Frontier, a carbon removal initiative backed by major technology companies, has facilitated a $41 million offtake agreement with Arbor, a U.S.-based Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) company. The deal will support Arbor’s first commercial facility near Lake Charles, Louisiana, and aims to permanently remove 116,000 tons of CO₂ between 2028 and 2030.
Arbor’s system uses waste biomass to generate low-carbon electricity while capturing more than 99% of resulting CO₂ emissions. “These offtakes will enable the launch of Arbor’s first commercial facility and test the viability of a new, highly efficient BECCS approach,” Frontier said in a statement.
The new approach integrates biomass gasification, oxycombustion, and supercritical CO₂ turbomachinery into a single process. The facility’s turbine will produce up to 18 MW of power, and each ton of CO₂ removed will yield as much as 1,000 kWh of clean electricity, equivalent to a U.S. household’s average monthly usage. The plant is expected to become fully operational in 2028.
Unlike conventional BECCS systems that rely on chemical solvents to capture CO₂ from air-based combustion, Arbor uses pure oxygen to burn biomass, resulting in exhaust composed primarily of water and CO₂. This simplifies the capture process and reduces cost. Arbor projects that its integrated system could lower carbon removal costs to below $100 per ton, a threshold seen as critical for large-scale deployment.
The system is designed to meet growing demand for clean, always-on electricity from sectors such as data centers. Arbor also plans to sell excess water produced during the process for applications like irrigation and cooling.
The project aligns with Frontier’s sustainable biomass principles. Arbor will source biomass from managed timber plantations in regions where tree growth exceeds harvest rates and where local pulp and paper mills have closed. Emissions will be independently quantified by carbon registry Isometric to ensure accurate accounting of net carbon removal.
BECCS is considered one of the most promising pathways for large-scale CO₂ removal, with potential to eliminate several gigatons of emissions annually by 2050, while also supplying renewable energy.
