“Climate isn’t my lane” is one of the most common things we hear from funders. Most giving strategies are built around one cause, and climate feels like someone else’s line item.

But every cause that philanthropy cares about is shaped by the impacts of climate change.

A few examples:

• Heat and air pollution worsen asthma and heart disease.

• Floods and drought disrupt education for children globally.

• Extreme weather strains food banks, shelters, and water systems.

• Climate change increases security risks for women and girls.

• Wildfires and disasters threaten cultural heritage.

• Disasters are increasing demand for faith-based resources and community services.

Treating those problems without touching climate means those causes are even more exposed.

So if you care about health, education, or hunger, climate is how you protect the work. You keep funding your cause, and you add climate to defend it.

Progress, with an asterisk

According to the 2026 ClimateWorks Funding Trends report, climate giving represented only 2.1% of all global philanthropy in 2024. It’s the first time on record that it crossed the 2% threshold, so in a way, it’s progress*.

But if climate shapes the success of nearly every other philanthropic priority, then 2% of philanthropy isn’t even close to where it needs to be.

The ClimateWorks report captures this well:

“As these crises converge, so too do the solutions. Climate solutions are helping to boost economic development and competitiveness, and protect lives and livelihoods.”

If a stable climate shapes whether grants succeed, it can’t stay in a box marked ‘someone else’s problem.’

Putting climate in your portfolio

Wherever you give, there’s a climate group sitting one step upstream. A few to start with:

• If you fund policy or civic engagement, consider Carbon Removal Alliance. It builds the policy and market conditions that let climate solutions scale, the same lever civic funders already pull for other causes.

• If you fund public health, consider Global Methane Hub. Methane is the fastest lever on near-term warming, which is driving the heat and air-quality damage already showing up in health budgets.

• If you fund economic development, jobs, or energy access, consider RMI. It works with businesses, utilities, and governments to build a cleaner, more affordable energy system.

• If you don’t know where to start, or you fund broadly, consider ClimateWorks Foundation. It connects funders and implementers, routing capital to the strongest bets across the field.

Terraset touches each of these causes, but we sit one step earlier in the chain. We pre-purchase carbon and superpollutant removal before markets are ready to back it, so that a project gets funded before it has to prove itself. That’s where the leverage shows up: since 2022, we’ve seen that each dollar we deploy in philanthropic capital unlocks more than $5 in private investment.

The next step

You don’t have to become a climate funder to fund climate. You just have to see it as part of the portfolio you’re already running.

We can help you do that. Email us at hello@terrasetclimate.org and we’ll find some solutions that support the work you’re funding.

*The 2.1% figure is from 2024, the latest year with complete data; 2025 and 2026 data is still unknown.

Editor’s Note: Tradewater, one of our portfolio companies, finds abandoned oil and gas wells in the U.S. that are leaking methane and permanently plugs them. Terraset’s portfolio coordinator, Grace Mumford, traveled to Kansas last month to see the work firsthand, and to check our own diligence against what's actually happening on the ground.

No place like home for a few thousand orphaned wells

Liberal is a town in Kansas that leans into being Dorothy’s hometown. Think Ruby slippers, character cutouts, and a life-size Tin Man standing watch over a yellow brick road.

The region around Liberal also has a few thousand abandoned oil wells. There may be a deeper connection between those oil wells and the oil can the Tin Man needed, but we’ll leave that exploration for another time. For now, we’ll focus on the abandoned oil wells, and why they matter.

Abandoned oil wells 101

When an operator drills a well, they’re required to post a bond, a kind of deposit that’s meant to cover the cost of plugging the well once it stops producing, so it doesn’t sit there leaking gas indefinitely.

This matters because abandoned oil and gas wells leak methane into the air. Methane is the primary component of natural gas, and it traps dozens of times more heat than carbon dioxide over the short term. Leaking wells also hurt crops, and exposed equipment can injure cattle and get in the way of farming the land around it.

Since methane is 200 times less abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, it’s also too difficult to capture it once it’s released. Once it’s out there, it’s out there. That’s why it’s so important to plug the wells, so they don’t leak methane into the air.

The trouble is, the bond almost never covers what plugging actually costs. The cost to plug a single oil or gas well can range anywhere from high tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. In Kansas, the bond for an operator with up to 25 wells is only $30,000.

Here’s one way this plays out. A major oil producing company drills a well and pumps it until it’s not worth their time anymore. A smaller operator buys it, bond included. Eventually it stops being worth their time too, and they’re stuck with a choice: forfeit a portion of that $30,000, or spend potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars plugging the well. Almost nobody picks the second option, and states don’t push back because scaring off small operators means fewer buyers left for old wells.

So the well gets orphaned, and the leaking and local damage continues.

States are technically responsible for these wells, but they can’t keep up. Kansas has ~4,566 orphaned wells on record requiring action, and the state plugs around 3.2% of them each year. They estimate an additional 5,285 undocumented wells are spread throughout the state.

More wells exist than can be plugged using federal dollars.

Where Tradewater comes in

This is the gap Tradewater fills. They track down abandoned wells like those in Liberal, Kansas, and permanently plug them. They’re funded in part by the methane credits the work generates: each well they seal prevents methane that would otherwise have leaked, and that avoided methane is what gets verified and sold as a credit. Tradewater has plugged 19 wells in Kansas so far, with 7 or 8 more ready to go.

Tradewater has successfully plugged 19 wells in Kansas so far, with 7 or 8 more ready to go. Without companies like Tradewater sealing up old wells before methane can leak into the air, the work either falls to underfunded state programs or doesn’t happen at all.

We started supporting their methane abatement work last year as part of our expansion into superpollutants.

Impact beyond the plugging

Landowners want these wells gone. Beyond the crop damage and risk to cattle, exposed equipment eats into the acreage farmers can actually plant and limits where they can safely run machinery.

Some landowners can even get supplies from the scrap, like tubing and stairs, that Tradewater hauls off the site. And then there are the wells that don’t meet the criteria to justify a creditable project, which Tradewater often plugs anyway to help farmers reclaim usable land.

Behind the curtain of oil well plugging

Negotiations can take 6 to 8 weeks and the physical capping takes 3 to 5 days, or longer if unexpected conditions arise in the well. Crews pull the tubing, pour cement down the well, set plugs to seal off perforations in the casing that allow gas to flow, then cap it with another layer of cement. Once they confirm the plug was successful, they regrade, reseed, and return the site to something a farmer can work again per state regulations.

Plugging the gap (and the well)

The gap between the bond the law requires and what the job actually costs is the reason this work exists. Grace came back with a clearer sense of just how much patience, coordination with landowners, and plain physical labor is behind every methane credit.

It’s 6,000 feet of steel and cement, a landowner who’s been waiting years for a viable solution, and a crew that makes sure the job is done right.

Reach out at hello@terrasetclimate.org if you want to learn more about methane abatement or oil and gas well plugging and how to support it.

Editor’s Note: Grace Mumford is our portfolio coordinator. A key part of her job is identifying innovative climate projects and opportunities that leverage the types of capital Terraset provides.

We hear from a lot of strong projects. Most are further along than people expect. They often have grants signed, lenders interested, pilots running. What they need is a pre-purchase to turn interest into action.

We can’t support all of these projects ourselves, so we’re sharing a few that we hope others can.

Spread the word, fund them through Terraset, or make the pre-purchase yourself. In any case, you can help these climate solutions get their shot at operating on a scale that matters.

Methane Abatement & Water Conservation, Southeast Asia

AgriCapture works with rice farmers across Southeast Asia to cut the methane produced by flooded fields and reduce the amount of water needed for irrigation. Their credits are strong, but many buyers are price-sensitive. Currently, the water and carbon benefits are lumped into one credit. Selling the water conservation outcome separately, instead of folding it into the carbon price, lets AgriCapture lower that price and reach more buyers.

Capital they need: $300,000

What the capital unlocks: A model other rice farms could adopt, which could make methane and water cuts affordable at a much bigger scale.

What excites us about them: Separating the carbon credit from the water credit means more sales and more farmers using these methods. If it works for AgriCapture, it could work for a lot more rice farms. We bought 1,000 tons of methane abatement from them this past May.

Methane Abatement, United States

Brightly funds nonprofit food rescue organizations that redirect surplus food from landfills to people who are experiencing food insecurity. Less food rotting in landfills means less methane released. They’ve signed multiple forward contracts from organizations like The Climate Trust and 3Degrees. As one of the first projects of its kind, pre-purchases can help demonstrate demand for this emerging credit category.

Capital they need: $250,000

What the capital unlocks: Early sales prove this new kind of credit works, plus it increases long-term funding for food rescue groups.

What excites us about them: Food rescue and methane cuts almost never line up this well. One dollar fights hunger and cuts harmful gases at the same time. They’ve also earned an A-rating from BeZero Carbon.

Biochar, Greater Caribbean

Carbonwave collects sargassum seaweed, which washes up on Caribbean and Gulf coasts, and turns it into biostimulant and biochar. A $150,000 to $250,000 pre-purchase would fund the buildout of both biochar and their paver product, another use for the same feedstock.

Capital they need: $150,000–$250,000

What the capital unlocks: This would be Carbonwave’s first carbon revenue, and would unlock the equity necessary to build out biochar and paver production side by side.

What excites us about them: Carbonwave is getting three products out of one feedstock: biostimulant, biochar, and pavers. That kind of business doesn’t have to rely on carbon credits alone to survive, which makes the carbon revenue easier to underwrite, not harder.

