Frontier Signs $31.3 Million Deal to Buy Marine CDR Credits from Planetary

The Frontier carbon dioxide removal buyers club will purchase 115,211 credits from Planetary, which mitigates emissions via ocean alkalinity enhancement, for $31.3 million, the group said on Tuesday.

The deal valued marine CDR credits at roughly $271/metric ton and will include credits created between 2026 and 2030. “Between $250/mt and $300/mt is indicative of what this carbon removal can cost,” Hannah Bebbington, Frontier’s head of deployment, told OPIS.

“There is a declining curve in our offtake agreement, which is relatively common, especially in non-facility-based approaches where you can see a step-down in costs as scale increases, but that weighted average [of $271/mt] is indicative of the price today,” Bebbington said.

Planetary removes carbon by introducing dissolved alkaline minerals into the ocean. These compounds, such as magnesium oxide, react with carbon dioxide dissolved in ocean waters to form bicarbonate ions, which will remain stable in the ocean “for over 10,000 years,” Frontier said in a news release. This process gives the ocean greater capacity to absorb atmospheric CO2.

The compounds are introduced at existing “outfall” facilities, including power plant cooling and waste-water treatment systems, that currently discharge water into coastal ocean areas, according to project descriptions on Planetary’s website. Partnering with existing plants “helps minimize disturbances to coastal marine ecosystems” and “helps reduce the carbon and financial cost of a project,” the company added.

OAE could deliver carbon removals in a price range of $50/mt to $160/mt provided the alkaline minerals can be sourced cheaply in large volumes and in close proximity to participating outfall facilities, according to 2023 research from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration cited by Bebbington.

Planetary’s Nova Scotia Mineral OAE Project was verified by Isometric in March and received its first issuance of 625.6 credits in June, registry records show. These were delivered to Stripe, Shopify and British Airways, which had signed separate offtake agreements with the developer, Planetary said at the time. Shopify and Stripe were founding Frontier members, along with Google and McKinsey Sustainability.

According to Frontier and Planetary, the project actively measures the effects of OAE in the local ocean environment. If sensors detect any measurement that “exceeds permitted safety thresholds,” they will immediately halt project activity, Frontier said.

OAE also carries the co-benefit of improving “conditions for marine calcifiers like oysters, shrimp, lobsters, and crabs, benefitting not only the aquaculture and fishing industries but also natural ecosystems,” Frontier said.

Scaling the project method is primarily limited by access to outfall facilities and supplies of alkaline feedstock, Bebbington said. Planetary sourced its synthetic magnesium oxide used for its first verified crediting period from a facility in Spain, according to registry records.

Projects could also use “a waste alkaline material,” Bebbington said. “We think that category for the pathway gets you to hundreds of millions of tons a year.””As part of our agreement with Planetary, there is a baked in assumption that they will move to U.S.-based material sourcing,” she added. “They have a whole pipeline of waste alkaline materials that they can draw from. Magnesium oxide, calcium oxide, even limestone that you can then calcine are very abundant materials. You should be able to find these co-located at wherever you want to do your deployment.”

While highly scalable in theory, the use of marine environments has lagged significantly behind terrestrial removal carbon projects. Three of the 28 projects registered by Isometric involve marine CDR projects, while none of the 93 projects listed on Puro[dot]earth use a marine pathway.

“I think there are some parallels to what we see in enhanced rock weathering with the ag community,” Bebbington said. “If we’re going to be putting something down on farmland, we need to make sure [it] is safe, responsible and yields positive benefits for those farmers.

The same is true in the ocean community, but we are seeing heightened levels of sensitivity toward ocean-based CDR that is not warranted. To be frank, being extremely careful about what we’re putting in any natural ecosystem is important, especially where we are moving from small pilots to commercial-scale for the first time.”

–Reporting by Henry Kronk, hkronk@opisnet.com; Editing by Jeff Barber, jbarber@opisnet.com