Frontier Signs $33M Carbon Removal Deal With Eion

In a huge step to move carbon removal tech forward, green tech startup Eion has gotten a $33 million buy order from the investor group Frontier. The transaction is supported by key companies such as Google, Shopify, JPMorgan Chase, and H&M Group. Through this transaction, Eion will be able to take over 78,700 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere during 2027-2030.

Eion, established in 2020, is a company that deals with advanced rock weathering (ERW), a process aimed at accelerating Earth's natural CO2 storage processes. The firm employs olivine, a magnesium-iron silicate mineral, which is ground into tiny particles and applied to agricultural land. As the mineral dissolves, it reacts with rainwater to trap CO2, transforming it into bicarbonate. This bicarbonate ultimately flows through groundwater and into the ocean, where the CO2 is safely stored for thousands of years.

A key feature of Eion's solution is its integration into agricultural systems. The firm collaborates with farmers in the U.S. South and Midwest, providing them with olivine as an affordable alternative to agricultural lime, a widely applied ingredient for managing soil acidity. By substituting conventional lime with olivine, farmers not only preserve soil health but also address large-scale carbon removal without changing their normal agricultural practice.

One of the main benefits of Eion's process is olivine's high rate of weathering, which allows for more efficient CO2 removal in comparison to other ERW systems. This coupled with its adoptability by farmers makes it an appealing solution to scalable carbon capture. Seeing this potential, Eion has amplified its reach via a partnership agreement with Growmark, an agriculture cooperative that delivers a distribution platform to take the technology to additional areas.

Anastasia Pavlovic, Eion's CEO, underscored the significance of this transaction in ramping up amplified rock weathering throughout the U.S. She pointed out that the collaboration with Growmark would enable the firm to assist farmers while realizing large-scale carbon removal. The venture, she observed, is consistent with the dual objectives of sustainability in the environment and preserving farm efficiency.

In addition to the removal of CO2, Eion puts a great deal of effort into making its carbon accounting as transparent and accurate as possible. The company uses a direct measurement method of deep soil sampling to measure CO2 removal. This method gives valuable insight into how dissolving olivine affects soil and water and enables a more accurate description of the ERW process.

One of the major players in this partnership, Google, emphasized that transparency of data is crucial in creating effective climate solutions. According to Reilly O'Hara, Google's Program Manager for Carbon Removal Commercialization, this collaboration is not just about CO2 removal, but also about creating a more comprehensive picture of enhanced weathering's potential. By incorporating ERW into current agricultural systems and making data-sharing a priority, Eion's research will be helping to advance carbon removal science at large.

The transaction was enabled by Frontier, a market commitment program opened in April 2022 that aimed to develop permanent carbon removal technologies at higher speed. Frontier is instrumental to ensure the progress of such technologies by establishing an assured demand bucket for carbon removal as well as screening suppliers. The program prioritizes technologies likely to deliver significant removal volumes in lower cost.

Frontier arranged this purchase on behalf of its inaugural members, comprising Stripe, Google, and Shopify, among other leading companies like Autodesk, JPMorgan Chase, Workday, and Salesforce. Other organizations like Canva, Match Group, SKIMS, Wise, and Zendesk also joined in the acquisition via a collaboration between Frontier and sustainable platform Watershed.

Frontier's Head of Deployment, Hannah Bebbington, lauded Eion's strategy, emphasizing that the fact that olivine weatheres rapidly and will adopt without adjustment from farmers aligns it for a high-leverage carbon capture solution. The massive-scale use of Eion's approach would not only secure lots of CO2, but valuable weathering information as well, that will help the broader industry of accelerated weathering, she said.

The interest in accelerated rock weathering mirrors the heightened need for scalable, long-term carbon removal solutions. Although technologies such as direct air capture (DAC) have been highly publicized, ERW provides a more natural and inexpensive solution by utilizing Earth's own processes. Coupled with existing agricultural practices, Eion's process creates an immediate avenue for large-scale implementation without the need for completely new infrastructure.

As international action to fight climate change increases, collaborations such as that between Frontier and Eion showcase the potential for corporate investment to drive solutions to climate at a faster pace. With corporations pledging long-term purchases of carbon removal, startups like Eion receive the capital they need to scale up their operations and improve their technologies.

This contract is a breakthrough for more aggressive rock weathering as a significant carbon removal tool. With several big companies sponsoring its growth, Eion's efforts may become the precursor for increased ERW use, bolstering worldwide efforts at carbon reduction while also giving the agricultural industry a boost.