Biochar, Idaho

Forestir is helping solve the US Forest Service’s biomass problem. Chipping and hauling logging waste out of Valley County, Idaho — one of the most at-risk firesheds in the state — is expensive, and the pileup raises wildfire risk. They are building an on-site facility to turn 4,200 tons of that waste a year into biochar instead of a fire hazard. The Forest Service awarded them a $1 million Wood Innovations grant last year based on the benefits it will receive from partnering with a biomass processing solution.

Capital they need: $260,000–$390,000

What the capital unlocks: This funding would prove demand that incentivizes a bank to lend, opening the door to the Timber Expansion Loan Guaranteed Program and other USDA opportunities.

What excites us about them: This is what practical wildfire mitigation looks like: turning a costly waste problem into carbon removal, right where the fire risk is highest, with state and federal entity support.

Biochar, Namibia

PyroCCS bundled three biochar plants into one €2.1 million project. They already have offtake commitments and a soft yes from a bank lined up. What’s missing is about €200,000 of equity-like capital to close the gap.

Capital they need: €200,000

What the capital unlocks: This directly unlocks a €2.1 million loan. Proof of funds is due in September.

What excites us about them: Bundling three plants into one financing package is a smart way to get biochar built at real scale in the Global South, instead of raising money plant by plant.

Enhanced Rock Weathering, Latin America

Silica works with quarries and farmer organizations to spread fine volcanic rock on fields across Latin America, a process that pulls carbon out of the air and increases crop yields as the rock breaks down. FIRA, Mexico’s rural development finance institution, has invited Silica to be included in key sustainable finance programs, which would provide access to preferential interest rates for Silica and partner farmers.

Capital they need: $250,000–$300,000

What the capital unlocks: This will enable a new funded project needed to qualify for FIRA’s programs. Inclusion in a program significantly lowers project financing costs, and expands deployments through FIRA’s 2M+ farmer network.

What excites us about them: Enhanced rock weathering barely exists in Latin America today. Gaining access to FIRA’s network offers the opportunity to expand Silica’s operations and the ERW ecosystem more broadly.

Biochar, Ukraine

Tellus Conservation is building a biochar project in Ukraine to fund conservation work the war has cut off. Profits from the kilns flow into the Nature Fund of Ukraine, which provides long-term funding for 11 national parks. The near-term plan is a batch-kiln pilot, followed by a larger two-kiln commercial system in Rivne Oblast. A development bank has invited Tellus to apply for financing on that buildout, but needs a buyer letter of intent or forward offtake for the 4,000 credits a year produced by the two kilns, once the feasibility study and site selection wrap up.

Capital they need: $300,000

What the capital unlocks: Development-bank financing for the two-kiln system, and a real funding stream for 11 national parks that the war has left with almost nothing.

What excites us about them: Most paths to fund Ukrainian conservation depend on a grant renewing every year. Turning biochar revenue into permanent park funding is the kind of model Terraset wants to help prove out.

If any of these projects pique your interest, reach out at hello@terrasetclimate.org. We’d love to talk about contribution approaches or connect you with the teams behind the work.

Editor's Note: Planetary runs Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement out of a pilot site in Halifax, adding minerals to seawater to pull carbon out of the atmosphere.

The ocean breathes. As Mi’kmaw elder Ken Paul explained it to Planetary Co-Founder and CEO Mike Kelland: the ocean is full of living things, but it is also a living thing itself. It has a world-sized circulatory system and it breathes in whatever we put in the air.

That’s the problem. When we put carbon in the air, the ocean breathes it in, turns it into acid, and releases the acid into the ocean. That acid is very harmful to shell-building creatures like oysters, clams, mussels and tiny snails that rely on calcium and carbonate building blocks in seawater. Damaging them upsets the ocean food chain from the bottom up, which in turn affects the food chain that feeds the rest of the planet. Mike calls it ocean heartburn.

Planetary’s fix is exactly what you’d give a person with heartburn: an antacid.

The company is at the forefront of operationalizing a process called Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, or OAE, which adds minerals to seawater to neutralize acid. That process restores the ocean’s natural ability to absorb carbon that is warming the atmosphere.

Honing the tech

Like many climate technologies, Planetary’s system has been through several iterations.

Version 1 in 2023 delivered only 137 tons of carbon removal.

Version 2 didn’t automate the mineral handling the way the team hoped, so they went fully manual. Mike joined the crew in beating bags of mineral over a tank with a cricket bat, the best tool on hand during winter in Halifax, while wearing respirators against the dust. That’s the system that hit the 1,000-ton X Prize target.

Version 3, the system running now, is a different world of automated augers and self-regulating tanks. It can handle roughly 25,000 tons a year.

Version 4 is in the works, targeting a significant scale up.

The importance of early, patient capital

Terraset was an early buyer of Planetary’s carbon removal, with three purchases in 2024 and one in 2025. None were big checks by climate-finance standards.

But the first one landed when Planetary was raising their Series A, during what Mike describes as a difficult stretch. The team was trying to get its second-generation system running, hadn’t yet delivered any registered credits, and was racing towards the X Prize.

That first Terraset purchase was the difference between being able to buy the materials the system runs on, and not.

“We didn’t have a clue when we’d deliver, or how many times we’d be able to. Terraset’s flexibility meant we could prioritize deliveries for buyers with less flexibility, and use the cash to keep going.” – Mike Kelland | CEO, Planetary

Early validation compounds

Terraset and Shopify were Planetary’s two key early buyers.

About five months after our purchase, Planetary signed its first offtake with British Airways, which Mike suggested likely would not have happened without early buyers like Terraset. For Planetary, that type of support signaled that their OAE was more than a niche interest of a single buyer.

That is what we do best. We show up when the timing is hardest. It keeps good companies moving and tells the next buyer the demand is real.

Planetary went on to secure a few larger deals and is now sold out through 2027.

Company growth paced by ocean and community

Planetary paces growth by ocean conditions, not engineering capacity alone. If something in the water looks off, Planetary pauses dosing to understand why, even if that means missing a delivery forecast.

“If we miss a forecast, that’s bad. But it’s not nearly as bad as doing something harmful in the ocean.” – Mike Kelland | CEO, Planetary

The Halifax site is supported by a coalition of community members: Indigenous communities and rights holders, local, provincial and federal governments, academic researchers, and buyers are all part of the collective effort.

As buyers, we are part of a broader mission to help determine whether an antacid for the ocean can become a real part of the solution.

That’s the bet: put real money behind ocean chemistry before it’s obvious, and find out together how to help it scale.

Want to back ocean-based climate solutions? Reach out at hello@terrasetclimate.org if you’re interested in learning more or putting your capital to work.

British MP Edward Morello cited our revolving fund model in a UK Parliamentary debate this month as the basis for what he believes to be “the single most important proposal that the Government should consider” in scaling carbon removal.

Mr. Morello said:

Since we launched the Revolving Fund last year, we’ve been delighted to see it catch the attention of a number of entities — from sovereign wealth funds to city governments, and now the British Parliament — as a mechanism for immediate climate impact and as an on-ramp for future carbon removal buyers.

Mr. Morello believes that a Government-seeded revolving fund could underpin national greenhouse gas removal policy:

Mr. Morello went on to cite Terraset’s support of Graphyte and the onward sale of credits to Wren, the revolving fund’s first resale back in 2025, as a specific example:

Editor’s note: The debate followed our recent purchase of biochar from Restord — a deal that unlocked the UK's first commercial loan to a biochar company — as part of our partnership with the Green Finance Institute on the UK CDR Catalyst. Watch this space for more developments in the UK.

Learn more about the impact of our revolving fund here. Its second round of purchases will be made this autumn. If you’re a donor in the USA, UK or somewhere else in the world who is looking to see your money go as far as possible in helping to scale carbon removal and superpollutant abatement, we’d love to hear from you at hello@terrasetclimate.org.

Editor’s note: Our CEO sends a quarterly friends and supporters note. This one apparently struck a chord, maybe because people love an ancient Greek analogy (and the concept of leverage). For whatever the reason, we thought we'd share it in full with a broader crowd.

Friends of Terraset,

Archimedes said: “Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

Leverage is the number one topic at Terraset right now. Our capital is directly unlocking follow-on funding at every scale, and it’s exactly what we want to do more of.

Our ~$200k pre-purchase from Restord unlocked $2M in financing, including the UK’s first-ever commercial loan to a biochar company. The >$1M we deployed through our revolving fund’s first round unlocked $6 for every $1 spent. With donor funds ringfenced as first-loss capital, we can unlock 5-10x debt capital for climate projects.

Our mission, methodology, and tools are a stable fulcrum. Capital is the only limiting factor now. We need a longer lever if we’re going to move the world (every dollar you donate and each introduction you make lengthens it). In the meantime, here’s what pulling on it has looked like over the last couple of months.

Have a great summer,

Adam

• Our ~$200k pre-purchase from Restord unlocked a financing package worth around 10x that amount, including the UK’s first-ever commercial loan to a biochar company. Thanks to backing from the Green Finance Institute, we’re expanding further into the UK.

  • If you know someone perfectly placed to lead our work in London, point them here.

• In Round 1 of our revolving fund for greenhouse gas removal and abatement we deployed more than $1M across 11 projects and are seeing up to $6 unlocked for every $1 we put in. The model is simple: recycle proceeds from the resale of early purchases back into new commitments, so every dollar works more than once. And the model is working. We’re excited for Round 2, and looking to grow the pot.

  • If you know potential donors who want to see their money drive repeated cycles of climate impact, please introduce us.

