Arbor’s ‘vegetarian rocket engine’ power plant is actually an omnivore

Two years ago, former SpaceX engineers used rocket technology to build a power plant Able to remove carbon dioxide From the atmosphere, with a small asterisk. CO to draw down₂It burns plant waste, making it a sort of “vegetarian rocket engine” for the grid.

This week, Arbor Energy said it raised a $55 million Series A round led by LowerCarbon Capital and Voyager Ventures on the heels of a partial pivot. Its power plant, instead of sticking to a strict vegetarian diet, is going to be an omnivore, capable of burning natural gas in addition to biomass.

Shifted this year As power demand from data centers increases. The existing design was fully capable of powering AI servers, but its reach would be limited by wood and agricultural waste sources. Natural gas is more widely available.

Arbor still plans to capture CO₂ From power plants, which use oxy-combustion, which converts hydrocarbons into syngas and then burns it in the presence of pure oxygen. The result is CO₂ That seizure does not require much preparation.

Due to tax credit, saving CO₂ It would be cheaper than dumping pollutants into the atmosphere, Arbor spokesman Patrick Mahoney told TechCrunch. The company doesn’t plan to sell its technology to businesses that don’t plan to capture carbon for use or sequestration, he said.

But waste CO₂ Climate isn’t the only consideration when it comes to burning natural gas. The main component of natural gas is methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that produces 84 times more warming than carbon dioxide over 20 years.

Because of that, any leaks in the natural gas supply chain can have an additional impact on the climate impact of a natural gas-fired power plant. Leakage rates as low as 0.2% mean a gas-fired power plant can have the same carbon footprint as a coal plant. Recent research. The US government did approx While the leakage rate across the oil and gas supply chain is about 1% Satellite measurements Show a rate of about 1.6% across the United States

Arbor said it is working with natural gas suppliers that are certified for low leakage rates, aiming to have a climate impact of less than 100 grams (about a quarter of a pound) per kilowatt of electricity generated.

The startup confirmed that it is still in the process of building a power plant in Louisiana that will burn biomass. That plant is being partially financed by a $41 million deal with FrontierAdvanced marketplace commitment backed by Stripe, Google, and others. Under that agreement, Arbor must remove 116,000 tons of carbon dioxide by 2030.