Is there enough organic waste to power a carbon-negative future?

The demand for clean power is surging. As we electrify transportation, transition industries to renewables, and adapt the grid to a greener future, the world needs energy solutions that can deliver consistent, reliable power. Experts agree that bioenergy—using organic matter (biomass) as fuel—is an essential piece of the puzzle. Yet for decades, traditional bioenergy approaches like Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) have struggled to deliver on their promise.

Traditional BECCS has faced significant roadblocks. Its reliance on dedicated energy crops strains land and water resources and creates competition with food production. The infrastructure is expensive and slow to deploy, and even when operational, many systems fail to fully capture emissions, leaving pollutants like methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. 

At Arbor, we’ve developed innovative technology that solves these limitations. By focusing on organic waste as a fuel source and employing advanced engineering, we’ve created a system that produces carbon-negative power efficiently, affordably, and at scale. This innovation redefines what bioenergy can achieve—and prompts an important question: 

Is there enough organic waste to power a carbon-negative future?

The answer is a resounding yes. And the opportunity is even greater than many imagine.

A world of waste waiting to transform our energy system

Organic waste is everywhere. In the United States alone, 500 million tons of unused organic waste are produced each year—everything from leftover crops and overgrown forest underbrush to food scraps and discarded building materials. Globally, this number reaches an astounding 5 billion tons worldwide per year, according to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Yet much of this waste remains underutilized, sitting idle in landfills or contributing to environmental crises. Instead of being part of the solution, unmanaged waste often exacerbates climate challenges:

• Improperly managed forests result in wildfires: Forests with excess underbrush and overgrown vegetation are at high risk of destructive wildfires. These fires emit massive amounts of CO₂, devastate ecosystems, and destroy communities. Removing and managing this excess material is prohibitively expensive, leaving millions of American acres vulnerable to fire. 

• Burning crop leftovers pollutes the air: In many parts of the world, farmers burn leftover plant material from harvests to clear their fields. This practice releases harmful particulates and greenhouse gases, contributing to both air pollution and climate change. While banned in California, it remains common in many regions.

• Landfills produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas: Organic waste left to decompose in landfills releases methane, a greenhouse gas over 25 times more potent than CO₂. These emissions are a major contributor to climate change.

But with the right technology, this burden can become a powerful asset in the fight against climate change. 

Reports like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s 2024 study on biomass and the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technology Office's 2023 Billion-Ton Report and data from the USDA’s Forest Inventory and Analysis highlight the enormous opportunity to turn waste into power. Using Arbor’s technology, the U.S.’s organic waste alone could:

• Generate 25% of the U.S.’s annual electricity consumption, providing a clean, steady source of power.

• Remove 800 million tons of CO₂ annually, equivalent to taking every gas-powered car in the U.S. off the road.

With the right approach, this massive untapped resource can become a cornerstone of our energy future—powering our world while helping bring balance to the planet. 

Arbor’s technology: Unlocking the potential of bioenergy

For bioenergy to fulfill its potential, it must overcome longstanding barriers in efficiency, scalability, and sustainability. Arbor’s technology provides the breakthrough needed to transform bioenergy into a practical and powerful tool for meeting our increasing energy demands AND combating climate change.

Traditional bioenergy systems are held back by key limitations:

• Feedstock restrictions: Many systems rely on dedicated crops, creating competition for land and water at the expense of food production and biodiversity. Traditional gasifiers often require extensive pre-processing and are limited to homogenous waste streams, increasing costs and restricting the ability to use diverse, abundant waste streams that are already available.

• Inefficiency: Older technologies fail to fully capture emissions and extract energy efficiently, undermining their environmental and economic benefits.

• Lack of scalability: Large, inflexible infrastructure has made traditional bioenergy systems expensive and slow to deploy.

Arbor’s technology redefines what bioenergy can achieve by addressing these challenges head-on:

• Transforming waste into opportunity. Unlike traditional BECCS, Arbor’s system uses organic waste rather than competing with food systems or natural ecosystems. Using advanced high-temperature gasification, our system operates at extreme temperatures, completely converting even the most challenging compounds like tars into a clean, usable gas. This eliminates the need for extensive pre-processing and makes it possible to efficiently process a wide range of waste, unlocking underutilized resources like forest waste and farm leftovers and creating new opportunities for sustainable land management. By providing a market for these materials, Arbor can help unlock funding for better forest management and agricultural practices that are currently out of reach for many communities.

• Improving efficiency. By leveraging supercritical CO₂ power cycles, Arbor’s system extracts the maximum amount of energy from every ton of waste. This cutting-edge technology significantly improves efficiency, reduces costs, and allows us to deliver power at a competitive price. 

• Unlocking scalability. Designed for real-world impact, Arbor’s compact, modular systems are built using advanced manufacturing techniques, including 3D printing. These systems can be deployed in months, not years, bringing urgently needed power solutions online faster than legacy systems.

Deployed at scale, Arbor’s technology could process millions of tons of waste annually, meeting a significant portion of global electricity demand while removing billions of tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere. By addressing inefficiencies, unlocking scalability, and enabling a wider range of feedstocks, Arbor is proving that bioenergy can be a cornerstone of a sustainable energy future. And we’re prepared to move quickly, targeting gigawatt-scale power within a few short years, bringing meaningful impact within this critical decade. 

From waste to power: Building the bridge

With half a billion tons of organic waste available annually in the U.S. alone—and even more globally—there is more than enough to meet the demands of scaling bioenergy. The real question isn’t whether the supply exists; it’s how to connect this untapped resource to communities, industries, and energy grids to pave the way for a cleaner energy future.

Arbor is creating this value chain in a way that’s responsible and scalable:

• Regional sourcing: We partner with forestry, agriculture, and waste management organizations to source biomass locally. This approach minimizes transportation emissions, strengthens regional economies, and ensures a steady supply of waste for energy generation.

• Rigorous standards: Arbor adheres to the highest sustainability protocols, including those from Frontier and Carbon Direct. Our MRV framework includes detailed tracking of sustainable biomass sourcing, in line with Isometric’s rigorous Biogenic Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BCCS) Protocol. These standards ensure that every ton of waste we process is responsibly sourced, contributes to measurable climate benefits, and supports local stakeholders.

A win-win for energy and the environment

The potential of bioenergy has never been in doubt, but traditional approaches have fallen short of realizing it. Experts agree that biomass must play a critical role in achieving our energy and climate goals—and it will take the right approach to unlock its full potential. 

Arbor’s innovation transforms this potential into reality. By turning unmanaged waste into clean, reliable power, we can address critical climate challenges while creating ripple effects that benefit waste management ecosystems and local economies. Arbor’s approach complements intermittent renewables like wind and solar while combatting air pollution, reducing methane emissions, and mitigating wildfire risks. 

This is bioenergy that works—for people, for the planet, and for the future.

It’s also a chance to reimagine waste—not as a problem to be managed, but as a valuable resource to be harnessed. With Arbor’s innovative technology, we can turn waste into possibility and progress, powering a balanced planet that thrives for generations to come.