• We made our first purchase of rice methane abatement credits, funding emission reductions from smallholder farmers in markets commercial buyers haven’t reached. In addition to reducing methane emissions by up to 70 percent, our purchase saved millions of gallons of water. It’s another good example of how greenhouse gas removal and abatement has impacts that go way beyond the tons themselves.

  • If you know donors focused on water sustainability solutions who might want to explore this interconnection with methane, please connect us.
    

• We launched a partnership with Forum for Impact (FFI), deepening how we connect funders to high-quality climate solutions. FFI is a global platform where leaders and institutions (investors, philanthropists, sovereign wealth funds, and other innovators) converge to shape the future of impact. We’re working with them to help donors understand how their philanthropic capital can catalyze climate solutions around the world, with a particular focus on the hundreds of billions of dollars sitting in Donor Advised Funds in North America. That capital could take any of the examples above to significant scale.

  • If you’d like to attend an upcoming FFI convening, let us know.

• A new report from 150+ climate finance leaders, backed by Builders Vision, concluded that philanthropic and concessionary capital is irreplaceable for CDR and superpollutants, and that companies built solely around carbon revenue are at existential risk. The market needs an intermediary willing to take on risk that pure market capital won’t touch right now, while the window is narrow and the need is acute. We read this as a case for what we are doing with Terraset. Thanks for your support in building it.

Editor’s note: We supported Recoolit, a company capturing and destroying gases from air conditioners, with a pre-purchase through our revolving fund.

London had a heatwave during Climate Week last month, and the irony was not lost on those attending. But there’s an even deeper irony in the air conditioners that people switched on to cope. (And we’re not even talking about the fierce debate about the use of AC in Europe and the U.S.)

Those machines – ubiquitous in the U.S. and growing around the world – run on refrigerants called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. These man-made gases can trap hundreds to thousands of times more heat than carbon dioxide.

Refrigerants have garnered attention in recent years under the “superpollutants” label. In 2017, Project Drawdown – a go-to source for rankings of the most effective science-based solutions to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions – listed refrigerant management as the number one solution to the climate crisis. But action on refrigerant management has been slow to mobilize.

When Recoolit founder Louis Potok learned about the potential impact of removing superpollutants, he moved to Indonesia to be where the problem was acute. Rising temperatures and improving living standards are making air conditioning a staple, but the country has little infrastructure to safely dispose of HFCs. Louis found that technicians were venting gas from old machines into the air as standard practice, because there was no alternative.

Since 2021, his team has been working to make cooling sustainable around the world.

What’s actually inside your AC, and what it takes to destroy it

Air conditioners and refrigerators work by cycling refrigerants, chemicals that evaporate and condense to absorb and release heat. Sealed inside a machine, they’re harmless. The problem starts when the equipment undergoes routine maintenance or end-of-life disposal, which releases the refrigerants into the air. These refrigerants are responsible for the equivalent of over 3 billion tons (gigatons) of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

While prohibitions on venting exist in different countries, enforcement is nearly impossible.

In most of the world, the infrastructure to capture and destroy that gas at a meaningful scale simply doesn’t exist, and the destruction process relies on high-temperature incineration at facilities that are limited in number due to cost and strict permitting.

Recoolit’s process

Recoolit built the infrastructure that’s missing elsewhere: local technicians, regional consolidation, and certified destruction, all tracked end to end. The process runs in four stages:

Stage 1: Technicians recover refrigerant waste from household and commercial units into reusable cylinders.

Stage 2: The cylinders go to a Recoolit warehouse, where they’re weighed, tested, and consolidated into larger tanks.

Stage 3: The gas is destroyed at a partner facility, fully compliant with local regulations and UN technical standards.

Stage 4: Every step is tracked digitally, creating a full chain of custody from a specific device to destruction.

Check the sticker inside your fridge door. If it says R-134a, that refrigerant traps 1,430 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 100-year window. When Recoolit destroys it through high-temperature incineration, the warming potential drops from 1,430 to one. What goes in as a potent greenhouse gas comes out as carbon dioxide, water, and – once the acid gas is scrubbed – a stable salt.

Multiplied across the estimated 550 million AC units that will be sold in Indonesia between 2022 and 2060, the climate impact is massive.

The more difficult problems: operations, protocols, and funding

Louis will tell you that destruction isn’t the hard part. It’s everything that comes before it: building a collection network, training technicians to capture gas instead of venting it, and developing the protocols that let that work generate verified carbon credits.

When Recoolit completed its first destructions in 2022, it hit a wall. Existing carbon credit methodologies covered older refrigerants like CFCs and HCFCs, but not HFCs. Existing registries weren’t interested in updating these little-used methodologies without proof of large credit supply and robust buyer demand – a classic chicken-and-egg problem.

Without a methodology, Recoolit couldn’t issue credits for the emissions reductions from gas it was destroying for nearly three years. It had to spin up an internal registry and find catalytic early buyers like Wren who were willing to take risks and move faster than the legacy market infrastructure. This allowed Recoolit to survive and keep growing until the market evolved.

Things shifted when Google signed a major offtake agreement with Recoolit, providing capital to scale Indonesia operations and plan expansion into other countries. At the same time, Isometric was developing their new HFC-specific methodology. The missing and fragmented infrastructure was starting to come together.

Recoolit’s goal: keep the equivalent of 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by 2050.

Why Terraset got involved

The climate crisis operates on multiple timescales at once. Carbon removal addresses what’s already in the atmosphere. Superpollutant mitigation stops gases with greater warming potential before they’re released.

Terraset made a pre-purchase from Recoolit in 2025 as part of our expansion into superpollutant mitigation alongside our carbon removal portfolio. That funding let the Recoolit team buy cylinders, pay for gas collection, hire field staff, and pay themselves.

Your air conditioner is keeping you cool this summer. What happens to it when it’s done matters more than most people realize. Organizations like Recoolit are building the systems to make sure it doesn’t warm the planet on its way out.

If you want your dollars working on multiple timescales at once, this is what it looks like. Get in touch at hello@terrasetclimate.org.

Editor’s note: In April 2026, Terraset pre-purchased ~£165,000 (~$200,000) of carbon removal from Restord, a biochar company based in the United Kingdom, as part of our partnership with the Green Finance Institute and their CDR Catalyst. That six-figure commitment helped unlock a first-of-a-kind £1 million bank loan (6x direct follow-on funding) and a broader financing package that will see Restord move from pilot scale to its first commercial facility.

When people talk about catalytic capital, the term can feel abstract and hand-wavey. The story of Restord offers a concrete example of how strategically deploying money can unlock additional capital that would not have otherwise been possible.

From grandfather’s farm to commercial facility

Tom Previte founded Restord in 2024 on his grandfather’s farm in Cornwall. He took local tree trimmings and heated them in a low-oxygen environment to create biochar, a material that locks carbon away for centuries and helps restore soil and ecosystems. In its new life as biochar, this green waste holds onto planet-warming carbon that would otherwise return to the atmosphere through decomposition or burning. When added to soil, biochar helps retain water and nutrients, and can even improve crop yields.

The work was not glamorous. Tom used this pilot-scale operation to test feedstocks, generate early biochar, and show that wood waste could be turned into both carbon credit revenue and a usable agricultural product.

That pilot gave Restord real operational experience. Tom had run the process, identified reliable feedstock in the woody oversized material that a local green waste facility couldn’t compost, and delivered carbon credits. He started with grants and crowdfunders, but scaling the operation required a different kind of capital strategy.

Moving from pilot to commercial scale required financing for machinery, site preparation, operational capital, and a structure that could satisfy a lender in a sector most banks still see as high-risk.

The challenge of the financing gap

Restord sat in an awkward middle ground: too early, too capital-intensive, and too novel for many conventional lenders; too small to attract large institutional banks; and project financing wasn’t the right fit for venture investors. Tom spent six months speaking with lenders, with many promising routes leading to dead ends. They weren’t comfortable with a model built primarily on the future value of carbon credits, especially without a buyer confirmed.

The first part of Tom’s solution was to show that Restord wouldn’t rely on a single revenue stream. In addition to carbon credits, the project generates revenue from physical biochar sales and thermal energy, which can be converted into electricity. That diversification helped. So did the idea of structuring the loan against the pyrolysis equipment itself, with a manufacturer buyback option from Woodtek as additional protection. Woodtek also came in with a machinery discount in return for an equity position in the new project, reducing upfront costs and bringing a key equipment supplier into the deal as a committed stakeholder. But getting a deal across the line would still need more.

What it took for a bank to say yes

Restord eventually identified a serious potential lender in Oxbury, a UK agricultural bank with extensive experience financing food and farming businesses. Biochar was a more intuitive fit for them than a generalist lender. But thematic alignment alone was not enough.

Oxbury was willing to lend a substantial share of the required capital, but it didn’t want to be the only financial backer. Restord would have to assemble a broader financing package that included non-loan capital and committed project partners. Oxbury also needed evidence that the project had real customers, realistic revenue assumptions, and credible protections against downside risk.

How the capital stack came together

While all this was going on, the Green Finance Institute (GFI) – a global independent advisor to governments and investors – was bringing stakeholders together for the creation of their CDR Catalyst, which was designed to solve exactly this sort of problem. Terraset, meanwhile, had launched a revolving fund, which pre-purchases credits with philanthropic capital and resells them to corporate buyers on delivery. It quickly became apparent that the two approaches were deeply complementary. Together, the GFI and Terraset identified the role that a pre-purchase from Terraset could play in unlocking further financing to scale carbon removal in the UK.

