The Frontier Fund, a corporate buyers’ group including Alphabet, H&M, JPMorgan, Shopify and Stripe, this week announced a $57.1 million contract with startup Lithos Carbon, which is developing a method for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by spreading crushed rock on soil.
The deal is the largest yet for Frontier, a $1 billion project created last year to scale-up carbon removal techniques. The agreement with Lithos calls for 154,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide to be captured between 2024 and 2028 via "enhanced weathering," which mimics the way CO2 is naturally absorbed into rocks as they are exposed to rain, wind or sea.
At least half the contract should be delivered by the end of 2025, said Nan Ransohoff, head of climate and Stripe, and also of the Frontier initiative. That’s quicker than other methods that received early investments from the group, she said.
Contracts that signal future demand
Frontier has made similar "offtake" transactions with direct air capture startups Heirloom and CarbonCapture, and with Charm Industrial, which converts agricultural waste into bio-oil. All these approaches ensure that carbon dioxide is captured "permanently," or for at least 1,000 years.
"Offtake" contracts with Frontier give investors confidence in financing early projects by proving corporations are willing to buy certificates for removals as they are delivered and verified, said Ransohoff. "It offers more evidence that there are buyers and helps de-risk this work," she said.
Under the Lithos contract, Frontier’s buyers will pay $370 per ton, including the verification process. That is substantially less than the $500 it paid Lithos for an earlier test project just one year ago, but far more than the $100 per ton price experts predict will be necessary for carbon removal technologies to earn mainstream appeal.
The annual demand for carbon removal offtakes could reach 40 million-200 million metric tons by 2030, according to the Boston Consulting Group. The capacity available today is a fraction of that amount, and Frontier hopes to encourage more supply.
A process that pays farmers
Enhanced weathering has received less attention than approaches such as direct air capture, in part because it has been difficult to measure and verify the impact of this approach without intensive fieldwork. "Unlike other pathways, the crux of the challenge is logistica
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