Why did we start Carboniferous?

Throughout Earth history, one of the principal mechanisms by which atmospheric CO2 concentrations have declined from hothouse conditions is the burial of organic carbon in anoxic marine basins. Carboniferous’s Anoxic Biological Carbon Sequestration (ABCS) process is designed to safely accelerate the natural process of organic carbon burial by collecting and processing agricultural byproducts and storing them in deep, hypersaline, anoxic basins, our first being below the oxygenated ocean in the Gulf of Mexico.,

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Our CDR approach is designed to maximize the efficiency of biomass preservation through both our choice of biomass sources and our targeted storage location. Most terrestrial biomass and crop residues are composed of lignin, cellulose, and other structural polymers that are relatively resistant to chemical and microbial breakdown. Some of these materials, like lignin, are particularly difficult to degrade in the absence of O2. Anoxia also slows the breakdown of terrestrial materials by restricting the activity of animals like worms that physically degrade biomass, and it reduces the energy available to microbes. Deep hypersaline anoxic basins take this effect even further, generally slowing metabolic rates and limiting life forms to extremophilic bacteria and archaea. Because of this terrestrial biomass storage in anoxic environments should represent an optimal scenario for efficient biomass preservation.

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The sources of carbon for the ABCS process are crop byproducts, including sugarcane bagasse (the pulp remaining after sugarcane processing) and corn stover (stalks, leaves, etc.). These materials fix large amounts of carbon every year, with one tonne of dry terrestrial biomass embodying approximately 1.6t of CO2e. Currently, most non-grain biomass is tilled back into the soil to decompose, or burned, releasing the fixed carbon back into the atmosphere. Our approach mitigates the return of part of this biomass to the atmosphere.

We’re excited to announce that we received a $250k Frontier R&D Grant to continue researching our Anoxic Biological Carbon Sequestration (ABCS) process! Frontier is the premier CDR advance market commitment organization and being selected for their research grant is a huge validation of our work to date.

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This grant is a testament to the hard work, passion, and dedication of our team, as well as the invaluable support we have received from our partners, stakeholders, and the entire climate community. Thank you to everyone who’s helped make this happen.

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From a practical standpoint, we will be using the funds to develop and deploy more research landers into anoxic basins with improved sensor and samping systems to test our biomass degradation rates. If you’re interested in partnering with us, please feel free to reach out!

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We get asked this question a lot, and it’s pretty simple. We wanted to have a large impact on mitigating climate change while minimizing negative impacts on the environment and society, which like many things in life is relatively simple to understand, but not easy to execute. With these goals in mind we settled on pursuing storing terrestrial biomass in naturally occurring anoxic basins because it likely is one of the cheapest, safest, and most scalable carbon dioxide removal pathways available.

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We’re excited by the relatively simple process because it has the potential for low cost, low environmental impact, easily scalable carbon dioxide removal at a gigaton scale, all while distributing financial benefits to a broad community of farmers around the world. It’s low cost because the biomass we use is already being grown for food, scalable because much of the infrastructure to do this type of CDR already exists, and low impact because with proper farming practices and the nature of anoxic basins, there’s very little chance of damages to the ocean or farmland.