Charm Partners with Mangrove to Scale Carbon Removal Operations

We're excited to announce that Charm Industrial has partnered with Mangrove Systems to power our digital carbon removal measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) digital infrastructure.

MRV has always been at the core of Charm. We introduced Ledger in 2022 to bring next-level transparency to the removals market. As we scaled our operations and deliveries, we graduated from spreadsheets to a purpose-built carbon accounting system for MRV. There have been many learnings from building out our MRV programs and systems that we want to share in this blog post, and why we believe Mangrove is the best dMRV platform to support Charm’s scale up to gigatons. 

Our collaboration with Mangrove marks a significant step forward in our journey to scale durable carbon removal, allowing our team to stay focused on producing the highest quality CDR on the planet while Mangrove provides the data infrastructure that powers every ton we deliver.

What We’ve Learned Building Digital MRV 

When we first started scaling operations at Charm, we knew that robust MRV would be foundational to everything we do. Data and MRV isn't a byproduct of our operations — it's the backbone of our business. Every data point we collect is critical for providing verifiable proof to our customers, our registry partners, and the world.

When we first started Charm, the digital MRV (dMRV) market was nascent and it was clear we needed to build our own solution to support the complex value chain we were operationalizing. We created Ledger, an in-house dMRV platform designed specifically for Charm's operations. Ledger allowed us to track every step of our process, from biomass sourcing through pyrolysis production to bio-oil injection. Ledger (and now our trusted registry Isometric) publishes all our data transparently, and it served us well as we scaled from prototype to production.

But as we've scaled up our operations, the need for a more robust digital infrastructure became clear for two reasons. First, Charm is a distributed operation. We operate a network of small-footprint sites. The distributed nature of Charm's approach is an advantage: it allows us to scale quickly with lower CapEx. But that also means that we often find ourselves in the "hub" of a network of partners that we work with across the United States. That means that we need to innovate in how we approach MRV, from a single carbon accounting system to shared MRV infrastructure we can onboard partners onto.

Image Caption: One of the first injections at Charm LASecond, over the last year we've focused on improving a key metric we call Time to Verification, a measurement of time between a bio-oil injection and the issuance of credits on registry. Through a combination of technology, process, and operational improvements, the Charm team has been able to improve Time to Verification by over 7x! That means customers get credits faster and we can recognize revenue sooner, which we can reinvest in scaling operations. But as we looked at the roadmap ahead, to improve Time to Verify would require solving hard technical bottlenecks: integrating data from a network of stakeholders and systems, processing and automating data audits, and flexibly adapting our carbon accounting models to reflect on the ground operational changes.

Managing a complex, multi-site operation while simultaneously maintaining and evolving a custom software platform created a burden on our small team. We reached an inflection point where we had to ask ourselves: should we continue building and maintaining our own dMRV infrastructure, or should we partner with specialists who could partner with us to define the future of MRV?

Why Mangrove?

Once we decided to explore alternatives, we evaluated the available options in the market. What stood out immediately about Mangrove was their deep understanding of both carbon removal operations and the technical requirements for rigorous dMRV.

• Configurability is key. Charm's process isn't off-the-shelf. We're pioneering bio-oil sequestration at industrial scale so we needed a platform that could adapt to our specific workflow without forcing us into a one-size-fits-all model. Mangrove's system allowed us to configure our unique process flows while maintaining the rigor required for third-party verification.

• Multi-stream modeling is a critical factor. Charm produces both bio-oil and biochar through our pyrolysis process: we call it the Charm Duo. Many dMRV platforms are designed for single-output processes, but Mangrove could elegantly handle our co-production model, tracking carbon flows across both streams with the granularity we needed.

• Advanced accounting features gave us confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our carbon removal claims. Mangrove's platform includes sophisticated tools for mass balance accounting, embodied emissions amortization, and AI-validation features that reduce human error and increase reporting speed.

• Seamless flow of data from Mangrove’s system into Isometric's Certify API has been one of the most powerful aspects of the partnership. When we close a reporting period, the data flows directly from Mangrove's platform to Isometric for independent verification. This automated handoff eliminates manual data transfer steps and reduces the risk of errors during the verification process, while expediting our time to credit issuance.

Finally, we knew our MRV partner had to be a team we could rely on day-in and day-out on our path toward gigaton scale. Mangrove combined deep domain expertise in carbon removal with strong product development capabilities. They weren’t interested in a one-size-fits-all solution. They were designing the tools that bespoke carbon removal companies like Charm actually need to scale. That alignment of mission and capability mattered to us.

Working Together Today

The implementation process moved quickly, and Mangrove's team worked closely with ours to configure the platform for Charm's specific operations—mapping our data flows, defining our accounting rules, and setting up integrations with our existing systems. 

We’re excited to share that our September removals are fully running on Mangrove infrastructure, and all verified credits issued to Charm going forward will be via Mangrove dMRV. 

The early outcomes have been promising. We're seeing significant efficiency gains in how quickly we can close reporting periods and prepare data for verification. Our tech stack has become more aligned and maintainable, allowing our engineering team to focus on the hardware and operational challenges that are truly unique to Charm. And our reporting flows have become more streamlined, making it easier for our operations team to collect data in the field and see it flow through to verified credits.

Looking Ahead and Evolving Together

The transparency we established with Ledger, publishing our data openly and making our methodology accessible, remains a core value. Mangrove's platform actually enables us to strengthen that transparency by providing better tools for data visualization and public reporting feeding directly into Ledger.

Mangrove and Charm will push the boundaries of what digital MRV can achieve, from AI-validated monitoring reports that can catch errors in data faster and real-time data integrations to provide unprecedented verification timelines for credit verification and issuance.

This partnership enables speed and scale. As we expand our fleet of pyrolyzers and open new production and injection sites around the globe, Mangrove provides the infrastructure we need to manage that complexity without losing rigor or transparency. Our team can now focus on what we do best: running efficient, high-quality carbon removal operations.