Terraton

Next week Greg and Nat will be in London for #CarbonUnboundEurope. They’ll be talking about how Terraton is working with agribusiness operators to build biochar facilities that deliver verified carbon removal at scale—turning waste into profitable carbon credits and connecting buyers to dependable supply. Greg will be coming straight from China, where we were running acceptance tests on one of our biochar units. If you’re attending, come say hello and swap notes on building what works.

I can't believe that #ClimateWeekNYC was over a week ago! What a phenomenal opportunity to get to speak with so many people in person that I never had the pleasure to meet before. The Climate community is a truly fascinating one! I especially appreciated Puro.earth's East Coast CDR Summit bringing together the various voices in CDR to help blaze the trail forward. Paula Navarrete and I were also able to give some of the Climate folk a brief respite from the panels with a chocolate tasting of numerous bars including ones made by Dandelion Chocolate from Three Mountains Cocoa, where Terraton is building one of our first biochar facilities utilizing their unused cocoa pod husk! You could almost taste the carbon removal! It went so well I think we'll do it again, let me know if you want to get on the list. Until next time, New York!

Excited to be attending #ClimateWeekNYC this week! I’m excited to absorb what is happening around the industry as well as share what we’re building at Terraton: mid-scale biochar facilities that can work with existing agribusiness operations. Crop waste in, durable credits out, and biochar to help their production. Practical, repeatable, and exactly the kind of thing we need thousands of if we’re serious about carbon removal. Let me know if you want to meet up!

Next week Kevin, Greg, and Nathan will be in Minneapolis for the North American Biochar Conference. We’re looking forward to swapping ideas on building mid-scale biochar in ways that pencil out for operators and deliver the certainty buyers need. Thanks to US Biochar Initiative for bringing the community together—and if you’ll be there, come say hello!

A common misconception we hear from agribusiness operators: carbon credits are too much effort for too little value. That assumption usually comes from thinking about low-value offsets, like forestry credits that can sell for only a few dollars a tonne. If that’s the picture in your head, the juice really wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. Durable carbon removal is different. Biochar credits typically sell for $100–$160 per tonne because they store carbon for centuries and are backed by verifiable data. With the right systems—standardized facilities, smart software, financing, and buyer access—the effort matches the reward. That’s the model we’re building at Terraton, so operators can turn existing waste streams into a business that pencils out.

You’ll often hear about mega-plants on one side of biochar, and backyard kilns on the other. At Terraton, we’re focused on the middle. Mid-scale facilities—roughly 1 to 5 tonnes per hour—are a sweet spot: big enough to create meaningful revenue, yet small enough to tuck into existing agribusiness operations without a major overhaul. The kind of facility you can actually finance, site, and get running in months, not years. For operators already juggling waste streams and thin margins, that scale makes sense. And for buyers, it means more high-quality carbon credits hitting the market sooner. This is where growth starts: practical facilities, built for real operators, running reliably in the field.

Biochar delivers more carbon removal than any other durable method, and there’s room to do much more. Thanks to Violet George and Carbon Herald for covering our fundraise and the model we’re building with operators in Ghana and Kenya. Link in the comments.

Great piece from Tim De Chant in TechCrunch on what we’re building at Terraton. Biochar already works. The challenge now is scaling it beyond one-off projects. At Terraton, we’re building with operators who want to add biochar to their existing agribusiness. Standardized facilities, smart software that makes operations easier, and direct access to credit buyers—the pieces that turn crop waste into steady revenue and verified carbon removal. Read the full article at the link in the comments.

We’re excited to share that Terraton has raised $11.5M to scale biochar carbon removal. Thank you to Lowercarbon Capital and Gigascale Capital for co-leading, to our strategic investor from Japan Global Brain Corporation, and to the group of incredible angels who joined this round. Biochar already delivers more durable carbon removal than any other method—over 250,000 tonnes in 2024—but the potential is massive. For agribusiness operators, biochar has the economics to be a strong business line once the right systems are in place. That’s where Terraton comes in: a full-stack platform that combines financing, equipment, software, and buyer access to get facilities up and running. The result is practical carbon removal, reliable revenue, and credits that buyers can trust. Our first two facilities are already underway in partnership with: - Three Mountains Cocoa in Ghana—converting cocoa pod husks into biochar, preliminarily approved by Puro.earth - EcoFix Kenya Ltd (EFK) in Kenya—converting nut shells into biochar, currently under review with Isometric Combined, these facilities are expected to remove more than 20,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year while turning underused byproducts into a profitable revenue stream. We are also glad to welcome Professor Kate Maher of Stanford University as our first Scientific Advisor, and we're excited to work with Terraset, whose pre-purchase of credits has helped to get the Ghana facility going. We are incredibly grateful for all of the support that got us here. Thank you to Ryan Orbuch, Duncan Carlson, Mike Schroepfer, Akifumi (Chris) Takigawa, Kosuke"Ko" Yamada, Jeff Dean, Bret Taylor, Pete Koomen, Lars Rasmussen, John Lilly, Tom Stocky, Timothy Rann, Ryan Aytay, Matt Portman, and Stephanie Hannon for helping us take the next step in scaling biochar.

Last week the Terraton team met in Denver—our first time all together in person as a remote-first team. Meeting face to face gave us space to push further on facility and software design and still have a good laugh in between. We’re currently working with Denver-based Offstream, so we had a happy hour to connect our teams. And yes, we made time for a team field trip to Casa Bonita 🌮🎉 Plenty of work ahead, but it’s good to pause and remember: carbon removal scales when operators have systems that work—and when the teams building those systems enjoy working together too.