January 23, 2023

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Living Carbon, a mission-led company working to balance the planet’s carbon cycle using the power of plants – more specifically, photosynthesis-enhanced trees – has closed on a $21 million Series A led by Temasek. 

Lowercarbon Capital, Toyota Ventures ,Felicis Ventures, and other unmanned strategic angel investors also participated in this round, which brought total funding for the company to-date to $36 million.

Earlier this year, the company released a white paper citing that plant biotechnology has the power to increase terrestrial carbon capture and storage in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

To test its theory, the team integrated a photosynthesis enhancement trait in hybrid poplar trees. This initial enhanced hybrid poplar demonstrated that it grows faster than control seedlings and is resilient in high temperatures. In its white paper, Living Carbon outlined the efficacy of a photosynthesis enhancement genetic trait to improve biomass accumulation in trees by up to 53 percent. This breakthrough revealed for the first time, the potential to capture approximately 27 percent more carbon, and reinforced the role of biotechnology in stabilizing the climate. 

“Living Carbon engineers supertrees that grow up to 50% faster and eat up to 27% more CO2 than your run of the mill logs, “ said Chris Sacca, founder, Lowercarbon Capital. “That means more timber, forests, and other carbon-storing products sooner and cheaper.” 

The company stated that the integration of its photosynthesis-enhanced trees will complement the benefits of traditional forests by offering carbon removal and positive ecological impact on marginalized land. 

“The voluntary carbon credit market is on track to exceed $50 billion by 2030, but the momentum will only be sustained by the near-term introduction of credits that are transparent, cost-effective, and produced in high volumes,” said Lisa Coca, climate fund partner, Toyota Ventures.

“Living Carbon’s synthetic biology platform has the potential to fill the gap between supply and demand by leveraging the powerful combination of proven nature-based solutions as a carbon sink and genetic engineering to deliver high-quality credits to the market. And, most importantly, to do so on a timeline that will supply credits in scale within the next three to five years.” 

Vince Stanley of Stanley Farms, which is one of Living Carbon’s land partners, commented, “Our partnership with Living Carbon will increase the productivity of our land, while also increasing the amount of carbon captured by our trees. It’s an honor to use our family land to restore nature and advance much-needed nature-based solutions to climate change.”

“Through partnerships with landowners like us, Living Carbon has the opportunity to draw down carbon and create revenue for landowners by making it profitable to plant on underperforming land with faster-growing trees.”

With the capital raised through this round, the startup stated that it intends to continue to make progress toward scaling carbon removal using plant biotechnology.

“This new funding will allow us to produce 4-5 million photosynthesis-enhanced seedlings and plant them at large scale,” said Maddie Hall, CEO and co-founder, Living Carbon. “Humans have warmed the world so quickly and degraded over 75 percent of the land on our planet. We want to focus on restoring land where trees are not otherwise thriving.”

As commercial production accelerates, these 4-5 million seedlings will be supplied throughout the U.S. over the course of 2023-24. Seedlings will be made available for companies to purchase to reduce their carbon footprint alongside Living Carbon’s quantification and monitoring. 

The company also is developing carbon projects with photosynthesis-enhanced hybrid poplars and loblolly pine in mixed stand plantings that can restore degraded ecosystems, and is partnering with landowners in Pennsylvania and Georgia. 

The company also will use this funding to grow its team and expand its work on bioengineered climate solutions. In addition to photosynthesis enhancement, the team is developing a trait that enables trees to accumulate higher levels of metals in their roots – naturally slowing decay to increase the duration of carbon storage, produce more durable wood products, and remediate toxic soils. 

Ultimately, Living Carbon stated it will focus on the U.S. market and has a goal to double its acreage annually to act on carbon removal by the millions of acres of reforestable land. 

“Since Living Carbon’s launch last year, we’ve been filling the gap between traditional nature-based offsets and engineered carbon removal, and are ready to deliver our climate solution widely this year,” said Martin Srna, commercialization lead, Living Carbon.

“We’re an essential partner in the decarbonization movement and are excited to bring to the market a nature-based carbon removal solution that is verifiable, scalable, and additional, while working with forward-thinking companies to deploy it. We look forward to using this funding to continue supporting companies in developing their carbon removal portfolios as well as deploying our tree technology on their own land assets.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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