Chestnut Raises $160M to Scale Carbon Removal Initiatives
Afforestation and reforestation will help capture an enormous amount of CO₂ from the air, which, in turn, mitigates the impact of the climate crisis.
The carbon removal developer is on a mission to restore as much unproductive farmland as possible with the recently raised funds.
Chestnut Carbon, a US-based carbon removal developer, has received $160 million in Series B financing for converting marginal and degraded farmland into forests.
The carbon removal startup buys unproductive land and plants native trees in it. When these trees mature, they prepare to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere, which helps Chestnut Carbon generate and sell carbon credits. Other businesses, particularly in the tech industry, can buy these credits to offset their emissions.
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Investors, including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Cloverlay, DBL Partners, and others, participated in the financing round. Though the amount raised is huge, it is comparatively lower than the $200 million pledged by private equity firm Kimmeridge when Chestnut Carbon was founded.
The startup expanded its operations by taking over Forest Carbon Works, a business that helps small forest owners trade carbon credits. This helped Chestnut transition from a business just managing forests to developing its own large-scale reforestation programmes.
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It presently owns more than 35,000 acres of land in the southeastern U.S. The proceeds will help the company buy more land and scale its carbon credit capacity to 100 million metric tonnes by the end of this decade. To successfully execute this plan, they need to restore hundreds of thousands of acres into forests.
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Source: TechCrunch