Opportunities like this are core to our mission. We don’t think philanthropic capital will solve the climate crisis on its own, but we know from experience that it can play a catalytic role. We’ve seen our pre-purchases unlock more than 10x the funding we’ve deployed in direct financing, and seen more than 40x in follow-on investment secured within 12 months of completing a deal. The GFI thinks similarly, so working together felt both obvious and natural. This opportunity gave the chance to prove the concept in the UK for the first time, as part of a partnership that will ultimately bring many more projects like this to life.

What ultimately emerged was a layered structure, brought together under GFI’s CDR Catalyst and supported by Oxbury, Terraset, Cornwall’s The Green Waste Company and future carbon credit buyers.

The total financing requirement was slightly above £1.5 million. Tom broke it down as a set of complementary sources of capital, each solving a different problem in the financing package.

• £1 million loan + £100,000 revolving facility from Oxbury Bank: The core debt financing, structured against the pyrolysis equipment. This provided the bulk of the machinery finance, with the equipment itself serving as the primary asset behind the loan.

• ~£165,000 pre-purchase from Terraset: Early customer capital tied to future carbon removal deliveries. This was used for the manufacturer deposit as well as planning and permitting, allowing Restord to start spending before the main loan was drawn. It also gave Oxbury more confidence that demand existed at a real contracted price.

• Six-figure investment from The Green Waste Company: Partner capital invested into the project in exchange for an equity stake. These funds went toward the machine as well as civil works to prepare the site. It also strengthened the feedstock and site relationship at the center of the project.

• Alongside the financing and upfront pre-purchase, Tom has been negotiating further offtake agreements for the credits Restord will produce, and Terraset has secured supplementary purchases from additional future carbon credit buyers through our revolving fund, helping round out the non-loan portion of the package.

Terraset’s role was especially catalytic because its pre-purchase solved two problems at once: it validated demand for future deliveries and supplied early cash for immediate project expenses. In Tom’s telling, that helped reduce lender risk while accelerating the project timeline.

Blended finance is underused in carbon removal

This deal offers a practical set of lessons for developers trying to finance early climate solutions. Most developers continue to chase grants or wait for commercial investment that isn’t ready yet. The Restord deal offers a third path: using early philanthropic commitments to reduce lender risk, validate demand, and help projects cross the threshold where debt becomes possible.

Tom shared candidly that when working across buyers, lenders, and developers in this way, getting everyone in the same room early matters. A buyer may want to be catalytic, but unless the structure actually addresses lender concerns, that intention may not translate into funding.

This story is also a reminder that climate impact alone is rarely enough to unlock debt. Tom said lenders cared primarily about repayment, downside protection, and the resilience of the business model. For developers, that means learning to present a climate-positive project in the language of finance without losing sight of the mission underneath it.

Restord demonstrated what’s possible when multiple parties take on part of the risk required to move a project from pilot to commercial scale. It won’t look the same everywhere. Different lenders will care about different things, but the logic still holds. Catalytic capital works best when it is tied to a specific moment or challenge in the financing stack.

How to get involved in the next catalytic opportunity.

Since completing this deal, a number of banks have asked us to team up on larger partnerships. The only barrier is the capital we have available.

Reach out at hello@terrasetclimate.org if you are:

• A donor interested in giving that unlocks private capital and investment. You can give to Restord specifically here.

• A carbon removal developer trying to finance early commercial infrastructure.

• A funder working to scale climate solutions in the UK who wants to learn more about our expansion in the market or our partnership with the GFI on their CDR Catalyst.

We’re excited for what’s coming up.

In May of 2025, we put $1.1M to work into 11 early-stage climate companies. We did this through the first philanthropic revolving fund applied to greenhouse gas removal.

In the 12 months that followed, those companies attracted over $114M in outside capital. One got acquired. One closed a deal with Microsoft. One secured a seven-figure bank loan that wouldn’t have happened without our purchase.

We shared a case study of how it worked with Graphyte and Wren, and now we’re ready to share an analysis of what we did, what worked, and what we’re doing next.

Read the full report here.

1. We proved the gap is real and closeable.

Commercial investors typically require 12–15% returns before committing capital. Early-stage CDR projects tend to land around 6–7%. That gap is where promising projects stall. Terraset’s combination of upfront pre-payment and volume commitment improved project financial returns by 2.2 to 3.6 percentage points. For ERW, that moved portfolio companies to within 0.4pp of the commercial threshold. One modest co-philanthropist could close it.

2. Paying above market price is a strategy.

Terraset paid above the average market rate in three of four technology classes: $52/ton above average for Biochar/BiCRS, $110/ton above for ERW, and $4/ton above for refrigerant destruction. When an early-stage company can point to a credible buyer willing to pay for quality, it changes how commercial investors assess the project. The premium functions as a public signal. It also means Terraset is selecting for companies whose credits will hold up to scrutiny.

“For Biochar and ERW, commitment to a particular price point was cited as the most impactful component of the deal.”

3. The leverage surprised us.

Portfolio companies collectively attracted over $114M in third-party equity, grants, and offtake agreements in the 12 months following Terraset’s purchases. Restord secured a seven-figure bank loan directly catalyzed by our pre-purchase. Charm followed our commitment with $87M in additional offtakes. UNDO closed a debt facility, a Barclays offtake, and a Microsoft offtake. Eion was acquired by Terradot and cited the pre-purchase as key to reaching that agreement.

4. Buyers wanted in faster than we expected.

Unlike a grant, the capital recycles. And it moved faster than we expected. Within the first year, five buyers contracted or pledged purchases totaling over $200,000 back into the fund. Over $350,000 in new donations—separate from the Schmidt Family Foundation anchor gift—has been pledged in 2026 alone. Each cycle builds on the last, generating more market credibility, more recycled capital, and more projects crossing the commercial threshold without needing ongoing philanthropic support. The mechanics work. Now we need more volume.

The revolving fund started in carbon removal, but the model travels. We've deployed funding from it for methane abatement and refrigerant destruction, where the same mechanics apply: upfront prepayment, quality pricing, and volume commitment move project economics in ways that unlock commercial capital.

We're exploring other areas where the structure fits, anywhere an early-stage climate solution has real demand potential but can't yet attract the financing it needs to scale.

Read the full report here.

Want to be involved with the revolving fund?

If you’re a developer with a project ready for pre-purchase commitments, we want to hear from you. Apply here.

If you’re a funder interested in having your dollar support multiple rounds of impact, reach out to Taylor at taylor@terrasetclimate.org.

If you’re a corporate buyer looking for meaningful purchases where your dollar gets redeployed into new solutions, reach out at hello@terrasetclimate.org.

Rice feeds more than half the world. It also produces around 10 to 12 percent of human-caused methane emissions globally. That’s not a reason to stop growing rice, but it is a reason to grow it differently.

This month, Terraset committed to purchasing 1,000 tons of methane abatement from AgriCapture, a company that pays rice farmers to change how they manage water in their fields in order to reduce methane emissions.

The standard approach is continuous flooding, where the fields stay underwater all season. This produces heat-trapping methane as bacteria break down organic matter in the standing water. It also burns through an enormous amount of groundwater in some of the most water-stressed regions of the United States.

The alternative is called alternate wetting and drying, or AWD. Instead of sitting underwater all season, fields get drained periodically, which gives the soil a chance to breathe. This approach reduces methane output from the field by up to 70 percent, uses dramatically less water, and produces the same yield of quality rice. Since 2021, AgriCapture’s farmers have saved 53 billion gallons of water and avoided methane emissions equivalent to more than 177,000 tons of CO₂ by switching from continuous flooding to AWD.

So why aren’t all rice farmers doing this already?

Because changing how you farm carries risk, and the financial reward for taking on that risk has to show up before the season starts, not after the harvest. AgriCapture shares credit revenue directly with farmers, which means every ton we buy translates into payments to the people actually doing the work in the field.

You can’t win the long game if you lose the short one first

Terraset started with durable carbon removal: pulling CO₂ out of the atmosphere and locking it away for centuries. That work is at the core of what we do. It’s chronically underfunded and has to happen eventually.

But carbon removal operates on a long clock. Methane doesn’t.

While CO₂ can stay in the atmosphere for centuries, methane breaks down after a decade or so. The catch is, it’s more potent: over a 20-year window, methane traps roughly 80 times more heat than CO₂. This means that we need to cut methane emissions today to avoid measurable warming within years, not generations. Durable carbon removal is how we stabilize the climate over centuries. Methane abatement is how we keep the next two decades from running away from us.

We added superpollutants to the Terraset portfolio because methane and refrigerants are warming the planet right now, and we have tools to stop it. Using them feels obvious.

The water beneath this purchase

The farms in AgriCapture’s US network sit on top of three of the most stressed groundwater systems in the country: the Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer, the Texas Coastal Uplands Aquifer, and the Coastal Lowlands Aquifer that runs from Texas through Louisiana. In parts of Louisiana and Texas, farmers are already drilling deeper just to reach water. The water’s going out faster than rain and rivers can replace it.

Each credit from AgriCapture saves around 300,000 gallons of water. That water stays in aquifers that took thousands of years to fill.

That matters for how we think about this purchase. Reducing methane emissions is the headline. The water savings are the bonus that makes this purchase feel different.

We’ve been here before

AgriCapture is our first rice methane purchase, but it’s not the first methane work we’ve supported.

We’ve backed Tradewater, which destroys refrigerants and plugs abandoned oil and gas wells that have been venting superpollutants, sometimes for decades.

We’ve also supported StratX, which is building better landfill cover systems to capture methane that escapes across the surface, rather than from a single point. They’re at an early stage. We backed them because someone has to go first, and early purchases build the evidence base that brings everyone else in later.

