Frontier, a carbon credit purchasing consortium that counts Google and Meta as founding members, has signed a deal with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) firm Arbor for 116,000 tons of carbon removal credits.

As part of the deal, Frontier will pay Arbor $41 million, with the credits set to be delivered between 2028 and 2030.

The offtake deal will support the launch of Arbor’s first commercial facility in Lake Charles, Los Angeles, California, which is expected to reach operational status in 2028.

“We need to remove gigatons of CO₂ from the atmosphere, and we need a lot more clean electricity to meet the pace of AI’s development. Though they are two separate challenges, Arbor tackles both with a single solution,” said Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier.

Arbor’s BECCS system works by transforming waste biomass into energy while capturing the carbon produced for permanent storage. The process begins by converting organic waste into syngas – a blend of hydrogen and carbon monoxide – through a specially engineered gasifier.

The syngas is then burned in an oxycombustor, a furnace that uses pure oxygen rather than air, producing a stream of supercritical carbon dioxide and water. The supercritical CO2 is then used to power an 18MW turbine. The process produces mainly water and CO2, which Arbor says makes the collection and storage of the carbon much easier, with capture rates exceeding 99 percent.

Arbor claims to be the only company integrating these three systems into one cohesive platform and says it can deliver up to 1,000kWh of low-carbon energy per ton of CO2 it removes. Also, due to its use of modular turbines, it can scale power generation without significant capital costs.

“Carbon removal approaches that deliver both net removal and decarbonization benefits will scale quickly. That’s what sets Arbor’s approach apart. This offtake agreement with Frontier buyers accelerates a model that removes carbon while generating the reliable, zero-emission energy our power grid needs,” Brad Hartwig, CEO of Arbor, said.

Arbor sources its biomass from thinnings of managed timber plantations, in areas where the amount of biomass grown versus harvested is either stable or increasing, and where pulp and paper mills that have utilized these thinnings have shut down. As a result, the project meets the standards set as part of Frontiers’ sustainable biomass sourcing principles.

The deal is Frontiers’ second major carbon purchase in 2025. In March, the consortium signed a $33 million deal with enhanced rock weathering firm Eion for the removal of 78,707 tons of CO2 between 2027 and 2030.

Microsoft has also signed several carbon removal deals with BECCS firms. In May, the company expanded an agreement with BECCS company Stockholm Exergi from 3.33 million tons to 5.08 million tons. The credits will be generated by Stockholm’s BECCS project in Värtan, Stockholm.