Carbon removal buyer coalition Frontier announced that it has facilitated offtake agreements to purchase $48.6 million of carbon removal output generated by Stockholm Exergi’s planned bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) facility in Sweden, on behalf of buyers including Alphabet, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, and H&M, among others.

Launched in April 2022 with commitments by tech companies Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify and Meta and global management consulting firm McKinsey, Frontier is an advance market commitment to buy permanent carbon removal, aimed at accelerating the development of carbon removal technologies with guarantees of future demand. In addition to setting a demand pool for carbon removal, Frontier also vets suppliers, with a focus on solutions with the potential to achieve high volume and low cost. Frontier has grown to advance market commitments of more than $1 billion.

Stockholm Exergi received an environmental permit for its BECCS facility earlier this year. The facility aims to bring together a bioenergy-based combined heat and power plant fueled by residues from forestry, sawmill and pulp and paper production, with a carbon capture and storage process that captures CO2 in the plant’s flue gases, and cools and compresses it into liquid form, for transport and permanent storage in sedimentary bedrock below the North Sea floor, where the liquid CO2 mineralizes over time. The company recently said that it aims to reach a final investment decision on the BECCS plant in Q4 2024, with construction of the carbon capture unit, liquefaction and intermediate storage planned to begin in 2025.

Once in operation, the plant is expected to capture 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

Anders Egelrud, CEO of Stockholm Exergi, said:

“The agreement with Frontier and its prominent member companies is a very strong testimony of the efficiency and sustainability of Stockholm Exergi’s BECCS project. With the determination of frontrunners like Frontier to kick-start the permanent removals industry, we are driving increased ambitions by pooling funding from private and public sources.”

The new agreement facilitates purchases on behalf of Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey Sustainability, as well as Autodesk, H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase, and Workday. Additionally, through a partnership between Frontier and climate solutions platform Watershed, companies including Aledade, Canva, Samsara, Skyscanner, SKIMS, Wise, and Zendesk have also participated in the purchases.

Hannah Bebbington, Head of Strategy at Frontier, said:

“If Exergi can prove that large-scale, responsible, tightly executed retrofits are possible, it will be truly catalytic and dozens of other facilities will follow. This is a first-of-a-kind industrial project but we have real confidence in this team.”