Abandoned oil wells, landfill covers, rice farming. Different sources, different verification, same logic. We find a credible intervention, confirm the measurement, and show up early enough to matter.

The farmer signing up next season is who our dollars actually reach

If you want to be part of that, this is the most direct route.

If you’re thinking about how methane fits into a broader climate giving strategy, or if you work in water security or agricultural sustainability and want to understand how carbon credit revenue can fund farmer transitions, that conversation is worth having. Reach out to Taylor at taylor@terrasetclimate.org.

Editor’s note: Christina Janulis joined Terraset in April to help with communications. She comes from a background in ocean conservation, with a focus on grantmaking and science communication.

I’ve spent several years in ocean conservation, telling stories tangled up with climate along the way. Now, I’m learning a whole new language at Terraset.

I had a lot of browser tabs open during my first week. Carbon markets have their own vocabulary, and it moves fast. Here’s what was on my mind as someone new to carbon markets.

What does “reaching gigaton scale” actually mean?

I kept seeing “gigaton scale, gigaton removal.” It sounded big, but I couldn’t grasp what it really meant.

Here’s what I know now:

• A gigaton is one billion tons.

• Humans emit roughly 37 billion tons (gigatons) of CO₂ (we’ll just call it carbon) per year. Not to mention, there’s already too much carbon in the atmosphere from past emissions.

• The entire voluntary carbon market retired 0.157 gigatons of carbon credits in 2025, including both avoidance and reduction credits. Of that, actual carbon removal accounted for only about 5%, or roughly 0.008 gigatons.

• To get on track for a livable future, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we need to remove 10 gigatons per year by 2050.

These numbers provided some context, but you know what really helped me wrap my head around it? Whales.

Terraset’s CEO, Adam Fraser, used a “whales in the sky” visual at a conference earlier this year.

This image helps us visualize the carbon we need to remove from the atmosphere each year in a different unit: a 150-ton blue whale, the largest animal on Earth.

We need to remove the equivalent of 80 million blue whales of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. Today, we’re only removing about 5,000 “whales” worth of carbon dioxide each year. The image above has hundreds of whales; we are currently removing thousands of whales; and we need to be removing millions of whales.

I also learned that getting to this mythical “gigaton scale” is primarily a funding and infrastructure problem, not so much a science problem. Which is, more or less, what Terraset exists to help solve.

I found this comforting. It’s not that the technology doesn’t exist. It’s that the pipeline from “this works” to “this works at scale” needs a lot more money.

What are the different flavors of carbon dioxide removal (CDR)?

I was familiar with marine-based CDR, but I had no idea how many different approaches there were.

The broadest split is between nature-based and engineered approaches. Nature-based solutions work with biological systems that already remove carbon: forests, soils, oceans. Engineered approaches build technology to do it directly. They have very different cost profiles, permanence timescales, and trade-offs. The IPCC has a great overview comparing those dimensions by approach, if you want to go deeper.

Here are a few examples from Terraset’s portfolio:

• Bio-oil injection (Charm Industrial): Plant biomass is converted into carbon-rich bio-oil and injected into EPA-regulated underground wells. Geological permanence (i.e. thousands of years). This is one of the more mature engineered approaches.

• Biochar (Pyrogen, Graphyte): Organic material is heated without oxygen into a stable, charcoal-like substance that locks carbon in soil for centuries. This is an older technology finding new applications and Pyrogen even embeds it into concrete.

• Direct air capture (Octavia Carbon, Climeworks, DeepSky): Machines pull carbon directly from the air, then store it underground or use it as an input. The most energy-intensive approach, but also one of the most scalable and verifiable. Costs are dropping fast.

• Agricultural soil carbon (Andes): Beneficial microorganisms added to farm fields capture carbon while crops grow, boosting yields at the same time. Nature-based, with the added benefit of supporting farmers directly.

• Ocean-based approaches (Planetary, CarbonRun): My personal area of interest. Planetary enhances ocean alkalinity to lock carbon away for millennia while also reversing coastal acidification. CarbonRun works with river chemistry. MRV for ocean-based approaches is still catching up to the science, but the potential is enormous.

• Superpollutant elimination (Tradewater): Rather than removing carbon, Tradewater finds and destroys potent refrigerant gases with a warming potential hundreds of times greater than carbon. This is an unglamorous, highly effective addition to any climate solutions portfolio.

Carbon180 has an excellent explainer on the full CDR landscape that’s worth bookmarking.

How do we actually measure the carbon being taken out of the air, and what’s “additionality” all about?

Coming from ocean science, I’m used to measurement being difficult. Carbon removal is no different, with MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification).

MRV draws on everything from satellite imagery to geochemical sampling to life cycle analysis to tell us how much carbon was removed, how we know it’ll stay there, and if it would have happened anyway.

That last part is the additionality question. If a forest was going to be protected regardless of whether a carbon credit was sold, the credit isn’t really doing anything new. Additionality means the removal only happened because of this specific intervention.

It sounds simple, but in practice, it is enormously contested. This is why standards and regulations exist, and why Terraset vets which projects it backs.

With a high-quality credit, we have third-party verification that one ton of carbon was removed from the atmosphere and will remain locked up (underground or in other materials, for example) for thousands of years.

Note: As of right now, a “credit” is a certificate, or formal piece of documentation that proves ownership of a ton of carbon.

What actually happens to a carbon credit after it’s bought?

Another mystery for someone who studied science rather than economics. I understood that companies and donors buy carbon credits, but I didn’t have a clear picture of what happened next.

When Terraset purchases a carbon credit from a project like Octavia Carbon – Africa’s first direct air capture company – that purchase gives them capital to operate, hire, and build. In parallel, it creates a verified record on a carbon registry that a specific quantity of carbon was removed, by this project, on this date. That record is permanent and public.

The registry (Puro, Isometric, Rainbow etc.) is essentially the ledger that keeps the whole system honest.

What I found interesting is that the credit purchase isn’t always at the end of this chain of events. I assumed all the action happens, then a credit pops out at the end. But a credit can serve a different role: an early purchase of credits from a buyer like Terraset signals market confidence that helps open doors to more funding. Early buyers help prove a project is credible, which makes it easier to attract the larger institutional capital that comes later.

What’s stopping donors from giving more to climate right now?

Less than 2% of global philanthropy goes to climate. I found that number shocking, and I wanted to understand why.

From everything I’ve read and the conversations I’ve had in my first month, it’s not a lack of motivation. Many donors care about climate.

The hesitation seems to stem from two things: trust and access. The voluntary carbon market had some scandals in the early days around junk credits, and donors are reasonably cautious. On the logistical side, most donors don’t have a path to vetted, investment-ready climate projects that meet their financial advisors’ standards. Both problems are solvable. That’s what we’re working on at Terraset.

The science and the solutions exist. What’s missing is capital and trust. That’s a much better place to be than most climate problems.

If there are topics in the carbon removal or market space that you’re curious about, ask them. We’re figuring this out in public.

Terraset exists to close the gap between deployment-ready climate solutions and funding. We pool philanthropic capital and move it to where markets haven’t arrived yet, using purchase commitments and revolving funds to move money faster and further than traditional philanthropy can.

To understand where that gap is most acute, we surveyed the companies working to close it. Last year, we asked carbon removal developers what they needed most. This year we surveyed companies across a broader set of climate solutions. The answers shifted in ways that matter, and confirm what we see every day in our portfolio.

Read the full 2026 Capital Needs Survey results here.

Nearly 80% of companies are ready to deploy. Most still can’t access the capital to scale.

Over 55% of respondents are at the “Demonstration” stage, and another 24% already have repeat third-party sales. Today, 39% are producing under 100 tons per year. Within 3 to 5 years, 51% are targeting more than 100,000 tons annually. Closing that gap requires project finance that is challenging to access today.

The #1 barrier to capital is sector skepticism.

This is the most important year-over-year shift in the survey. In 2025, the top barriers were high upfront costs and lack of early revenue (both at 54%). In 2026, the top barrier is investor hesitancy or misunderstanding of the sector, which jumped 14 points to 56%, while high upfront costs dropped to 43%. The technology is maturing, but funder confidence has not kept pace.

60% of companies face meaningful setbacks without near-term capital.

We asked what would happen if respondents didn’t raise their target funding in the next six months. 25% said their project would be paused or cancelled. 34% said they would proceed at a smaller scale. Nearly 60% of the solutions in this survey are at risk of meaningful setback in the next six months.

Purchase agreements are by far the most crucial lever.

When asked what would most accelerate progress, committed demand was the most cited answer across every pathway, with 71% ranking pre-purchase agreements as the most beneficial type. And their impact goes beyond revenue: 66% of respondents said the most important feature of a purchase agreement is the ability to use it to raise additional capital. A committed buyer unlocks debt, equity, and supplier agreements downstream.

The market is outgrowing grants and moving toward scalable capital structures.

In 2025, recoverable grants were the most desired financial tool at 73%. In 2026, they dropped to third at 43%. Equity investments (58%) and low-interest loans (57%) now lead. Companies are moving past grant dependency toward scalable capital structures, and the binding constraint is patient capital to build first facilities and prove the economics at scale.

Companies are converging on $100 to $200 per ton.

38% of respondents are targeting the $100 to $200 per ton range in the near term, rising to 46% in the 2-5 year window. The three factors holding back cost reductions are CapEx, feedstock, and financing costs. Lowering the cost of capital through concessional finance or blended structures would directly reduce the cost per ton.

