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Instead of rocket fuel, they’re burning biomass.
Arbor Energy might have the flashiest origin story in cleantech.
After the company’s CEO, Brad Hartwig, left SpaceX in 2018, he attempted to craft the ideal resume for a future astronaut, his dream career. He joined the California Air National Guard, worked as a test pilot at the now-defunct electric aviation startup Kitty Hawk, and participated in volunteer search and rescue missions in the Bay Area, which gave him a front row seat to the devastating effects of wildfires in Northern California.
That experience changed everything. “I decided I actually really like planet Earth,” Hartwig told me, “and I wanted to focus my career instead on preserving it, rather than trying to leave it.” So he rallied a bunch of his former rocket engineer colleagues to repurpose technology they pioneered at SpaceX to build a biomass-fueled, carbon negative power source that’s supposedly about ten times smaller, twice as efficient, and eventually, one-third the cost of the industry standard for this type of plant.
Take that, all you founders humble-bragging about starting in a dingy garage.
“It’s not new science, per se,” Hartwig told me. The goal of this type of tech, called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, is to combine biomass-based energy generation with carbon dioxide removal to achieve net negative emissions. Sounds like a dream, but actually producing power or heat from this process has so far proven too expensive to really make sense. There are only a few so-called BECCS facilities operating in the U.S. today, and they’re all just ethanol fuel refineries with carbon capture and storage technology tacked on.
But the advances in 3D printing and computer modeling that allowed the SpaceX team to build an increasingly simple and cheap rocket engine have allowed Arbor to move quickly into this new market, Hartwig explained. “A lot of the technology that we had really pioneered over the last decade — in reactor design, combustion devices, turbo machinery, all for rocket propulsion — all that technology has really quite immediate application in this space of biomass conversion and power generation.”
Arbor’s method is poised to be a whole lot sleeker and cheaper than the BECCS plants of today, enabling both more carbon sequestration and actual electricity production, all by utilizing what Hartwig fondly refers to as a “vegetarian rocket engine.” Because there’s no air in space, astronauts have to bring pure oxygen onboard, which the rocket engines use to burn fuel and propel themselves into the stratosphere and beyond. Arbor simply subs out the rocket fuel for biomass. When that biomass is combusted with pure oxygen, the resulting exhaust consists of just CO2 and water. As the exhaust cools, the water condenses out, and what’s left is a stream of pure carbon dioxide that’s ready to be injected deep underground for permanent storage. All of the energy required to operate Arbor’s system is generated by the biomass combustion itself.
“Arbor is the first to bring forward a technology that can provide clean baseload energy in a very compact form,” Clea Kolster, a partner and Head of Science at Lowercarbon Capital told me. Lowercarbon is an investor in Arbor, alongside other climate tech-focused venture capital firms including Gigascale Capital and Voyager Ventures, but the company has not yet disclosed how much it’s raised.
Last month, Arbor signed a deal with Microsoft to deliver 25,000 tons of permanent carbon dioxide removal to the tech giant starting in 2027, when the startup’s first commercial project is expected to come online. As a part of the deal, Arbor will also generate 5 megawatts of clean electricity per year, enough to power about 4,000 U.S. homes. And just a few days ago, the Department of Energy announced that Arbor is one of 11 projects to receive a combined total of $58.5 million to help develop the domestic carbon removal industry.
Arbor’s current plan is to source biomass from forestry waste, much of which is generated by forest thinning operations intended to prevent destructive wildfires. Hartwig told me that for every ton of organic waste, Arbor can produce about one megawatt hour of electricity, which is in line with current efficiency standards, plus about 1.8 tons of carbon removal. “We look at being as efficient, if not a little more efficient than a traditional bioenergy power plant that does not have carbon capture on it,” he explained.
The company’s carbon removal price targets are also extremely competitive — in the $50 to $100 per ton range, Hartwig said. Compare that to something like direct air capture, which today exceeds $600 per ton, or enhanced rock weathering, which is usually upwards of $300 per ton. “The power and carbon removal they can offer comes at prices that meet nearly unlimited demand,”Mike Schroepfer, the founder of Gigascale Capital and former CTO of Meta, told me via email. Arbor benefits from the fact that the electricity it produces and sells can help offset the cost of the carbon removal, and vice versa. So if the company succeeds in hitting its cost and efficiency targets, Hartwig said, this “quickly becomes a case for, why wouldn’t you just deploy these everywhere?”
