August 1, 2024

By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media

Applied Carbon, a Houston, Texas-based agtech startup whose automated machines convert ag crop waste into biochar for carbon sequestration, has attracted $21.5 million in a Series A round for its biochar technology. Led by TO VC, the round extended to multiple participants, including Congruent Ventures, Grantham Foundation, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, S2G Ventures, Overture.vc, Wireframe Ventures, Autodesk Foundation, Anglo American, Susquehanna Foundation, U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good and Elemental Excelerator.

Applied Carbon will direct the proceeds from the round toward deploying a fleet of its biochar machines, which provide high-durability carbon removal and agricultural services, to a handful of Southwestern U.S. states including Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. According to Crunchbase, the agtech startup has raised a combined $21.5 million across just over a dozen investors since its inception in 2020.

As of 2021, the U.S. agriculture industry was responsible for nearly 11 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Joshua Phitoussi, co-founder and managing partner at TO VC, stated, “Up to one-third of excess CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the start of human civilization has come from humans disturbing soil through agriculture.” To reach the world’s net-zero objectives, he added, carbon must be returned to where it belongs, pointing to biochar as the solution.

Applied Carbon’s mobile system comprises a high-tech, fully self-contained trailer pulled behind a tractor that scoops up crop residue left behind after harvesting. The machine then pyrolyzes that residue into biochar, a form of charcoal, before drenching it with water and pumping it with nutrients and microorganisms tailored to the grower’s needs, all in a single field pass. Next it releases the final biochar and redeposits it into the field, thereby strengthening soil health, bolstering agronomic productivity, and minimizing lime and fertilizer use while delivering a stable carbon removal and storage solution.

This technology is revolutionary because by processing the biochar on the farm, it removes the capital and time intensive processes of having to collect biochar and send it out to a separate facility before returning it to the field as a soil amendment. Therefore, Applied Carbon’s solution eliminates bulk material transport, significantly slashing its cost per ton for farmers.

Applied Carbon Co-Founder and CEO Jason Aramburu explained, “Multiple independent studies indicate that converting crop waste into biochar has the potential to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year while creating trillions of dollars in value for the world’s farmers. However, there is no commercially available technology to convert these wastes at low cost. Applied Carbon’s patented in-field biochar production system is the first solution that can convert crop waste into biochar at a scale and a cost that makes sense for broad acre farming.”

Joshua Posamentier, co-founder and managing partner of Congruent Ventures, stated, “We’ve been looking at the biochar sector for over a decade and Applied Carbon’s in-field proposition is incredibly compelling. The two most exciting things about this approach are that it profitably swings the agricultural sector from carbon positive to carbon negative and that it can get to world-scale impact, on a meaningful timeline, while saving farmers money.”

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