What suppliers told us in their own words

Three themes came through consistently when we asked what “catalytic” support actually means to them.

1. Committed buyers unlock everything else. A signed purchase agreement is the prerequisite for all other financing. Without one, loans are inaccessible, equity is too expensive, and the whole funding structure falls apart.

2. The hardest gap is between a working pilot and the first commercial facility. Many companies have a viable product and customers and are stuck on the financing needed to build at scale. They need patient loans, non-dilutive grants, and flexible capital for first-of-a-kind construction.

3. Verification costs are a gating issue. For newer approaches like enhanced weathering, bioenergy with carbon capture, and refrigerant destruction, the absence of accepted measurement and verification standards determines whether a company can participate in the market at all.

Where funders fit

If you’re a corporate buyer, a foundation, or an impact investor, here’s where capital goes furthest.

Make a purchase. A 3-5 year purchase agreement is the most catalytic action a funder can take. 66% of suppliers will use your contract to attract additional financing.

Fund the construction gap. Patient loans and early-stage capital convert a working pilot into a commercial project.

Cover verification costs. Verification is blocking credit issuance across newer pathways, and funders who cover these costs strengthen the credibility of an entire approach.

Make introductions. 87% of respondents said customer introductions would help them most. Connecting a buyer to a climate company may be the highest-leverage action you can take.

Read the full 2026 Capital Needs Survey results here.

If this resonates and you want to talk through where capital goes furthest, we’re at hello@terrasetclimate.org.

Donate

We just published our 2025 Annual Impact Report. If you want the full picture, it’s worth a read. But if you only have a few minutes, here are the four things we’d want you to take away from Terraset’s year.

Read the full report

1. We deployed capital when timing mattered.

This year we moved money to 25 projects earlier than conventional markets would, to the developers who needed it most, exactly when they needed it most.

Pyrogen in Kenya needed a buyer to bridge the gap between pilot and commercial deployment. SinkCo in Louisiana needed financial certainty to stay operational long enough to prove their solution works. Mafix in the Mississippi Delta needed someone to help cover early measurement costs before they could move to a 1,000-ton demonstration phase. In each case, we showed up before the market was ready to.

2. We built the first revolving fund for carbon removal.

In May, we launched something that didn’t exist before: a revolving fund dedicated entirely to carbon removal. Philanthropic capital pre-purchases early-stage credits, those credits get resold to buyers, and the revenue cycles back to fund the next round of commitments.

In its first year we deployed $1M+ across 13 deals and resold $200k+ to buyers. The capital gets re-invested in the fund, so it can be deployed into more projects.

3. We expanded beyond carbon.

For the first time, Terraset made purchases in superpollutant abatement and refrigerant destruction. Methane and refrigerants are among the most potent greenhouse gases, and destroying them delivers some of the fastest near-term climate wins available. This expansion means Terraset can now address multiple timelines of climate impact within a single portfolio.

4. We made the case for catalytic philanthropy.

When markets are small, who shows up and what they say matters. In 2025 we represented Terraset at more than 15 events including TEDx, Verge, and New York Climate Week. We published a developer survey, earned coverage in Trellis and Carbon Herald, and hosted the first ever Gritty Gala with Charm Industrial. Every conversation we joined made it easier for the next donor to say yes and the next developer to get funded.

We are moving fast in 2026.

Our priorities for 2026 are to grow the amount of catalytic capital flowing to greenhouse gas solutions, expand and globalize the revolving fund, and deploy new financial mechanisms to unlock more philanthropic capital.

Our big learning is that the work is too important to wait for perfect conditions.

So we won’t.

That’s the short version. If it resonates, the full report is linked below.

Read the full 2025 Annual Report →

Want to support what comes next?

Make a donation or reach out at hello@terrasetclimate.org.

Donate

A new generation of companies is tackling climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere, cutting methane at the source, and destroying refrigerants before they can do damage. The technologies are real and the projects are ready to deliver.

But too many of them don’t make it, because the capital they need to survive their earliest stage never shows up.

The gap is a timing problem.

There’s a pivotal window between when a project is viable and when commercial buyers are ready to commit. In that window, developers need funding to hire, build, and execute. But funders wait for proof and commercial buyers wait for scale.

Without early capital to bridge that gap, projects fold. It’s a loss for the developer and a permanent loss for the climate.

Our revolving fund closes the funding gap

We move capital to vetted greenhouse gas projects earlier than the market typically would, then recycle the funds as projects deliver, so the same dollars go to work again and again.

Here’s how it works:

1. Philanthropic capital enters the fund via a grant or donation.

2. Terraset makes early pre-purchase commitments to vetted projects, giving them the capital to actually remove greenhouse gases.

3. Projects deliver verified credits to Terraset.

4. Credits are sold to buyers.

5. Revenue returns to the fund and gets deployed into the next project.

Each donation or purchase funds a cycle, and every cycle supports more projects.

Proof the model works: A case study with Graphyte and Wren

Project developer: Graphyte, a carbon removal company

Buyer: Wren, a consumer climate platform

When Graphyte needed early capital to move from planning into execution, commercial buyers were interested but not ready to commit at the timing or scale the project required.

We provided an early pre-purchase commitment of over $100,000 through this revolving fund. This gave Graphyte the funding to move forward without waiting for buyers to catch up.

Graphyte delivered verified tons. Wren purchased them from Terraset. The revenue from that sale returned to our revolving fund, and is ready to be redeployed into new commitments.

Philanthropic capital moved first, buyer procurement completed the cycle, and together they proved the model works, with a real project and real tons delivered.

In our first year, we deployed over $1 million through the fund and have already secured more than $200,000 in onward purchases, allowing us to quickly redeploy into new commitments. That funding flow will accelerate as more of our initial pre-purchases are delivered in the next 12 months.

Early capital funds projects and builds markets.

Greenhouse gas solutions are deeply underfunded relative to the scale of what’s needed. Demand from corporate buyers is growing, but credible supply takes time to develop, and developers can’t wait for buyers to catch up.

By absorbing early-stage innovation risks, philanthropic funding enables CDR developers to reach the milestones necessary to prove technical viability.

Each completed cycle lowers perceived risk, builds buyer confidence, and brings more solutions to market faster. This fund supports individual projects but it is also creating the conditions for a functioning climate market where credible supply can actually meet growing demand.

There’s a role for every kind of capital.

Contribute philanthropic capital

A contribution to this fund is a grant that keeps working. Rather than funding a single project, capital moves through multiple cycles, deploying into projects, returning as credits are delivered, and going back out to the next. This is philanthropy as market infrastructure: one contribution, compounding impact over time.

Purchase removal and abatement credits

As projects deliver verified tons, we make those credits available for purchase, giving buyers access to high-integrity, vetted credits while returning capital to the fund so new projects can move forward.

Invest through a PRI or recoverable grant

PRIs and recoverable grants support the same early-stage commitments as philanthropic contributions, but with the option to take repayment. A PRI through this mechanism becomes part of a platform that deploys capital into vetted, high-integrity projects cycle after cycle. An investment helps more companies deliver, with returns coming back to fund the next projects.

Some partners combine approaches, contributing funding to accelerate projects while purchasing credits to achieve sustainability goals.

The gap is real, but innovative capital can close it.

If you’re thinking about how your philanthropy, investment, or purchasing power can have the greatest climate impact, we’d love to talk.

Explore participation in the revolving fund for greenhouse gases by reaching out to our team at hello@terrasetclimate.org.

Support the fund here

Our most recent seven-figure purchase round focused on helping projects bridge the gap between promise and proof.

The funding made it possible for companies to complete first deployments, finalize measurement and verification, validate work outside the lab, and build confidence with buyers. This early capital is crucial because it enables the operational work that moves solutions from promising ideas to evidence-backed businesses.

The sixteen teams in this round are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in greenhouse gas removal, abatement and destruction: Capture6, Charm, Circular Impact, Climeworks, Deep Sky, Graphyte, Heirloom, Mafix, Octavia Carbon, Planetary Technologies, Sinkco, Spiritus, StratX, TerraFixing, Terraton, and Vaulted Deep.

Let’s dive into a few of them.

When we say this round helped projects push through the messy middle, it’s not hyperbole. Here’s what it looked like in practice.

Graphyte — Biomass carbon removal through durable carbon casting

The market constraint

Biomass-based carbon removal is well understood scientifically, but many approaches struggle to demonstrate long-term durability and verifiable storage at a scale buyers can trust.

What donor capital unlocked

This purchase supported Graphyte as it moved from pilot operations toward commercial readiness. Early demand helped advance storage verification, MRV, and delivery milestones bridging the gap between proof-of-concept to market-ready removals.

Why it matters for the market

Clear standards for durability and verification are essential for the broader removal market. Graphyte’s progress establishes benchmarks for permanence, monitoring, and delivery that future buyers can reference, lowering uncertainty for the broader biomass pathway.

This purchase also enabled the first resale through Terraset’s Revolving Fund. Graphyte credits were purchased by Wren, demonstrating how early philanthropy and later market demand can work together to recycle donor dollars and move technologies from potential to proof.

Mafix — Enhanced rock weathering with next-generation mineral fertilizers

The market constraint

Enhanced rock weathering has strong scientific foundations, but early projects often stall because of slow weathering rates which leads to expensive measurement and verification.

What donor capital unlocked

Support at this stage allowed Mafix to validate measurement and verification of a novel, fast-weathering material during its pilot phase, rather than waiting for a larger, more capital-intensive demonstration. That early work helped translate laboratory science into credible, field-based evidence.