Initial customers will likely be (no surprise here) the Microsofts, Googles and Metas of the world — hyperscalers with growing data center needs and ambitious emissions targets. “What Arbor unlocks is basically the ability for hyperscalers to stop needing to sacrifice their net zero goals for AI,” Kolster told me. And instead of languishing in the interminable grid interconnection queue, Hartwig said that providing power directly to customers could ensure rapid, early deployment. “We see it as being quicker to power behind-the-meter applications, because you don’t have to go through the process of connecting to the grid,” he told me. Long-term though, he said grid connection will be vital, since Arbor can provide baseload power whereas intermittent renewables cannot.
All of this could serve as a much cheaper alternative, to say, re-opening shuttered nuclear facilities, as Microsoft also recently committed to doing at Three Mile Island. “It’s great, we should be doing that,” Kolster said of this nuclear deal, “but there’s actually a limited pool of options to do that, and unfortunately, there is still community pushback.”
Currently, Arbor is working to build out its pilot plant in San Bernardino, California, which Hartwig told me will turn on this December. And by 2030, the company plans to have its first commercial plant operating at scale, generating 100 megawatts of electricity while removing nearly 2 megatons of CO2 every year. “To put it in perspective: In 2023, the U.S. added roughly 9 gigawatts of gas power to the grid, which generates 18 to 23 megatons of CO2 a year,” Schroepfer wrote to me. So having just one Arbor facility removing 2 megatons would make a real dent. The first plant will be located in Louisiana, where Arbor will also be working with an as-yet-unnamed partner to do the carbon storage.
The company’s carbon credits will be verified with the credit certification platform Isometric, which is also backed by Lowercarbon and thought to have the most stringent standards in the industry. Hartwig told me that Arbor worked hand-in-hand with Isometric to develop the protocol for “biogenic carbon capture and storage,” as the company is the first Isometric-approved supplier to use this standard.
But Hartwig also said that government support hasn’t yet caught up to the tech’s potential. While the Inflation Reduction Act provides direct air capture companies with $180 per ton of carbon dioxide removed, technology such as Arbor’s only qualifies for $85 per ton. It’s not nothing — more than the zero dollars enhanced rock weathering companies such as Lithos or bio-oil sequestration companies such as Charm are getting. “But at the same time, we’re treated the same as if we’re sequestering CO2 emissions from a natural gas plant or a coal plant,” Hartwig told me, as opposed to getting paid for actual CO2 removal.
“I think we are definitely going to need government procurement or involvement to actually hit one, five, 10 gigatons per year of carbon removal,” Hartwig said. Globally, scientists estimate that we’ll need up to 10 gigatons of annual CO2 removal by 2050 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. “Even at $100 per ton, 10 gigatons of carbon removal is still a pretty hefty price tag,” Hartwig told me. A $1 trillion price tag, to be exact. “We definitely need more players than just Microsoft.”
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A leaked internal memo reveals why the environmental group adopted President Trump’s new name.
The Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit, was told by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration it had to rename a major conservation program as the “Gulf of America” or else lose federal funding, according to a leaked internal memo reviewed by Heatmap News.
For the last week, the Nature Conservancy has been pilloried by figures in the climate and environmentalist community for changing the name of its conservation program in the Gulf of Mexico region to being a “Gulf of America” restoration program, brandishing what President Donald Trump declared on his first day in office would be the new official U.S. term for the body of water. Trump’s new name has become a First Amendment firestorm as news organizations find themselves split on whether to adopt the term and the White House is punishing outlets — including the Associated Press — for continuing to use the Gulf of Mexico.
We can now exclusively reveal why the Nature Conservancy adopted this fresh Trump branding: They were allegedly pressured into it.
Jennifer Morris, CEO of the Nature Conservancy, sent an email to all staff at the organization this morning stating that the organization’s conservation program in the Gulf of Mexico was renamed to Gulf of America “after receiving clear directives from a federal agency.” “Please know that we did not make this decision lightly,” Morris wrote. Attached to the email was staff guidance claiming the nonprofit “received specific direction from NOAA that we must change all references to the new nomenclature in association with our NOAA funded work in the Gulf.”
“For example, all maps, reports, and other deliverables must use ‘Gulf of America,’ the memo stated. “We have at least $156 million in active federal grants in the region, including $45 million from NOAA alone.’ Federal funding makes up most of the organization’s work in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the memo.
In addition, the Nature Conservancy has “been advised that new proposals in the Gulf for US federal grants must conform” to Trump’s executive order adopting “Gulf of America” as the official U.S. name for that body of water, the memo stated. State governors in the Gulf region in charge of “disseminating” remaining BP oil spill recovery funds have “followed suit in support of these nomenclature changes” and there is fear a “failure to adjust” could also “jeopardize” state funding.
“Ultimately, this decision was made after reviewing all the facts and looking at what the organization felt was best to ensure we can continue our conservation programs and support our teams on the ground,” the memo stated.
