Barclay Rogers, CEO, Graphyte
Startups are grueling and rewarding at the same time. The grueling bit is obvious: almost every day you wake up to some new challenge to overcome. Things often feel existential; the safety net is thin. But you keep pushing, doing your best to overcome the daily obstacles.
The rewarding bit is much less obvious. In fact, I often get to the end of an exhausting week and find myself wondering: did we really accomplish anything this week? I’m not talking about how many meetings we held or whether we got positive feedback from a potential customer. Instead, I’m talking about: did we accomplish anything that will move us toward our goal of being the largest supplier of durable carbon removal in the world?
It’s a bit like climbing a mountain. Each step may seem small. But you keep at it and eventually you look back to see how far you’ve come. I wanted to use the approaching holiday period to look back on the year and take stock of how far we’ve come. As can be seen in the graphic below, we accomplished a lot over the past year:
The individual successes are too many to describe in full, but I do want to highlight a few of the major themes.
Scaling Durable Carbon Dioxide Removal Today
Graphyte is less than 2 years old, but we are already operating one of the largest durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) facility in the world.[1] On April 12, 2024, we cut the ribbon on our Lobolly project in Arkansas that can remove around 15,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (tCO2) per year. To put that in comparison, the largest operational direct air capture projects in the U.S. have a nameplate capacity of 1,000 and 5,000 tCO2 per year (i.e., the Loblolly facility operating capacity is 3 to 15 times larger than the biggest U.S. direct air capture plants in operation.) We are already planning expansions to the Loblolly project and intend to almost triple its operating capacity in 2025. We have two additional projects beyond Loblolly in development, and plan to have the capacity to remove roughly 150,000 tCO2 per year by the end of 2025.
Making Durable CDR Affordable
Durable CDR is important from a climate perspective as we need solutions to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere for climate-relevant timescales. But many forms of durable CDR are very expensive -- the average price of durable CDR is almost $500/tCO2 according to CDR.fyi -- making widespread adoption economically difficult. With our proprietary Carbon Casting process, Graphyte has made durable CDR affordable as it must be if it’s going to play a material role in decarbonizing the economy. Graphyte’s durable CDR solution costs a fraction of the costs of other forms of durable CDR, and we remain laser-focused on reducing costs every day.
Expanding the Purchaser Pool
Durable CDR must also extend beyond a few select buyers to include a broader range of industry actors if it’s going to be meaningful in broader decarbonization efforts. We, of course, are interested in offtake agreements with the leading buyers in the durable CDR space, and are happy to include BCG, Terraset, Wren,
and other customers who have a catalytic impact creating demand for new solutions. We also focus on expanding the CDR buyer pool and are thrilled to include American Airlines as a major buyer from Graphyte as well. Aviation is among the “hard to abate” sectors, and we are happy to help American Airlines achieve its carbon goals. In addition to these buyers, Graphyte was selected as a Phase I purchase award recipient from the US Department of Energy, recognizing a best-in-class carbon removal approach.
Financing the Expansion
No startup can realize its goals without outside investment. Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) helped Graphyte to get off the ground with initial seed funding in 2023. In July 2024, Prelude Ventures, Carbon Direct Capital, and Overture joined BEV in our Series A funding round. We are thrilled to have such amazing investors, and we look forward to working with them to grow Graphyte into a world-changing company.
Onwards towards a Low Carbon Future
The startup journey never ends, and the daily challenges remain. But looking back on 2024, I realize how far we’ve come. Graphyte has recently been named to Inc’s 2024 Best in Business list, which is incredible validation for what has been accomplished by the Graphyte team this year.
I am looking forward to climbing further up the mountain in the years to come.
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[1] “Durable” carbon dioxide removal means extracting carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere in a way that is measurable and ensuring that the CO2 does not re-enter the atmosphere for climate-relevant timescales.