There Are Now 800 Carbon Removal Startups. How Many Is Too Many?
“The challenge has been the lack of demand and the lack of natural customers,” Nan Rasohoff, head of climate at Stripe, says on this week’s Zero.
A facade of the collector containers unit at the Climeworks Mammoth carbon removal plant in Hellisheidi, Iceland.
Photographer: Heida Helgadottir/BloombergCarbon removal is difficult and expensive, leaving the industry with two big sets of questions. The first set has to do with the technological challenge itself: What is the most effective way to pull carbon out of the atmosphere? The second has to do with the cost. What will it take to create a carbon removal market that can pay for these solutions to be deployed?
Two years ago, payment company Stripe took a big swing at both challenges by launching a public benefit company called Frontier, designed to sell carbon removal and fund carbon removal technology. Since 2022, Frontier has funded some 40 startups. One company, Alkali Earth, applies alkaline byproducts to gravel on roads, to act as a carbon sink. Another, Mati, applies silicate rock powder to farm fields to produce dissolved carbon. Stripe and Frontier have also convinced other big corporations, including Shopify and H&M, to buy into the carbon removal purchase market — essentially kickstarting demand.