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Alt Carbon Secures $12 Million Seed Funding to Expand Carbon Removal Operations
Alt Carbon, a pioneering climate venture focused on carbon dioxide removal, has secured $12 million in seed funding. The investment will fuel the company’s plans to broaden its operations across South Asia. Originating from a family-owned tea estate facing challenges, the climate tech startup employs enhanced rock weathering on agricultural land to sequester carbon for millennia. The funding round was spearheaded by Lachy Groom, co-founder of Physical Intelligence, a robotics AI firm.
From Tea Estate to Climate Innovation
The genesis of Alt Carbon began in May 2020. Siblings Shrey and Sparsh Agarwal undertook a 16-hour journey from Kolkata to Darjeeling, nestled in the Himalayan foothills and renowned for its tea cultivation. Initially, their visit was intended as a farewell to Salem Hill, their family’s struggling tea estate teetering on the brink of insolvency. However, this visit unexpectedly sowed the seeds for Alt Carbon, which officially launched in late 2023.
Their initial foray involved exploring carbon markets as a means to revitalize their family enterprise and bolster other tea estates in the region by creating supplemental revenue streams. During this process, they discovered enhanced rock weathering, an approach that held the potential to transform Darjeeling from a region vulnerable to climate change into a leader in climate action.
“Within carbon markets, we realized that many projects in India, primarily avoidance-based, are of inferior quality, resulting in ‘junk credits’,” Sparsh stated in an exclusive interview.
Scaling Up Operations
Last year, Alt Carbon initiated a pilot program on the Agarwal family’s tea estate, spanning approximately 500 acres. This initiative was subsequently expanded to North Bengal, broadening its focus to include rice and bamboo farming. The startup aims to expand its operations to encompass 500,000 hectares of land.
By 2030, the startup intends to extract 5 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere in the area, Sparsh told TechCrunch.
Enhanced Rock Weathering: A Sustainable Approach
Alt Carbon utilizes enhanced rock weathering by employing waste basalt rock dust sourced from mines and quarries situated in the Rajmahal Traps, a volcanic province in eastern India. This rock dust, a byproduct of the construction sector, is distributed across agricultural fields. There, it interacts naturally with rainwater to capture carbon dioxide. Additionally, It enriches the soil by adding essential micronutrients, enhancing its fertility, promoting plant health, and boosting crop production. As rainwater containing carbon dioxide reacts with basalt dust, stable bicarbonate ions are formed. “These are stored in the soil and transported through rivers to the ocean, where they are deposited as calcium carbonate, effectively sequestering carbon for over 10,000 years.”
Logistics and Efficiency
For the transportation of this specialized dust from its source to the agricultural lands, the startup utilizes rails and diesel trucks, paying one-way fares that are integrated into the tea industry’s existing freight network. Furthermore, the startup avoids emissions from dedicated rock processing by utilizing waste basalt from current mining and crushing activities.
Rather than using basalt dust in its raw form, the company has formulated a unique blend of basalt and other organic elements, marketed as ‘Hari Maati’ (Hindi for green soil), to encourage farmers to apply it to their fields.
Alt Carbon estimates the value of its carbon credits to be $270 per metric ton, which, according to Sparsh, is considerably more cost-effective than direct air capture credits, which he estimates to be around $800 per ton. Nevertheless, he anticipates the startup will reduce expenses within 36 to 48 months.
Measurement and Verification
The startup employs three measurement layers to determine the extent of rock weathering and carbon removal, Shrey explained.
Triple Layered Measurement System
- Initial Measurements: Track weathering progression.
- Water Analysis: Measures water within the soil with groundwater sampling and river monitoring.
- Reactive Transport Models: Utilizes proprietary reactive transport models to monitor ion movement from soil to water bodies.
The startup also uses machine learning-driven modeling to compute carbon-removal figures.
“Alt Carbon emphasizes its models’ close adherence to methodologies established by carbon removal registries, including Isometric and Puro.earth and have affiliations from intergovernmental organizations like SBTi, ICVCM, and CORSIA.”
Future Plans and Strategic Partnerships
Alt Carbon operates laboratories in Darjeeling and Bengaluru, employing 8 to 10 PhDs, with a complete staff of 25. The company aims to expand these facilities and broaden its scope by conducting more thorough soil sample analyses and even establishing a hardware studio to improve the quality of on-site data acquisition using remote sensing techniques. The startup also intends to deploy ground-based sensors to gain more insights at a reduced cost and in a quicker time frame. These initiatives will be made possible by the seed funding round led by Groom.
In the previous year, the startup secured a $500,000 pre-purchase from Frontier and a $1 billion advanced market commitment with leadership from Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey. It also forged a strategic alliance with NextGen, a buyer coalition established by South Pole and Mitsubishi Corporation, to scale its enhanced rock weathering technologies. The group also included BCG Group, Swiss RE, LGT, and UBS among its members. Recently, the startup finalized an offtake agreement with Japan’s shipping firm, MOL Group, for the acquisition of 10,000 tons of carbon removal credits.
Alt Carbon anticipates the delivery of its inaugural carbon credits in the near future through Isometric, Sparsh confirmed.