Charm Industrial is on a mission to return the earth’s atmosphere to 280 parts per million of CO₂, the level it sat at before the Industrial Revolution. They aim to do this by storing bio-oil deep underground.
Charm’s approach is unique. They asked, what would be possible if bio-oil didn’t need to be refined for fuel, and could stay dirty instead?
The thing is, bio-oil is rich with carbon from the product it came from—in Charm’s case, sawdust and corn remnants. Instead of converting that oil into a usable product, Charm opts to permanently sequester it in the earth. Where? In industrial disposal wells and salt caverns underground.
Bio-oil is easy to sequester permanently. It’s denser than water and sinks to the bottom of the rock formation it’s injected into—it wants to stay underground permanently. It’s a better candidate than the CO₂ used for traditional carbon sequestration which is less dense than water, rising to the top of its injection site and seeking a path back out to the atmosphere.
For every ton of bio-oil sequestered, 1.35 tons of CO₂ are removed (and this takes into account the energy emitted during production, transport, and injection). It’s still early days for Charm, having only come up with their idea in March 2020, but they’re moving extremely fast. Charm delivered 1,000 tonnes of carbon removal to Shopify in less than one year since we became their customer in September 2020. Our purchase will bring their cost curve down by 10% and help them prove and scale their technology.
We’re so impressed by Charm’s progress thatShopify has agreed to purchase 3,000 more tonnes of carbon removalto be delivered by the end of 2023. Our goal with this purchase is to give Charm more resources to accelerate their progress towards gigaton scale.
LocationSan Francisco, CA, USAFounded
2017
