The company found that picking up the biomass and transporting it to a centralized gasification facility was too expensive because it was bulky and unwieldy.
In 2020, Charm's chief scientist had a bright idea: if the company was willing to do what Reinhardt describes as half-assed gasification and yield bio-oil instead of hydrogen, the equipment. The company could take the process to the edge of the fields.
Charm, which has about 30 employees, pays farmers to allow it to pick up plant materials left after harvest. It is also looking at removing trees and plants from forests for fire prevention, or in the aftermath of a dry spell. The company is exploring the possibility of using bio-oil to clean up the dirtiest industrial sector in the world.
The business model wouldn't make sense in any other time. A growing number of companies are willing to pay the high cost of carbon removal and storage as a way of balancing out their own emissions, to help support the emerging market, or as a form of climate philanthropy. Around 40 organizations have purchased tons of removal from the company.
Winni WintermeYER is a woman.
As it scales up its operations, the company expects to eventually drive down the cost to $50 a ton of removed and stored carbon dioxide. It plans to build a fleet of semi-trailers with high-capacity, fast pyrolyzers. The company hopes to create a combine harvester that can pick up and convert agricultural remains wherever they fall in the fields, saving the costs of collecting, bundling, and moving the material.
Charm's approach to carbon removal and storage offers several advantages over other methods.
It promises to lock away the carbon for a long time, while options like planting trees or altering farming methods to hold more carbon in soil can be quickly reversed when trees die or fields are tilled. It prevents emissions from happening.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