Historically, NOAA has been more insulated than other agencies from political pressures like this, which has helped it maintain a global reputation as a world-class scientific meteorological body.
This ordeal, however, echoes the one other time Trump seemed to put his thumb on NOAA’s scales — an incident best known as Sharpiegate. In 2019 Trump incorrectly proclaimed Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama. He went so far as to draw on a giant map with a Sharpie in the White House to show his guestimated pathway for the storm. After the NOAA office in Alabama publicly sought to reassure residents that, no, a hurricane wasn’t on the way, Trump officials pressured NOAA into backing the president, leading to the agency issuing an unsigned statement backing the claim. An inspector general report – which Trump officials reportedly sought to obstruct from seeing the light of day – ultimately found the NOAA statement violated its scientific integrity policy.
If the Gulf of America is the beginning of NOAA subservience, I’m nervous to see what happens when Trump’s version of the agency – which any day now is expected to undergo mass layoffs – pivots to climate change and renewable energy.
The Nature Conservancy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “We can find no evidence of that, so far,” NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said.
President Donald Trump is going to be talking rocks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy during their Friday meeting in Washington, D.C., where they will sign a “very big agreement,” Trump said Wednesday.
As the Trump administration has ramped up talks to end the war in Ukraine, shift America’s strategic priorities away from Europe, and build a new relationship with Russia, it has also become intensely interested in Ukraine’s supposed mineral wealth, with Ukrainian and American negotiators working on a deal to create an investment fund for the country’s reconstruction that would be partially funded by developing the country’s mineral resources.
But exactly what minerals are in Ukraine and if they’re economically viable to extract is a matter of contention.
So-called critical minerals and rare earths have a way of finding themselves in geopolitical hotspots. This is because they’re not particularly rare, but the immense capital required to cost effectively find them, mine them, and process them is.
“A lot of countries have natural resources. We don’t mine everything that exists underground. We look for projects that are economically competitive,” Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me.
Baskaran pointed out, it was precisely Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that kicked the United States’ interest in building up supplies of critical minerals and rare earths outside of China — which dominates the industry — into overdrive.
“It was a fortuitous moment in that way for Ukraine’s resources, because they weren’t necessarily being mined before,” she said.
And Ukraine has done its best to promote and take advantage of its mineral resources, even if there’s some ambiguity about what exactly they are, and if they can be profitably extracted at scale.
While often conflated, critical minerals and rare earths are distinct. The so-called “rare earths” are 17 similar elements, which the U.S. Geological Survey explicitly says are “relatively abundant,” like scandium and yttrium. Critical minerals are a more amorphous group, with the USGS listing out 50 (including the rare earths) as well as commonly known minerals like titanium, nickel, lithium, tin, and graphite, with uses in batteries, alloys, semiconductors, and other high value energy, defense, and technology applications.
When countries are desperate for outside assistance or their patrons are desperate to see some return on their “investments” in military and foreign aid,as Bloomberg’s Javier Blas has pointed out, the minerals tend to show up — just look at the “$1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits” the United States identified in Afghanistan in 2010. Ten years later when the USGS looked at Afghanistan’s mineral industries, the rare earths remained untapped and instead the country was largely exporting talc and crushed marble to its neighbors.
Ukrainians have been eager to show there are economically viable and valuable minerals in the country, including a claim by one Ukrainian official in early 2022 that “about 5% of all the world’s ‘critical raw materials’ are located in Ukraine,” while a pair of Ukrainian researchers claimed there was 500,000 tons of unmined lithium oxide resources. More recently the country has claimed to have rare earths, and that President Trump has taken a special interest in.
Many industry experts doubt there’s any significant reserves of rare earths in the country, with the exception of scandium, which is used in aluminum alloys and fuel cells. Ukraine does have a significant mining industry and has produced substantial amounts of iron ore and manganese, along with reserves of graphite, titanium, cobalt, and uranium, many of which are those so-called “critical minerals” with uses for energy and defense.
“There do not appear to be hardly any economically viable rare earths in the country – that was largely a misuse of a term someone heard,” Morgan Bazillian, director of the Payne Institute and a public policy professor at the Colorado School of Mines, told me in an email.
Blas has documented a game of telephone whereby rare earths and critical minerals are conflated to make it seem like the former exists in abundance underneath Ukraine. Despite the doubts, President Trump said on Wednesday during his cabinet meeting “we’ll be really partnering with Ukraine, [in] terms of rare earth. We very much need rare earth. They have great rare earth.”
While there’s disagreement about exactly what Ukraine has to offer in terms of minerals, the interest in building up supplies of minerals is part and parcel of what is now a bipartisan priority to build up supplies and the ability to process and refine minerals used for a variety of defense, industrial, and energy applications.
