Deep in Inyo National Forest in the Eastern Sierra Nevada are a couple of bright white domed tents protecting an assemblage of technical equipment and machinery that, admittedly, looks a bit out of place amidst the natural splendor. Surrounding shipping containers boast a large “Charm Industrial” logo, an indication that, yes, the U.S. Forest Service is now working with the well-funded carbon removal startup in a two-for-one endeavor to reduce wildfire risk and permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere.
The federal agency and its official nonprofit partner, the National Forest Foundation, have partnered with San Francisco-based Charm on a pilot program to turn leftover trees and other debris from forest-thinning operations into bio-oil, a liquid made from organic matter, to be injected underground. The project is a part of a larger Cal Fire grant, to implement forest health measures as well as seek out innovative biomass utilization solutions. If the pilot scales up, Charm can generate carbon removal credits by permanently locking away the CO2 from biomass, while the Forest Service will finally find a use for the piles of leftover trees that are too small for the sawmill’s taste.
“It's actually pretty shocking how big the backlog of wildfire fuel reduction projects is in the United States,” Peter Reinhardt, co-founder and CEO at Charm, told me. “The pattern of putting out fires as much as possible, as quickly as possible, has created just an enormous amount of fuel in our forests that has to be treated one way or another.” Controlled burns and forest thinning are the primary ways of dealing with this fuel buildup, but as Reinhardt explained to me, California has few pellet mills, and thus few offtakers for leftover wood. What’s left often ends up being burned in a big pile.
That’s common at Inyo, which is considered a “biomass utilization desert,” according to Katlyn Lonergan, a program coordinator with the National Forest Foundation. NFF is paying Charm a nominal fee to take the waste biomass off their hands, though not nearly enough to constitute a primary source of revenue for the company.
At this point, funding isn’t a problem at Charm. Last year, the company announced a $100 million Series B round and received a $53 million commitment from Frontier, the Big Tech-led carbon removal initiative, to permanently remove 112,000 tons of CO2 between 2024 and 2030, the coalition’s first offtake agreement. At the time, Charm had delivered over 6,000 tons of removal, “more than any other permanent CDR supplier to date,” the group wrote. Since then, the company has received an additional $50,000 from the Department of Energy and is currently in the running for a DOE carbon removal purchase prize of up to $3 million.
Charm’s process begins with woody biomass and an industrial chipper, after which the biomass is screened and dried. The chips are then rapidly heated in a low oxygen environment, a process called fast pyrolysis, which vaporizes the cellulose in the biomass. The remaining plant matter is then condensed into a liquid and injected thousands of feet underground.
Until now, the company has gotten more attention for its efforts to use agricultural biomass like corn stalks. But Reinhardt told me that lately, 100% of the company’s feedstock comes from “fuel load reduction projects,” — unhealthy trees that have been cut down — though in the future, it plans to source from both agricultural and forest waste. The change in feedstock prioritization, Reinhardt said, is due to wildfires becoming “a more and more urgent issue,” plus the advantages that come from working with denser materials. “Almost all the cost of biomass is in the logistics, and the cost of logistics is driven by density,” he said. Transporting puffy bales of corn stalks, leaves, and husks to Charm’s pyrolyzer is just not as energy efficient as trucking a log.
And because there are already plenty of piles of logs and residue sitting around in forests like Inyo, if Charm can bring its pyrolizers directly to the forest, it can increase efficiency still further. Bringing Charm’s operations onsite could eventually help the Forest Service save money, too. “The Eastern Sierra, it's pretty isolated for this industry,” Lonergan told me. “And so we are actually hauling that [biomass] to Carson City, which is three and a half hours away.”
Fixing the agency’s transportation woes is a ways away though — Charm is starting small, processing just 60 tons of biomass over six weeks of operation in Inyo. The pilot is already more than halfway over.
Charm won’t be claiming carbon removal credits for this project, as Reinhardt told me it’s more a “demonstration of the production” to make sure the logistics work out. Scaling up will mean deploying larger pyrolyzers that can process significantly more biomass. “Our next iteration of pyrolyzers will be probably 10x the throughput,” Reinhardt told me. “So instead of 1 or one-and-a-half tons a day, about 10 to 15 tons a day.” Those numbers start to sound pretty darn small, though, when you consider the amount of forestry biomass and agricultural residue generated per year, which Reinhardt said is around 50 million tons and 300 million tons, respectively.
And while this particular project comprises 538 acres of forest, California alone has set a goal of thinning 1 million acres per year to reduce wildfire risk. Basically, Charm’s not going to run out of feedstock anytime soon, and the Forest Service isn’t going to find a quick fix for its piles and piles of unwanted wood. “I don't envision it being the one solution that fits all,” Lonergan said of Charm’s technology. But, she told me, “it can absolutely contribute to these biomass materials that we don't have an answer for yet.”
MTA