Google has signed a 4-year agreement with Indian climate-tech startup Mitti Labs to purchase 1 million carbon credits through 2030, in what the companies describe as the largest publicly announced deal so far involving credits generated by reducing methane emissions from rice farming.
The project will cover rice farms across Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, reaching around 100,000 hectares at peak delivery, according to Mitti Labs co-founder Xavier Laguarta. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Under the project, farmers will be paid to adopt practices that reduce the time rice fields remain flooded. This helps lower methane emissions during cultivation while also reducing water consumption. Mitti Labs says the approach can cut methane emissions by around 50% and irrigation water use by around 40%, without affecting crop yields.
The agreement comes as Google works towards its 2030 net-zero emissions goal while continuing to invest heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company’s greenhouse gas emissions increased 18% year-on-year in 2025 to around 14.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Mitti Labs began discussions with Google around 1 year ago, as the technology company explored methane-reduction projects for its carbon-credit portfolio. Google was reportedly attracted by the project’s water-saving benefits and the startup’s ability to operate at scale.
Mitti Labs says its projects have saved more than 500 billion litres of water over the past 2 years. Laguarta said the Google agreement will help the startup expand and gain the scale needed to work with larger corporate buyers.
“Having Google, one of the most sophisticated buyers in the market with rigorous due diligence processes, is obviously a good signal for us,” Laguarta said.
Google evaluated Mitti Labs’ monitoring technology and visited farms before signing the agreement. Founded in 2023, the New York- and Bengaluru-based startup has developed a GeoAI platform that combines satellite radar imagery with field measurements to remotely monitor crop growth, soil moisture and flooding across smallholder farms.
The platform uses synthetic aperture radar imagery from commercial and public satellites with resolutions ranging from 50 centimetres to 10 metres. Proprietary field data is also used to train its AI models.
The carbon credits sold to Google can be issued through Gold Standard or Isometric. The projects undergo independent third-party verification before credits are issued.
Mitti Labs also works with customers including Cool Effect, Ebro Foods and Syngenta. The Google agreement is its largest offtake deal so far.
The startup currently works with more than 100,000 farmers and aims to reach millions of farmers by 2030. A majority of revenue from its projects goes to farming communities, although the company has not disclosed how much farmers participating in the Google project will receive.
While the current project is limited to India, Mitti Labs plans to begin operations in the Philippines later in 2026 and expand into Indonesia and other Southeast Asian markets in 2027.
Laguarta estimates significant potential for agricultural methane-reduction projects, with around 150 million farmers growing rice across India, Southeast Asia and China.
The deal follows Google’s earlier carbon-removal investment in India. In January 2025, Google partnered with Gurugram-based Varaha to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon credits, marking its first large-scale carbon-removal purchase in the country and the largest involving biomass-produced biochar.
Google is also supporting clean-energy projects in India. It has signed an agreement linked to a 150-megawatt solar project in Rajasthan, taking its contracted solar capacity with ReNew in the state to 300 megawatts.
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