To the extent the United States is able to jumpstart any new mineral operations in postwar Ukraine, it would require first repairing the country’s greatly damaged infrastructure, which has been wrecked by the very conflict that has spiked interest in the country’s mineral sector.
“Their infrastructure is decimated. Rebuilding it will be the priority, getting industry moving again will take time – including from basic services like electricity,” Bazillian told me.
And after that, much basic work needs to be done before any mining can happen, like an updated geological survey of the country, which hasn’t been done since the country was part of the Soviet Union. And all that’s before starting the process for opening a mine, something that on average takes 18 years to do.
“You need to have a geological mapping. You need to identify investors who want to go in. You need to build infrastructure,” Baskaran said.
“Ukraine has undeveloped or untapped potential that could be utilized. And the question is whether that untapped potential is economically viable, and we don’t know yet.”
Current conditions: Firefighters contained a blaze in South Africa’s Table Mountain National Park that was creeping towards Cape Town • Moroccans are being asked not to slaughter sheep during Eid al-Adha this year because ongoing drought has caused a drop in herd numbers • Most of the U.S. will see “well above-average” temperatures through the end of this week.
The House voted yesterday to repeal a Biden-era fee on methane emissions generated by oil and gas operations. The Senate is likely to follow suit with a vote as soon as today. The rule, which was only finalized in November, charges producers per metric ton of excess methane released, and provides grants for infrastructure improvements to prevent leaks. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas responsible for roughly one third of the global temperature rise since the pre-industrial era. The EPA estimated the policy would prevent 1.2 million metric tons of methane from entering the atmosphere, which is roughly equivalent to taking nearly 8 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year. Congress will also vote this week on a measure repealing another recently implemented rule regarding efficiency standards for tankless gas water heaters.
President Trump said yesterday that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is aiming to cut 65% of the agency’s workforce. The EPA currently has about 15,000 employees, and E&E News reported that such a cut “would put the agency close to the numbers it had when it was created by President Richard Nixon.” According toReuters, the news came as a surprise to EPA union leaders. “Mr. Zeldin stated during his confirmation testimony that he pledged to enthusiastically uphold the EPA’s mission,” said Joyce Howell, executive vice president of AFGE Council 238 representing EPA employees. “So which is it? Upholding the EPA mission or imposing a reduction in force that makes upholding the EPA mission an impossibility?”
BP confirmed it will cut its investments in renewables and shift its strategy back to ramping up fossil fuel production. The radical shift represents “a major break from five years in which BP was the oil industry’s most ardent pursuer of net zero emissions and the transition to clean energy,” reportedBloomberg. BP had planned to have 50 gigawatts of renewable generation capacity by 2030 and cut oil and gas production by 40%, but CEO Murray Auchincloss said the company’s “optimism for a fast transition was misplaced.” Here is some early reaction and analysis:
New research suggests the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is not likely to fully collapse any time soon, but it could weaken significantly. As Heatmap’s Jeva Lange explained recently, AMOC is a current system sometimes described as the oceanic conveyor belt responsible for influencing the climate of the Northern Hemisphere. Its full collapse, triggered by rising temperatures and Arctic meltwater – would cause dramatic cooling across Europe, and scientists have been debating the likelihood of such an event for years. A recent paper predicted it could happen even within the next three decades. This new analysis from the UK’s Met Office used 34 climate models to test future warming scenarios and concluded that AMOC would still keep moving through 2100. But it also showed the current could slow down significantly, which would still have serious side effects like changing rain patterns, disrupting ocean ecosystems, and rising sea levels.
A study out this week finds that exposure to extreme heat makes older people age faster. Researchers from USC examined blood samples from 3,600 individuals aged 56 or older, looking specifically at markers indicating biological age, which is “a measure of how well the body functions at the molecular, cellular, and system levels.” The team compared this information to six years of climate data and found evidence that people exposed to repeated heat waves age more quickly. “Participants living in areas where heat days, as defined as Extreme Caution or higher levels (≥90°F), occur half the year, such as Phoenix, Arizona, experienced up to 14 months of additional biological aging compared to those living in areas with fewer than 10 heat days per year,” said USC’s Eunyoung Choi, a co-author on the study. “Even after controlling for several factors, we found this association. Just because you live in an area with more heat days, you’re aging faster biologically.”
The company behind the UK’s first new nuclear plant to be built in 20 years is considering installing 288 underwater speakers in a nearby river to deter fish from entering the plant’s water intake system. This “fish disco” would generate sounds that are louder than a jumbo jet 24 hours a day for 60 years.