Charm Industrial – a US-based carbon dioxide removal startup that launched just a year ago, announced a new milestone. The startup delivered over 5,000 tons of CO2 equivalent of permanent removal for its clients since it started operation in January this year.
Back in May 2020, Stripe – Charm’s first customer, purchased 416 tons of CO2 equivalent in carbon removal. The first 150 tons of that order were delivered in January 2021 and as of March 26th, 2021, according to the company, the entire Stripe carbon removal contract was delivered.
As of today, Charm had delivered 1,400 tons CO2e of carbon sequestration to Stripe and Shopify, 2,000 tons CO2e for Microsoft, and an aggregate 1,900 tons CO2e for Zendesk, Square, Sourceful, Cosora.earth, Aerial, Chero, Pledge, Carbon Removed, Kickstarter, Nicolas Schultheiss, Klimate, Thanks a Ton, Joro, Climate Responsible, Canopi, Removement, Andrew Brook, Tom McInerney, Ted Suzman, Ilya Volodarsky, and Calvin French-Owen.
Charm’s carbon reduction method includes turning waste or biomass into carbon rich oil that the company sequesters permanently in geological storage. The waste/ biomass would otherwise be burned or decompose, releasing back into the air the CO2 in contains. They have developed a machine called a pyrolizer that turns the biomass into a black liquid looking like crude oil.
“We sort of caramelize it or turn it into a carbon liquid soup…And then we inject that carbon soup deep underground,” said CEO of Charm, Peter Reinhardt. 1.4 tons of CO2 equivalent are removed with the sequestration of one ton of bio-oil produced by the startup.
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The purchases of Charm’s clients are directly enabling the company to scale up production of pyrolyzers and reduce their future costs, in the same way solar power costs have been coming down over the past 20 years. More carbon removal buyers are still needed for the company to continue scaling up engineered carbon removal.
