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January 2, 2025

Major carbon removal buyer inks $32.1M offtake agreement with New Haven startup

Contributed CREW Carbon's wastewater treatment carbon removal system.
By Andrew Larson

Frontier Climate, a carbon-reduction fund founded by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey & Co., has partnered with CREW Carbon, a New Haven startup born out of research at Yale University.

Through an offtake agreement, Frontier Climate will pay CREW Carbon $32.1 million to remove 71,878 tons of carbon dioxide between 2025 and 2030.

CREW Carbon has developed a system to capture carbon dioxide from the wastewater treatment process, which typically uses microbes grown in treatment tanks to break down organic waste. The process releases carbon dioxide.

CREW’s system adds alkaline minerals to the tanks, which react with the carbon dioxide, converting it into a more stable, benign form.

The resulting bicarbonate is discharged to oceans and rivers.

CREW Carbon partners with industrial and municipal wastewater operators to integrate carbon removal into their existing systems.

It has received funding from Connecticut Innovations’ $100 million ClimateTech Fund.

In an announcement, Frontier Climate said CREW Carbon’s approach “is easily scaled” and could remove more than 500 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

“There are 100,000 wastewater treatment plants worldwide, and this approach requires little modification,” the announcement states.

CREW Carbon CEO and co-founder Joachim Katchinoff said the offtake agreement with Frontier Climate will enable CREW to “accelerate the integration of carbon removal into existing wastewater infrastructure at a significantly faster pace and scale.”

“This agreement not only allows us to expand our existing CO₂ removal projects but also benefits the wastewater sector by enabling safer and efficient wastewater treatment,” said Katchinoff, who earned his Ph.D. in geological and earth sciences/geosciences at Yale.

Frontier Climate has committed to invest $925 million toward carbon removal by 2030.

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