Arbor’s “plant rocket engine” power plant is actually carnivorous

Two years ago, former SpaceX engineers used rocket technology to develop a power plant capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, marked with a small asterisk. To withdraw CO₂It burned plant waste, making it a kind of “plant rocket engine” for the network.

Arbor Energy said this week it had raised a $55 million Series A round led by Lowcarbon Capital and Voyager Ventures in the wake of the partial pivot. Instead of adhering to a strict vegetarian diet, its power plant will be an omnivorous plant, able to burn natural gas as well as biomass.

The shift occurred this year as demand for electricity from data centers boomed. The current design was fully capable of running AI servers, but its scope would be limited by wood sources and agricultural waste. Natural gas is more widely available.

Arbor still plans to capture CO2₂ Of the power plant, which uses oxygen combustion, which converts hydrocarbons into synthetic gas and then burns them in the presence of pure oxygen. The result is CO₂ Which does not require much preparation for insulation.

Because of tax breaks, carbon dioxide storage₂ The project would be cheaper than dumping pollutants into the atmosphere, Arbor spokesman Patrick Mahoney told TechCrunch. He said the company does not plan to sell its technology to companies that do not plan to capture carbon for use or sequestration.

But the waste company₂ It’s not the only climate consideration when it comes to burning natural gas. The main component of natural gas is methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that generates 84 times more temperature rise than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

For this reason, any leak in the natural gas supply chain could have a significant impact on the climate impact of a natural gas-fired power plant. Leakage rates as low as 0.2% suggest that the carbon footprint of a gas-fired power plant could be the same as that of a coal plant, according to recent research. The U.S. government has estimated that leak rates throughout the oil and gas supply chain are about 1%, while satellite measurements show rates of about 1.6% across the United States.

Arbor said it is working with natural gas providers that are certified to have low leakage rates, with the goal of getting the climate impact of every one kilowatt of electricity generated to less than 100 grams (about a quarter of a pound).

The startup confirmed that it is still in the process of building a power plant in Louisiana that will burn biomass. This plant is funded in part through a $41 million deal with Frontier, the advanced marketplace commitment backed by Stripe, Google and others. Under this agreement, Arbor must remove 116,000 tons of carbon dioxide by 2030.