By Justine Calma , a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hel

Silicon Valley is enamored with a company that pumps poop underground

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2024-05-01 12:30:15

By Justine Calma , a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home, a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.

aBig brands are paying startup Vaulted Deep $58.3 million to shoot poop and other organic waste products into underground wells as a way to fight climate change.

The deal was brokered by a group called Frontier Climate, which Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability launched in 2022 to support emerging climate tech. Specifically, Frontier is interested in trying to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They connect buyers with startups like Vaulted Deep that are developing ways to capture CO2 and sequester it underground so that it doesn’t heat up the planet.

Vaulted Deep’s strategy is to gather sewage, manure, and agricultural and paper mill waste and inject it deep underground to keep carbon in the waste from rising into the atmosphere as it decomposes. On top of Frontier’s founding companies, Autodesk, H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase, Workday, and other brands are also part of the deal Frontier announced today. Vaulted Deep agreed to sequester 152,480 tons of carbon dioxide by 2027 as part of the deal. That’s equivalent to taking around 36,000 gas-guzzling cars off the road for a year.