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The Charm Underground - Q3 Wrap Up

02 Oct 2024 | Peter Reinhardt

5 MINUTES READ

The Charm Underground - Q3 Wrap Up

The Charm Underground  is a monthly series sharing our progress & learnings as we scale carbon removal to gigatonne scale. If you’d like to get The Charm Underground  in your inbox, subscribe below. 

🌳538 acres of improved forest resilience in the Inyo National Forest.

🪵60 tons of small diameter logs with no feasible market or use. 

👷🏽7 Charmers operating 24/7 for 18 days to convert these logs into a carbon-rich bio-oil.

👏1 massive proof point in how permanent carbon removals can unlock more wildfire mitigation projects, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, and avoid smoke that hurts local air quality - all while removing emissions from the atmosphere.

We’re especially proud to feature our latest collaboration in the Inyo National Forest – bringing perspectives from our operators, stakeholders, and public-private partnerships.   

- Peter Reinhardt, CEO, Charm Industrial

🌳 Charm Partners with the National Forest Foundation and U.S. Forest Service to Improve Forest Resilience

This week, we announced a recent pilot project with the National Forest Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service – Charm held an operational demonstration in the Inyo National Forest. With the shared goal of addressing critical biomass reduction in high-risk areas for wildfire, we’ve been working for the past year to demonstrate our mobile pyrolysis technology as a tool to process biomass from wildfire mitigation projects and remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Read more about our Heatmap feature here for a deep dive into our operations.

📍National Forest Foundation x Charm Inyo Tours

On a sunny Friday morning in September, twelve local forest management stakeholders visited the site for a tour co-hosted by Charm Industrial and the NFF. Located in the remote Eastern Sierras of California, the Inyo National Forest has very few options to utilize biomass residues, which is a problem for wildfire fuel load reduction projects that are designed to improve forest health and community safety. The tour included showcasing: 

  • The site setup in a remote environment

  • The project planning it took to bring equipment to the Inyo National Forest

  • A step by step overview led by our operations supervisor, Brandon, of the steps it takes to turn logs into bio-oil, including chipping, processing, and pyrolyzing the woody biomass

  • A tour of different containers that warehouse the tools and spare parts, and the mechanical cleaning of key pyrolyzer components we need to run our machines smoothly in a remote field operation 

👷🏽Behind the Scenes on Deployment, with Brandon, Pyrolysis Operations Supervisor

Oftentimes, it’s hard to understand the complexities of on-site logistics and operations until you’re in-person and/or on the ground of our facilities. For this month, we’re excited to feature our very own Brandon Nichols as he takes us through his POV as the leader of our pyrolysis team on-site in the Inyo National Forest!

For the full-video tour, click here.

🏆Charm Named as a Pioneer in Carbon Reduction

Congruent Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank names Charm to their inaugural 50 by 2050 list!

This list highlights climate tech companies that have strong potential to drive carbon reduction over the next 25 years. We are honored to be recognized amongst the 50 companies featured with strong potential to abate significant greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Thank you to our incredible team and partners for making this achievement possible. 

Read the 50 by 2050 Full Report here.

👨‍💻Kevin Niparko Joins Charm!

Earlier this month, we welcomed Kevin Niparko, who is leading the build out of Charm’s digital operating system to power our MRV for the road ahead. No stranger to gnarly data challenges, Kevin joins us from Twilio Segment, where he led teams building realtime data & AI infrastructure used by the largest brands in the world. In 2022, Kevin co-founded CDR.fyi to help bring transparency & accountability to the durable carbon removal market.

Read more about the announcement here.

What Charmers Read This Month

  • Axioss announcement of Meta leaving Frontier’s carbon coalition.

  • The Wall Street Journal’s feature on Enviva’s world's largest wood-pellet plant and subsequent bankruptcy. 

  • Politico’s article on Cleveland-Cliffs consideration to abandon “green” steel and a $500M Biden climate grant.

  • Heatmap’s piece on Lego’s new plan to ditch fossil fuels.

  • Transport Topics piece on droughts threatening food exports.

  • Bloomberg’s article on California wildfire rules reshaping urban neighborhoods.

  • The New York Times piece on carbon capture subsidy fears.

  • British Airways announces new carbon removals partnerships to become the largest carbon removals purchaser in the UK and the largest airline purchaser of carbon removals.

  • Bloomberg’s article on West and Central Africa’s flooding and food-insecurity crisis.

  • NPR’s piece on California suing ExxonMobil for misleading the public on plastic recycling.

  • The Wall Street Journal’s feature on State Farm and Berkshire Hathaway making multibillion-dollar bets on major oil companies.

  • The New York Times piece on restless entrepreneurs releasing pollutants in the sky to try to cool the planet.

And that’s a wrap for Q3! Make sure to subscribe to get The Charm Underground in your inbox every month. 

Charm’s temporary footprint during our six week deployment in the Inyo National Forest

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Peter Reinhardt

CEO

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Subscribe to follow our journey to inject bio-oil into deep-geological formations, Charm permanently puts CO2 back underground.

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