Frontier facilitates $41M in carbon removal offtakes from Arbor

In California, Frontier has facilitated offtakes with Arbor, a Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) company that uses waste biomass to create clean energy while removing CO₂. Frontier buyers will pay Arbor $41 million to remove 116,000 tons of CO₂ between 2028 and 2030. These offtakes will enable the launch of Arbor’s first commercial facility and test the viability of a new, highly efficient BECCS approach for generating clean electricity and removing CO₂. The facility, located near Lake Charles, LA, is expected to become fully operational in 2028.

Arbor’s approach enables a CO₂ capture rate of over 99% and increases the efficiency of converting biomass to electricity by more than 30%—significantly higher than comparable bioenergy systems. Those advantages, as well as Arbor’s modular design, position it to substantially reduce costs while meeting the increasing demand for clean electricity, particularly for data centers. Importantly, the process doesn’t produce any exhaust or air pollution, unlike traditional bioenergy plants.

The process starts with converting waste biomass into syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, using a new gasifier design. This gas is then sent to an oxycombustor, a specialized furnace that burns the gas with pure oxygen instead of air, producing supercritical CO₂ and water. This supercritical CO₂ drives a turbine to generate clean electricity. For every ton of CO₂ that’s removed, Arbor’s system also supplies up to 1,000 kWh of clean electricity (the average household’s monthly electricity use). What’s unique about Arbor is that it is the first carbon removal company to combine three complex processes—biomass gasification, oxycombustion, and supercritical CO₂ turbomachinery—into a single system.