A Start-Up’s Unusual Plan to Suck Carbon Out of the Sky

A bundled climate change product could be sold to enterprises including carbon offsets, carbon sequestration, solar installations, and other climate services.

Banks and investors tend to be uncertain about lending to carbon-removal companies that want to build a facility to test their ideas, Ransohoff said. But with an offtake agreement from Frontier, a carbon-removal start-up can prove to a bank that it will have a customer once the facility is up and running.

The business model envisions that polluters will collect the carbon—and the tax credit—and then pay Bayou Bend a transport-and-disposal fee that Tiller says is likely to be $20 to $25 per ton.

Carbon dioxide removal may be essential; it’s already built into the calculations of the IPCC. Under the current order, however, it’s also economically infeasible. How do you go about creating a $100 billion industry for a product no one wants to buy? The eggplants and the Snack-Gurken represented an admittedly jury-rigged solution. By selling its

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