Frontier Invests $44 Million in Canadian Bio-Oil Carbon Removal

Major Advance Market Carbon Removal Deal Signed

A major advance-market carbon removal initiative has signed a multi-million-dollar deal with a Canadian firm to turn biowaste into permanent oil, showcasing a scalable solution for hard-to-abate emissions. Frontier, a buyers’ coalition backed by leading global technology and retail companies, has agreed to pay NULIFE GreenTech $44.2 million to remove 122,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2026 and 2030.

This agreement marks the group’s third and largest carbon removal offtake deal in Canada, bringing its total financial commitment in the country to over $100 million. The deal highlights a growing strategy to support new, scalable technologies that can deliver measurable and permanent carbon storage while addressing real-world waste management challenges.

Transforming Waste into Permanent Storage

The agreement centres on NULIFE GreenTech’s approach to managing biowaste from agricultural and industrial facilities. Waste residues, such as grease-trap waste and wastewater sludge, are typically left to decompose, releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

NULIFE addresses this issue using a patented technology known as hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL). This process efficiently converts wet biowaste into two primary products: a carbon-rich bio-oil suitable for long-term storage and biochar. Instead of emitting carbon, the waste is transformed into a stable and concentrated form.

The resulting bio-oil is central to permanent carbon removal. It will be injected more than 1,000 metres underground into certified, geologically stable salt caverns in Canada, ensuring the captured carbon is permanently sequestered and cannot re-enter the atmosphere.

Validation for Scalable Climate Technology

For NULIFE GreenTech, the Frontier agreement represents a significant validation of its business and technological model. Jerry Kristian, co-founder of NULIFE, said the offtake serves as a strong endorsement of the engineering rigour, transparency, and real-world waste-management value of the platform.

A key advantage of HTL technology lies in its modular design, which allows for rapid and repeatable deployment of processing units. This supports scalable growth not only across Canada but also in international markets. Frontier estimates that, at full scale, HTL technology could remove up to 1.5 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year by 2040 — a scale considered critical for meeting global climate targets.

Hannah Bebbington Valori, Head of Deployment at Frontier, highlighted the dual benefits of the solution, noting that NULIFE converts a routine waste problem into measurable, long-term carbon removal. She described it as an example of how smart waste management can also function as a gigaton-scale carbon removal solution.

A Coalition Driving the Carbon Removal Market

Frontier operates as an advance market commitment (AMC) initiative, pooling demand and capital from its member companies to accelerate the development of promising carbon removal technologies through guaranteed early-stage purchases. This model helps de-risk innovation and enables viable solutions to scale more rapidly.

The founding members of Frontier include major corporate names such as Stripe, Alphabet (Google), Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey. The initiative also facilitates purchases on behalf of a wide range of additional member companies, including Autodesk, H&M Group, Workday, Canva, Wise, and Zendesk, among others. This broad coalition reflects growing corporate commitment to funding permanent carbon removal as part of comprehensive climate strategies.

This landmark agreement with NULIFE GreenTech signals a continued shift from carbon removal as a theoretical concept to a commercial and scalable reality. By linking cutting-edge technology with guaranteed demand from some of the world’s leading companies, such deals are laying the groundwork for a permanent carbon removal industry.