Apply for offtake

Frontier's goal is to get carbon removal on its best possible trajectory. In support of this goal, the bulk of Frontier's spend goes toward offtakes - larger, multi-year agreements with companies preparing to scale their technologies.

You can find examples of past offtake purchases here.

About the offtake track

As the first step in applying, please make sure you've reviewed our Innovation vs. Offtake track table and that the offtake track is the appropriate track for your company. If the Innovation track is a better fit, please see our Innovation track page; otherwise, continue reading if you would like to apply for an offtake.

Offtake focus areas

While there are many early, exciting projects with meaningful climate impact, we are particularly interested in purchasing from companies that address our criteria for what a great project looks like and fill gaps within our portfolio across pathways:

How we evaluate projects

We look for permanent CDR solutions that have the potential to be low-cost and high-volume in the future, even if they’re not today. We use four lenses to make purchasing decisions:

Lens 1: Approach

Does the carbon removal approach meet Frontier's target criteria?

Rigorous external scientific and governance assessment against Frontier’s CDR criteria is the first and most critical qualifying step in Frontier’s purchasing process. Visit our FAQ for a list of approaches that do not meet one or more of our purchasing criteria and are not in focus for our offtake purchasing program at this time.

Lens 2: Execution

Can this team deliver on the proposal, given where the technology is today?

We look for evidence that a team will be able to execute their proposed plan rigorously, quickly, and responsibly. The specifics of what we look for will vary based on the stage of the project, but generally we look for:

Technology readiness level: Is the technology far enough along to make the proposal realistic/plausible? We typically look for an existing proof of concept at or beyond pilot scale, to what extent prior testing mimics operating conditions, and a plausible roadmap to close the gap between current data and assumed performance at scale. We also look at whether the technology has been tested as an integrated system.
Likelihood of successful execution: Is this team set up to deliver on the proposed project? This includes whether the team has the necessary expertise and experience to execute and outperform companies working on similar ideas, as well as the qualifications and commitments of potential project partners. We also factor in the stage of project development and the feasibility of securing any financing necessary.
Delivery volume: When will this project start delivering tons? We are looking for projects that can deliver meaningful volume (tens of thousands of tons or more) in the next 2–5 years, with a preference for earlier delivery (i.e., 2026/2027).
Path to future demand: Does this project have a clear path to local/regional/national government support? We’re looking for projects that could eventually be sustained by funding beyond the voluntary carbon market through co-product sales or government compliance markets, procurement programs or subsidies if costs get cheap enough.
Past and expected learning rates: Since this project’s start, how much progress has been made and over what time period? Is this approach fundamentally compatible with fast iteration? How costly is each iteration?
Ambitious but plausible and responsible scaling plans: We are looking for companies to move urgently, but responsibly and realistically. For most approaches, this likely means increasing scale by no more than 10x per deployment; for others, 100x might be acceptable if the applicant includes a justification for that magnitude.

Lens 3: Portfolio

Will this purchase help us build a diverse, risk-adjusted portfolio?

We believe it will take a portfolio of CDR solutions and companies to achieve the gigatons of removal required each year. Frontier’s goal is to build a risk-adjusted portfolio that maximizes the likelihood of that happening. This means that there is a possibility that even if a company meets our criteria, we may not make a purchase if, for example, we’re over-indexed on that type of solution.

Lens 4: Acceleration

Will a Frontier purchase now be catalytic to both the supplier and broader field?

We assess whether a Frontier offtake would accelerate a company's trajectory or the CDR pathway overall:

Does a Frontier offtake clearly help an organization meet a critical milestone needed to scale?
Can we quickly, and with reasonable effort, facilitate an offtake?
Does this offtake advance the field (e.g. with respect to technology, research, measurement techniques, business strategies etc.)?

To give you a sense of how we have applied these lenses in the past, please take a look at past offtakes Frontier has announced.

Offtake diligence process

Frontier facilitates offtake agreements from high-potential CDR projects on behalf of a number of buyers. We run a thorough technical, commercial, and governance diligence process. Our process includes several stage-gates to help us make decisions while also doing our best to be cognizant of your team's time.

Step	Details
1. Offtake expression of interest	Companies submit an offtake expression of interest with basic information on the proposed project and capacity. We may ask for a short conversation to clarify any questions. We consider offtake candidates on a rolling basis, but encourage you to submit interest in our program as early as possible.
2. Candidate screen	Frontier reviews submissions to assess: (1) whether the project is an eligible, compelling candidate for a Frontier offtake; and (2), if so, when to sequence diligence. Frontier invites a subset to submit full applications. Note: For some candidates, we may opt to delay an invitation for application until a later date given our team’s bandwidth (e.g., you might be proposing an offtake for CDR pathway X, but we are focusing on CDR pathways Y and Z first).
3. Offtake application	Company prepares an offtake application, including a techno-economic analysis (TEA) spreadsheet.
4. Application review	Frontier staff, as well as a team of scientific, commercial, and governance experts, review each application. Company is invited to respond to Frontier’s questions and feedback. After application review, we will notify applicants whether Frontier would like to: Progress with diligence now (i.e., we are excited by what we’ve learned so far and would like to advance to a site visit) Pause diligence (i.e., we have significant open questions, and it makes sense to pause for multiple months while the team collects the necessary data) Halt diligence entirely (i.e., we are not able to continue considering the company’s candidacy at this time)
5. Frontier site visit	Company hosts a ~half-day Frontier team site visit to meet the team in person, discuss the project in more detail, and see the current system. Topic areas include reviewing your performance data, TEA, life cycle analysis, project partners, etc.
6. Diligence memo	The Frontier team determines whether to propose the project to Frontier buyers for purchase. If Frontier elects to move forward, we draft a thorough diligence memo which summarizes our assessment of the project against Frontier's purchasing lenses so our buyers have a detailed understanding of the project—both the potential for impact and the risks. This step will involve close discussion between Frontier and the project as we dig into the details. We may follow up with additional requests for information as relevant. Frontier facilitates a meeting with Frontier buyers so the company can engage with the buying group directly to answer any remaining questions they might have.
7. Offtake agreement negotiation	Price, removal volumes, and timing will be discussed throughout the drafting of the diligence memo. The final step will be to review the terms and conditions in Frontier’s offtake agreement and discuss project-specific content such as milestones before each buyer signs.

Submit offtake expression of interest

Other considerations

Transparency and confidentiality

Frontier recognizes that we ask for a lot of sensitive information in order to make informed purchases. As such, we will not post offtake application materials publicly on our GitHub repository. Application information will remain confidential among Frontier staff and our expert review team (who have non-disclosure agreements in place with Frontier).

However, because commercial-scale permanent CDR is a nascent field, we want to be transparent about what we’re purchasing. Thus in order for Frontier to sign an offtake agreement, we will work together with companies to draft a public summary of the project so that external stakeholders can understand what the project is, including details such as volumes and average price over the term of the agreement. You can see examples of offtake summaries here.

Contracting

Our offtakes are pay-on-delivery, multi-year purchase agreements. The contract includes conditions precedents, specific to each project, that must be accomplished in order for a supplier to be able to start delivering carbon removal credits to the buyer. Purchases typically cover a multi-year delivery window and may go through 2040. Frontier works with each supplier to identify the volume and price per year of the agreement, and then each Frontier buyer signs an identical contract populated with the volume specific to their organization.

Communication

All communication related to Frontier’s offtake purchasing should be sent to suppliers@frontierclimate.com.