A Start-Up’s Unusual Plan to Suck Carbon Out of the Sky

Stripe—and now Frontier—aims to be a “buyer of first resort,” sending a demand-side signal to entrepreneurs and investors that a large market for permanent carbon removal exists.

Banks and investors tend to be uncertain about lending to carbon-removal companies that want to build a facility to test their ideas, Ransohoff said. But with an offtake agreement from Frontier, a carbon-removal start-up can prove to a bank that it will have a customer once the facility is up and running.

The business model envisions that polluters will collect the carbon—and the tax credit—and then pay Bayou Bend a transport-and-disposal fee that Tiller says is likely to be $20 to $25 per ton.