than any single press release conveys. Mercedes has a removal strategy built on sound principles, a biofuel programme that is actually reducing logistics emissions, and a 2040 total net zero commitment that goes beyond what most teams have committed to publicly. The technology choices in the new CUR8 portfolio are credible. The Oxford Offsetting Principles framework is the right one. This is not greenwashing.

What it is, is a communications strategy that leads with the most marketable milestone rather than the most complete picture. “Race Team Control Net Zero by 2030” sounds more immediate and more total than it is. The 2040 Climate Pledge commitment, the one that actually covers the full emissions footprint, does not make the headline. That gap between what is prominent and what is accurate is worth noting, not to dismiss the work, but because the work is genuinely good enough that it does not need the framing stretched around it.

The harder systemic question remains unanswered at a sport level. F1’s commercial structure, the one that drives calendar length and flyaway logistics, is not making equivalent commitments to the ones being asked of teams. Individual team progress, however genuine, is always going to be partial until the sport’s commercial operation is included in the accountability framework. Mercedes is doing the right things within its control. The question of what sits outside any single team’s control is still waiting for an answer.