$41 million carbon removal deal: Arbor will remove 116,000 tons of CO₂ between 2028 and 2030 under a deal facilitated by Frontier and backed by buyers including Google, Stripe, Meta, and others.
Dual climate solution: Arbor’s system delivers 99% CO₂ capture while producing clean electricity—meeting the rising demand for sustainable, baseload power.
Breakthrough BECCS technology: Arbor integrates biomass gasification, oxycombustion, and supercritical CO₂ turbines into a single high-efficiency, low-cost system.
Arbor, a pioneering Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) company, has secured a $41 million carbon removal deal through Frontier, a coalition backed by Google, Stripe, Meta, Shopify, McKinsey, and other major corporates. The agreement will support the construction of Arbor’s first commercial facility near Lake Charles, Louisiana, and enable the removal of 116,000 tons of CO₂ between 2028 and 2030.
“Carbon removal approaches that deliver both net removal and decarbonization benefits will scale quickly. That’s what sets Arbor’s approach apart,” said Brad Hartwig, CEO of Arbor. “This offtake agreement with Frontier buyers accelerates a model that removes carbon while generating the reliable, zero-emission energy our power grid needs.”
Dual Impact: Carbon Removal and Clean Power
Arbor’s system stands out in the carbon removal space by producing baseload, carbon-free electricity while capturing over 99% of CO₂ emissions, compared to the industry average of 90%. The process doesn’t generate any exhaust or air pollution, unlike conventional bioenergy plants, and supplies up to 1,000 kWh of clean electricity per ton of CO₂ removed—the equivalent of an average household’s monthly energy use.
“We need to remove gigatons of CO₂ from the atmosphere and we need a lot more clean electricity to meet the pace of AI’s development,” said Hannah Bebbington, Head of Deployment at Frontier. “Though they are two separate challenges, Arbor tackles both with a single solution.”
The urgency to power hyperscale data centers and meet corporate climate targets makes Arbor’s offering especially attractive. Its modular, high-efficiency system is designed to scale while reducing costs—delivering up to 10x more power and CO₂ removal for every 2–3x increase in system size.
Technical Innovation and Cost Advantage
Arbor is the first carbon removal company to integrate biomass gasification, oxycombustion, and supercritical CO₂ turbomachinery into one compact design. The process converts waste biomass into syngas, burns it with pure oxygen in a specialized furnace, and generates supercritical CO₂ and water—powering a turbine to produce electricity while simplifying carbon capture.
This approach allows for:
Over 99% CO₂ capture efficiency
30% improvement in biomass-to-electricity conversion
Minimal air pollutants and no exhaust
Potential costs below $100 per ton of CO₂ removed
Arbor’s 18 MW turbine—roughly the size of a car engine—enables scalable deployment and cost-effective operations.
Sustainability and Supply Chain Alignment
Arbor’s facility will adhere to Frontier’s sustainable biomass sourcing principles by using thinnings from managed timber plantations in regions where pulp and paper mills have shut down, and where biomass growth exceeds harvest rates. To ensure environmental integrity, Arbor is working with Isometric to quantify and deduct project emissions in net removal calculations.
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Strategic Backing from Global Leaders
The offtake was made possible through Frontier, whose buyers include Stripe, Google, Shopify, McKinsey Sustainability, Autodesk, H&M Group, and Workday. Additional participants via Frontier’s partnership with Watershed include Aledade, Canva, Match Group, Samsara, SKIMS, Skyscanner, Wise, and Zendesk.
“I’m thrilled to share that Google, through Frontier, has signed a carbon removal deal with Arbor Energy to launch their first commercial BECCS facility,” said a statement from Google’s sustainability team. “Arbor’s approach—capturing CO₂ from waste biomass while producing carbon-free energy for the grid—is a promising new path to advance both of these aims at scale.”
Arbor also plans to monetize excess water—a byproduct of the biomass and oxygen combustion process—for use in irrigation and data center cooling, further reducing the environmental footprint of its operations.
With its groundbreaking system and major industry backing, Arbor is poised to demonstrate that carbon removal and clean energy generation can be achieved simultaneously—and affordably—at scale.
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