16 Jan 2025 | Harris Cohn
Today, we announced our second carbon removal offtake with Google. This offtake is part of the largest purchase of biochar of all time: 100,000 tonnes of removals to be delivered through 2030. Our first offtake with Google—facilitated by Frontier Climate—will be fulfilled with Charm bio-oil removals, while this second offtake will be fulfilled with carbon removal from Charm Biochar.
Charm’s co-production of biochar and bio-oil from our version of pyrolysis is highly efficient; for every 1 tonne of biomass, a Charm pyrolyzer produces 0.2 tonnes of biochar and 0.5 tonnes of bio-oil (roughly 1 tCO₂e in total). If biomass resources were to ever be constrained, the high combined carbon yield of Charm’s biochar and bio-oil would become critical.
Google’s second offtake agreement with Charm and continued commitments to carbon removal purchasing, via its offtakes facilitated by Frontier Climate represent a growing shift in corporate climate action to better align with the requirements to limit global temperature rise to manageable levels – the objective of Net Zero. Any entity with a Net Zero goal needs to be removing any residual emissions in its Net Zero target year. This means taking action years in advance to understand and build a demand signal so carbon removal companies can continue to scale – Google is demonstrating the speed and ambition to achieve its Net Zero objectives.
Charm has—and will always—emphasize bio-oil production and sequestration. Bio-oil sequestration leverages decades of research on fast pyrolysis, bio-oil, and subsurface geology. Charm’s techno-economic modeling built on our rapidly accelerating operating history shows a clear path to low cost, exceedingly permanent carbon removals by maximizing bio-oil production and sequestration, at roughly 2x the volume of biochar production. Our analyses show promising economics to produce, transport, and store bio-oil for millennia. And, existing oil production wells can be safely converted to underground subsurface bio-oil storage, benefiting communities with remediation and economic growth. Additionally, bio-oil can be used as a reducing agent for iron-making, potentially dramatically reducing the 6% of global annual emissions from iron-making while also removing carbon.
Biochar will now play a key supporting role in Charm’s production model: enhancing total carbon removed, maintaining nutrient availability for new biological growth, improving soil health, and improving hydrology. These benefits contrast with other carbon removal approaches that use biomass feedstocks which end up removing these critical nutrients from natural systems. Charm is working on developing distribution relationships to ensure the biochar will be effectively distributed and monitored per the Isometric Biochar Protocol.
Why Now?
While Charm has always produced biochar, Charm moved cautiously on offering Biochar as a carbon removal solution. Based on new literature that demonstrates biochar permanence of up to 1000 years and the rigor of Isometric’s Biochar Protocol, Charm is excited to begin offering biochar as an additional product, paired with bio-oil sequestration. These products each have different benefits and attributes: bio-oil can be sequestered in geologic formations, ensuring storage for millennia, while biochar has ecosystem benefits, and has demonstrated durability of at least 200 years. We think that combined, they offer a unique benefit to the market that will drive strong climate benefits.
Getting permanent carbon removals to scale cost effectively is crucial over these next few years and Charm’s parallel production of both bio-oil and biochar is a key way to achieving these scale objectives while also delivering significant community benefits.