Why it matters for the market

Fast-weathering alkalinity unlocks rapid scaling. Progress here strengthens confidence in enhanced rock weathering as a whole and reduces risk for future buyers and funders.

StratX - Methane abatement + enhanced rock weathering for uncovered landfills (pre-deployment)

The market constraint

Combining methane abatement with enhanced rock weathering remains underdeveloped, particularly in the Global South. While key elements of StratX’s approach have been validated in controlled settings, the pathway still lacks a clear route to real-world deployment and buyer-grade evidence to support continued development.

What this support unlocks

Support at this stage marked StratX’s first sale, demonstrating early demand if this model is validated outside of the lab as StratX moves into first pilots. The focus for StratX now is field readiness: securing pilot partners (planned sites in Tanzania and Colombia), deploying enhanced biocovers that combine methane-oxidizing microbes with alkaline minerals to drive enhanced weathering, and generating early measurement evidence using established methods as the team develops its next-gen monitoring approach.

Why it matters for the market

Early proof matters for emerging pathways. If pilots can generate credible, buyer-grade evidence, it reduces uncertainty for future developers, buyers, and funders and helps validate whether landfills can support integrated methane abatement and carbon removal approaches at scale, including potential co-benefits like reduced runoff/leachate and local environmental improvements.

The lesson from this round is clear: early capital still plays an outsized role in shaping climate outcomes. Terraset will keep moving it.

Terraset exists to fund high-impact climate solutions early, when support is most needed and hardest to secure. Our belief is simple: when donors move first, projects get built, costs fall, and mainstream buyers follow.

In 2025, that played out in real time. Terraset donors deployed millions more dollars across carbon removal, methane abatement, and refrigerant destruction. We backed 25 developers, expanded into new climate pathways, completed the first full cycle of our Revolving Fund, and brought new funders into carbon removal for the first time.

If you remember one thing from us this year, let it be this:

Philanthropy is one of the strongest tools we have to de-risk the pipeline of climate solutions.

Here’s what we did.

Moved millions to projects and doubled down on pre-purchases

We deployed two rounds of funding this year, supporting our existing portfolio and adding 14 new companies: Carba, CarbonRun, Circular Impact, Deep Sky, Eion, Mafix, NY Carbon, Pyrogen, Recoolit, Sinkco, StratX, Terraton, Tradewater, and UNDO. By getting money out the door quickly, we helped teams hit key milestones and unlock production capacity.

See the purchase announcement → Moving millions today

More on our approach → The case for moving money now

Launched the Revolving Fund

We rolled out the Terraset Revolving Fund in May, anchored by funding from the Schmidt Family Foundation. The fund sustains a reusable pool of philanthropic capital for climate solutions by using donor dollars to fund early-stage projects, and reselling credits so the money can be deployed again and again.

Read the announcement → Launching the Terraset Revolving Fund

Wren was the first buyer of credits from the Revolving Fund. It completed the fund’s first full cycle and showed how early philanthropic capital can lower perceived risk and make it easier for new buyers to step in.

See the announcement → Wren is the first buyer from the Terraset Revolving Fund

Introduced funders to carbon removal for the first time

The future of carbon removal can’t rely on the same small group of funders. In 2025, we focused on widening that circle by creating simple on-ramps for new donors and buyers. At New York Climate Week, we partnered with CREO, Incite, Larsen Lam Climate Change Foundation, Carbon Removal Alliance, and the Doris Duke Foundation to bring new funders into the room, answer their questions, and help them take their first steps into carbon removal.

Expanded into superpollutants (because CO₂ isn’t the only problem)

We expanded beyond carbon removal to include methane abatement and refrigerant destruction, blending long-term and near-term impact. That balance matters: fast cuts now and durable removals over time. In total, we backed 25 developers this year across a broad set of climate solutions that need early money the most.

See the blog post → Adding superpollutants to our portfolio

Published a survey showing what developers need most

Our 2025 supplier survey offered one of the clearest views into what project developers need right now: flexible capital, clearer markets, and early buyers. It helped shape where we focus next.

See the findings → What carbon removal suppliers need most in 2025

Experimented with different ways to deploy money

We partnered with 4C to support a NY Carbon biochar project in the Hudson Valley, testing how traditional grantmaking can move money early and effectively. It gave us new data on how different funding tools can accelerate progress.

Read the announcement → We made a grant to NY Carbon

Grew our team (hi, Grace!)

We brought Grace Mumford on to manage our growing portfolio and the operational backbone behind Terraset. She’s helping us find and prioritize the opportunities where our funding can be most catalytic.

Made the case for early, high-impact philanthropy

From New York Climate Week and VERGE to Charm’s Colorado site visit, the Global Climate Finance Forum, Carbon Unbound, Carbon Removal Day Canada, TEDxYPO, Ethic, and the Queer Decarb Summit, we showed up, shared the thesis, and helped build alignment across the climate sector.

In conversations, interviews, podcasts like Carbonsations, Climate Solutions and Carbon Curve, and coverage from Carbon Herald and Trellis, we kept catalytic philanthropy front and center and helped buyers understand what durable removal and long term market stability really require.

Read our joint piece with Giana Amador → The case for bolder climate philanthropy

In 2026, we want to move even faster

That means expanding into new pathways, growing the Revolving Fund, and recycling more donor capital into the next wave of climate innovation.

We’re building a market where early action becomes the norm, not the exception. And we can only do that with a community of people who believe in moving first.

We’re just getting started and we’re grateful you’re here with us.

Here’s to a bigger, faster, more ambitious 2026.

Donate today

Editor’s note: Earlier this year, we expanded our portfolio beyond durable carbon removal and into superpollutants, supporting projects such as methane abatement from orphaned oil and gas wells and refrigerant destruction. These gases have an outsized impact on near-term warming and remain underfunded, making philanthropy essential to scaling their mitigation.

To mark this expansion, we invited Tradewater, a leading organization in superpollutant prevention, to share how forward-thinking buyers are beginning to “stack” climate credits across project types. This approach reflects the same both/and strategy guiding Terraset’s work: pairing long-term carbon removal with immediate climate impact. We’re excited to feature their perspective as we build a more complete, higher-impact climate portfolio.

Climate action requires balance. We need solutions that deliver immediate progress and long-term durability; innovation and proven tools; cost-effectiveness and high integrity. For buyers trying to make meaningful climate contributions, the real question becomes: What does a “good” purchase actually look like?

Frameworks like the Oxford Offsetting Principles, for example, emphasize the need for high quality credits that durably remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, these credits are often in short supply, rely on relatively new technology, and come at a higher cost. Bringing costs down requires multi-year, patient investment, but scaling up corporate impact takes time.

But the climate doesn’t give us that time. We also need fast, measurable impact today.

That’s where Tradewater’s work fits in. By preventing active methane leaks from orphaned oil and gas wells and destroying legacy refrigerants—two of the most powerful drivers of near-term warming—we deliver fast, measurable climate impact using proven technologies and methods that exist today. Increasingly, buyers are treating climate action the way they’d treat a financial portfolio: not by choosing one solution, but by combining complementary ones.

This approach is called credit stacking.

What is credit stacking?

Credit stacking simply means building a carbon credit portfolio across multiple dimensions of impact. Rather than choosing only removals or only avoidance/abatement, buyers blend approaches to maximize climate benefits.

Four of the most important dimensions include:

Permanence

Not all climate actions have the same durability. Some project types lock in long-term benefits (like carbon capture and storage); others offer permanent impact with no risk of reversal (like refrigerant destruction). Stacking allows buyers to mix complementary permanence profiles to strengthen overall resilience.

Technology Risk

Emerging carbon removal technologies have enormous potential but are still in the early stages of development. Superpollutant mitigation is ready to scale today. Blending innovation with reliability spreads perceived risk while still delivering climate benefits in the near-term.

Cost

Durable carbon removal technologies require committed investment to scale, resulting in high cost credits in the near-term. Stacking across price points helps buyers meet impact goals at a sustainable average cost-per-credit.

Climate Impact

Superpollutants increase atmospheric temperature much more quickly than CO₂—over 80 times more quickly in the case of methane, and thousands of times in the case of refrigerants. Stacking creates a portfolio that delivers climate impact on multiple time horizons while supporting broader social and environmental benefits like biodiversity, workforce development and stronger local economies.

Stacking is for everyone.

Companies like Salesforce, Google and—you guessed it—Terraset, are pursuing diversified portfolios that combine long-term removals with immediate superpollutant mitigation. But you don’t need to be a multinational company to build a smart climate portfolio. Individuals, philanthropists, and small businesses can all blend project types to support high-quality, high-integrity solutions across timelines.

Terraset’s recent expansion into superpollutants reflects that same both/and mindset:

• Stopping methane leaks from orphaned oil and gas wells

• Destroying legacy, end-of-life refrigerants with massive warming potential

• Permanently removing carbon dioxide through durable carbon removal projects

Credit stacking recognizes a simple reality: the climate crisis is multi-layered, and our response must be too.

Curious about how you can support a stacked portfolio? Reach out to Taylor Insley at taylor@terrasetclimate.org.

About Tradewater

A certified B Corp, Tradewater directly combats climate change by identifying, collecting, and eliminating the release of non-CO₂ super pollutants – including refrigerants in old appliances and stockpiles, excess halon gases in canisters, and methane from actively leaking oil and gas wells. These critical environmental actions generate high-quality carbon offset credits. Since 2012, we’ve eliminated over 10.6 million tons of CO₂ equivalent and expect to prevent at least 30 million tons by 2030 – similar to removing nearly 7 million gas-powered cars from U.S. roads. Every Tradewater credit is backed by rigorous third-party verification and issued by leading registries to ensure maximum integrity, additionality, and accuracy. Learn more at www.tradewater.co.

