Our largest carbon removal purchase yet
Moving $3 million and removing 5,000 tons of CO2
It’s almost Halloween, and there are plenty of frightening things out there. But what really scares you? If the answer is skeletons or ghosts, this blog doesn’t have much to offer (good luck for the next week or so). If you’re more scared by the terrifying amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we have good news for you.
Because while we can’t do anything about Halloween, we just made our largest quarterly carbon removal purchase yet—nearly $3 million, which will remove more than 5,000 tons of CO2.
This isn’t just the largest single round of purchases in our history. It’s one of the largest philanthropic purchases of carbon removal ever.
Who, what, and why
This purchase supported 11 organizations: Andes, Capture6, Charm Industrial, Climeworks, Frontier, Graphyte, Heirloom, Octavia Carbon, Planetary, Spiritus and TerraFixing. Each is pioneering a different approach to permanent carbon removal, and driving real impact.
But this milestone isn’t only about these numbers or organizations in silo—it’s about proving philanthropy’s underutilized role in bridging the funding gap for high-quality carbon removal.
It’s also about bringing more catalytic capital into young CDR startups (and a nascent CDR industry). By providing early-stage funding, we create a demand signal for carbon removal—helping innovative companies by ensuring a market for their solutions before they are fully commercialized.
We need more of these early purchases to help move the entire sector toward becoming accessible, affordable, and capable of removing billions of tons of CO2 annually.
Driven by systems change and market creation
Donors supporting this catalytic injection of capital into high-quality CDR include:
Climate foundations like the Grantham Foundation and Conscience Bay Research, who have deep expertise in climate action and believe in catalyzing systems change over incremental growth.
Founders, VCs, and investors like Paul Graham, Tim Ferriss, and Calvin French-Owen, who are compelled not just by the importance of removing greenhouse gases right now, but also by the need to create a market.
Employees donating through company matching programs at Google, PG&E, IBM and Rakuten, taking personal responsibility for solving a problem they can see is crucial to tackling the collective crisis we all face.
What do they have in common? They care about the climate, of course, but they’re also builders and futurists who imagine the world in 10, 20, or 50 years, and do things that push us in that direction. For them, carbon removal is an essential part of that future, and they know (like we do) that we’re way behind.
What comes next
Corporate commitments, like those made by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey through Frontier, are critical to this sector, driving important progress and signaling demand. But we need to do even more to close the massive funding gap that exists today.
By providing early, risk-tolerant funding, we can accelerate the maturation of carbon removal technologies—driving down costs, expanding capacity, and helping attract further investment.
Carbon removed today is worth significantly more than carbon removed in five or ten years, both in terms of its immediate impact and the lessons learned that will drive the industry forward. Put simply, CDR needs more buyers, right now, or it will not scale at the level the planet needs.
That’s why over the next year, Terraset plans to move more than $15M into high-quality carbon removal projects, removing thousands more tons of CO2 and helping these technologies achieve the scale needed to reach gigaton capacity.
Let’s make the atmosphere a much less scary place.
By the way
If you’re a CDR supplier—whether or not we have already purchased from you—here are a few things to put on your radar:
We’re running a survey to better understand your capital needs. The more we know about your goals and challenges, the more effective and impactful we can be for you. You can help us do that (and help you!) by filling out this form.
We’re an Official Nominator for The Earthshot Prize 2025. If you want to put yourself forward for global recognition, a whole host of resources and a £1M cash prize, let us know and we can talk next steps. Nominations must be submitted by December.
– Team Terraset
If you read this and thought “$15M is not nearly ambitious enough for 2025,” then you’re exactly the sort of person we want to talk to. Drop us a line at hello@terrasetclimate.org