From a having a hard time household tea estate to an innovative climate endeavor, Alt Carbon has actually raised $12 million in a seed round as it prepares to scale its carbon dioxide removal work in the South Asian nation.
The environment tech startup, which locks away carbon for countless years through enhanced rock weathering on farmlands, brought in investment led by Lachy Groom, the co-founder of the robotics AI company Physical Intelligence.The journey started in May 2020 with a bittersweet homecoming.
Siblings Shrey and Sparsh Agarwal drove 16 hours from the eastern state of Kolkata to Darjeeling a city understood for tea farming in the leafy foothills of the Himalayas anticipating to bid farewell to their familys tea estate, Salem Hill, which was facing personal bankruptcy.
Instead, that goodbye see planted the seeds for Alt Carbon, which they officially launched in late 2023.
They checked out carbon markets as a method to restore their household company and support other tea estates in the region by creating additional income.
However during their expedition, they found improved rock weathering as a method that might change Darjeelings tradition from being at danger of environment change effect to a frontier of environment action.Within carbon markets, our awareness was that a lot of the jobs in India, which are more avoidance-based, are of really poor quality, and they produce junk credits, Sparsh said in a special interview.Last year, Alt Carbon began its pilot around the Agarwals household tea estate on about 500 acres of land, which they later scaled up in North Bengal, broadening their scope from tea farms to those of rice and bamboo.
The start-up intends to broaden to 500,000 hectares of land.By 2030, the startup intends to remove 5 million lots of carbon from the area, Sparsh informed A Technology NewsRoom.Alt Carbon co-founders Shrey Agarwal (Left) and Sparsh Agarwal (Right).
Image Credits: Alt CarbonAlt Carbon releases improved rock weathering using waste basalt rock dust from mines and quarries in the volcanic igneous province of Rajmahal Traps, located in eastern India.
The rock dust, a waste product from the building and construction industry, is spread on farm fields, where it responds naturally with rainwater to get rid of co2 and include micronutrients to the soil to improve its fertility and health and boost crop yields.
When rainwater consisting of co2 interacts with basalt dust, it forms steady bicarbonate ions.
These are saved in the soil and ultimately flow through rivers to the ocean, where they settle as calcium carbonate, locking away carbon for over 10,000 years.For transferring the specialized dust from source areas to farm fields, the start-up depends on rails and diesel trucks and spends for one-way fares as these sources belong to the tea industrys freight transport system.
The start-up also avoids emissions from dedicated rock processing by counting on the waste basalt from existing mining and crushing operations.Instead of using the basalt dust alone, the startup has established a proprietary combination of basalt and other organic ingredients, which it calls Hari Maati (green soil in Hindi), to persuade farmers to spread it on their farmlands.Alt Carbon estimates its carbon credits at $270 per metric lot, which Sparsh stated is substantially less expensive than direct air capture credits that, he thinks, expense approximately $800 a lot.
He expects the startup to lower expenses within 36 to 48 months.The start-up relies on three layers of measurements to comprehend how much rock is getting weathered and how much carbon is being gotten rid of, Shrey informed A Technology NewsRoom.
It starts with measurements to track weathering progress and after that transfers to determining water within the soil, groundwater sampling, and river monitoring.
The third layer utilizes proprietary reactive transport models that help track ions transferred from the soil to water bodies.
The start-up likewise uses maker learning-driven modeling to get carbon-removal numbers.Alt Carbon states its designs adhere carefully to methodologies set by carbon removal computer registries, consisting of Isometric and Puro.earth.
They have likewise received approvals from intergovernmental organizations, including SBTi, ICVCM, and CORSIA.The start-up has its laboratories in Darjeeling and Bengaluru and utilizes 8 to 10 PhDs, with an overall headcount of 25 staff members.
It intends to scale these labs and broaden its work by doing more soil sample analysis and even setting up a hardware studio for much better, premium information collection on the ground, using remote noticing.
The startup likewise prepares to deploy sensors on the ground to get more insights at a lower cost and in a faster time.
All this will come through that seed round led by Groom.Last year, the startup secured a $500,000 pre-purchase by Frontier and a $1 billion advanced market commitment led by Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey.
It also recently signed a strategic collaboration with a purchaser union, NextGen, started by South Pole and Mitsubishi Corporation, to scale its improved rock weathering.
The group likewise included BCG Group, Swiss RE, LGT, and UBS among its members.
Last month, the startup signed an offtake agreement with Japans shipping company, MOL Group, to acquire 10,000 lots of carbon elimination credits.Alt Carbon will deliver its first carbon credits in less than a month through Isometric, Sparsh said.