Imagine this: After decades of investment in renewable technologies, international agreements, and sustainability pledges, we finally drastically reduce our emissions to near zero. The path was hard-won, marked by economic and social shifts, political wins, and technological breakthroughs.

But even after all that progress, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would remain catastrophically high if we weren’t simultaneously removing carbon at the gigaton scale. The greenhouse gases we’ve emitted did not vanish. They’re still in the atmosphere—heating the planet, fueling disasters, and endangering large swaths of the global population. We would have slowed the flow of new emissions, but ignored the carbon that’s already destabilizing the climate.

This is the challenge that too few philanthropists and funders are willing to confront.

There is a different path forward.

That future we opened with is not the one we need to accept, but it’s the one we will get if we don’t chart a new course. To put us on a more sustainable trajectory, we need to remove five-to-ten gigatons of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year by 2050. Today, we’re removing about  0.01 gigatons. The gap isn’t just large—it’s existential.

Over the last few decades, philanthropy has played a pivotal role in addressing climate change—supporting advocacy, advancing clean energy, and shaping landmark policy wins. But when it comes to early-stage, complex technologies like carbon removal, most funders are sitting on the sidelines. Why? Because these solutions are still developing. They carry perceived risk. And they lack the straightforward appeal of planting trees or electrifying school buses.

As a result, while 2% of philanthropic dollars go to climate efforts overall, less than 0.1% supports carbon removal. Funders have supported solar panels, electric vehicles, and reforestation efforts. These are essential, but they’re not enough. And they don’t need philanthropic capital in the same way that early-stage carbon removal does.

Approaches like direct air capture, mineralization, and marine- and biomass-based removals are scientifically sound, increasingly commercializing, and already delivering verified tons. They don’t compete with nature-based or renewable solutions, they complement them. But they require a different kind of support: long-term, risk-tolerant capital that only philanthropy can provide at this early stage.

Bold progress demands bold action.

It took years of strategic, bold bets, often backed by philanthropy, to push solar and wind technologies to market and bring them to price parity with fossil energy. The good news is those bets paid off, and solar is now one of the cheapest energy sources in the world.

Carbon removal is at a similar inflection point. A new wave of innovators is tackling some of the most complex engineering, policy, and infrastructure challenges of our time. Companies like Planetary, which partners with coastal communities to restore the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon and reduce acidification, and Vaulted Deep, which permanently stores biomass underground, are showing that durable removal is both real and on a clear path to scale. Both are part of Terraset’s portfolio and are already delivering measurable climate impact today with steep cost declines ahead if we can accelerate demand.

The problem isn’t whether the solutions exist. It’s whether we’ll back them in time.

Durable, scalable carbon removal isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. And philanthropy must play a role in this moment of transformation by moving capital where others can’t.

Innovative approaches to deploying capital are helping to close the gap. For example, The Schmidt Family Foundation seeded Terraset’s Revolving Fund, to create evergreen capital for carbon removal pre-purchases. It also underpinned a project finance loan for Carba in collaboration with Structure Climate and The Venn Foundation. These emerging models show what’s possible and help recycle capital, send strong demand signals, and help de-risk a pipeline of permanent, high-quality projects. It’s exactly what this sector needs to reach commercial lift-off.

We are at a moment of decision.

Will philanthropy continue to fund what’s familiar? Or step up to build the next frontier?

Developing a gigaton-scale carbon removal industry is one of the most consequential challenges of our lifetime. It requires the same kind of bold, calculated risk-taking that drove breakthroughs in medicine, aerospace, and clean energy.

Inaction is the real gamble. Either we fund the difficult work of carbon removal now—or we live with the consequences of failing to try.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to carbon removal. The sector depends on regional solutions built on local strengths. River alkalinity in Nova Scotia, basalt spreading in Scotland, biochar in Ghana—each has distinct ecosystems, policies, and expertise.

To reach gigaton scale, these pathways must all advance in parallel. Together, they form the foundation of an interconnected, resilient market for carbon removal.

That’s why we fund across regions and technologies. Because solving a global problem requires a truly global market.

No single market will solve the climate crisis.

Around the world, innovators are emerging in regions that have been underfunded but not under-resourced. Kenya has abundant biomass and deep agricultural expertise. Canada has world-class hydrology research. Scotland has centuries of farming heritage and policy alignment for land-based climate solutions.

The constraint isn’t talent or technology. It’s capital. The kind of early funding that turns potential into proof. And that’s where philanthropy matters most. Because it builds the confidence and infrastructure that allow private markets and governments to follow suit.

Local solutions build global momentum.

Our latest purchase round backs carbon removal projects around the world, each shaped by local expertise and designed to deliver lasting community and climate value.

CarbonRun is pioneering river alkalinity enhancement in Nova Scotia to restore acidified rivers, enhance biodiversity, and remove atmospheric CO₂. Their projects strengthen local economies by creating technical field roles, partnering with local organizations, and supporting place-based restoration work.

Beyond carbon removal, CarbonRun’s approach brings rivers back to life. Rebuilding habitat, improving water chemistry, and supporting species that matter deeply to coastal communities. In the West River Sheet Harbour, where river liming has taken place for over a decade, Atlantic salmon populations have increased by more than 300%.

Terraton deploys modular biochar systems in Ghana and other emerging markets to turn agricultural waste into stable carbon storage. Their model provides integrated technology, financing, and market access so small and mid-sized producers can participate in the global carbon economy, creating new income streams and expanding rural opportunity.

Each unit prevents waste burning, enriches soils, and keeps carbon out of the atmosphere. By training local operators, Terraton is building the workforce and infrastructure needed to scale climate impact.

UNDO has partnered with farmers in Canada and the UK to spread finely crushed and mineral-rich silicate rock on agricultural land—wollastonite in Ontario and basalt in Scotland—locking away CO₂ while improving soil health and crop yields. This process of enhanced rock weathering reduces dependence on synthetic fertilizers, lowers farm costs, and strengthens resilience to drought, pests, and disease.

By pairing local agricultural expertise with scientific rigor, UNDO is scaling a practical, permanent form of carbon removal with added community co-benefits.

Building the market that makes scale possible.

Every region holds a piece of the carbon removal solution. We direct early funding via pre-purchases to help those solutions take root.

We believe that is what scaling this sector looks like: many local successes, reinforcing one global market.

Your support builds the foundation for global climate impact. Join us in funding the next frontier of carbon removal.

Donate today

Not all greenhouse gases are created equal.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) lingers in the atmosphere, making permanent removal essential to stabilizing the climate. Superpollutants are faster-acting gases like methane (CH₄), refrigerants (hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs), and nitrous oxide (N₂O), which trap heat dozens or even thousands of times more potently than CO₂. Tackling both is essential to achieving our climate goals.

The good news: we know how to stop these superpollutants. We can cap leaking wells, recover and destroy refrigerants, and prevent emissions before they escape.

The bad news: almost no capital is flowing to fund this work.

Terraset is expanding into superpollutants.

Terraset was founded to prove that philanthropy can unlock hard-to-fund climate solutions. We started with carbon removal, and that remains a core pillar of our work. But the same catalytic approach applies to superpollutants.

This is not an either/or. Supporting superpollutants doesn’t mean any less commitment to scaling carbon removal. It means recognizing another overlooked frontier where early funding delivers rapid, verifiable results and helps build new markets for climate impact.

We continue to back emerging carbon removal methods like enhanced rock weathering, river alkalinity enhancement, biochar, and others. Together, these complementary pathways reflect the same throughline: catalytic philanthropy unlocks solutions markets won’t fund yet.

Superpollutants are the fastest way to slow warming in the next decade.

Superpollutants act quickly in the atmosphere and can’t be recaptured once emitted. Once they leak, we lose our chance to mitigate their impact. Cutting them today translates into measurable climate benefits within years, not decades.

So we’ve funded superpollutant removal and avoidance.

This summer, Terraset funded methane abatement and refrigerant destruction from two sector leaders: Tradewater and Recoolit.

Tradewater is tackling two of the biggest blind spots in climate action: orphaned methane wells and legacy refrigerants.

Orphaned wells leak methane, one of the most heat-trapping gases, while millions of tons of refrigerants banned decades ago still sit in tanks and appliances, slowly escaping.

Tradewater has proven it can collect and permanently destroy these gases—but without early buyers, many projects take years to complete. Funding from buyers like Terraset power their global scavenger hunt for emissions sources, turning proven mitigation into real, measurable climate relief.

Recoolit partners with A/C technicians to recover and destroy refrigerants before they are vented into the atmosphere.

Each ton destroyed avoids about 2,000 tons of CO₂-equivalent warming, delivering rapid climate relief in regions where cooling demand is rising fast. Their model also creates income for technicians and supports communities.

Recoolit’s recent agreement with Google shows growing buyer interest, but broader demand is still needed to reach scale. Our purchase serves as an early signal to help build that demand.

Expanding the frontier together.

Tradewater and Recoolit prove what’s possible when philanthropy moves first. With timely funding, urgent and solvable problems become investable opportunities.

Our role is to back the solutions that can’t wait for perfect markets or corporate demand. By funding both superpollutant mitigation and carbon removal, we’re closing the gap between what’s necessary and what’s funded, delivering immediate impact today while building durable climate infrastructure for tomorrow.

Your early support can eliminate the gases fueling the worst near-term warming. Donate today to scale what works.