Frontier, a carbon removal buyer coalition, has signed offtake agreements with direct air capture or DAC technology companies CarbonCapture and Heirloom.
Valued at $47 million, the agreements are to remove 72,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. According to Frontier, purchasers will pay a price per ton that will drop by at least 46% during the duration of the agreement.
The new agreements include a $20 million offtake with CarbonCapture to permanently remove 45,500 tons of CO2 by 2028. The $26.6 million agreement with Heirloom is for the removal of 26,900 tons of CO2 by 2030 from its next commercial facility. This includes options to purchase more tons from future projects at lower prices. The agreements also include measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) that each ton of CO2 is safely stored and accounted for according to a rigorous protocol.
These new agreements are Frontier’s first DAC offtakes. DAC technology removes carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the atmosphere, either permanently when combined with storage or as a raw material.
IEA lists DAC as a critical carbon removal option in the move to a net-zero energy system. It must be noted that an IPCC study indicates that reducing global warming to 1.5°C requires massive carbon dioxide removal techniques. It stressed that DAC potentially plays a significant role.
Launched in April 2022, Frontier is a $925 million commitment from Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, H&M, JPMorgan, and McKinsey Sustainability, and members Autodesk, H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase and Workday. Through a partnership between Frontier and climate solutions platform Watershed, companies including Aledade, Boom Supersonic, Canva, SKIMS, Wise, and Zendesk will also participate with purchases.
Frontier sets a demand pool for carbon removal and whets suppliers to find solutions with high volume and low-cost potential. It is targeting DAC companies with steep cost curves and rapid iteration speeds. CarbonCapture and Heirloom fit the bill.
CarbonCapture creates DAC devices that employ solid sorbents to efficiently absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Additionally, the business makes use of an upgradeable and modular capture system that allows it to replace sorbents with newer models as they become available, allowing for long-term cost savings without the need to construct new facilities.
Heirloom’s technology improves carbon mineralization, shortening CO2 absorption time to days.
Shashank Samala, CEO and Co-founder, Heirloom, said, “By harnessing the natural properties of an earth-abundant mineral, limestone, Heirloom has moved quickly from lab to commercial scale and halved the costs of our removals in just over two years. Offtake agreements like these allow us to continue moving quickly towards high-scale and low-cost direct air capture.”
Adrian Corless, CEO, CarbonCapture, said, “Large offtake agreements like this are critical to us because they demonstrate commercial viability and unlock a path to scale. We highly value Frontier’s confidence in our technology and team, particularly as we emerge from the lab and begin deployment.”