This year, the world most certainly easily exceeded the aspirational 1.5°C warming above pre-industrial levels set forth in the 2016 Paris Agreement. Catastrophic outcomes, including as more frequent extreme droughts, floods, and fires; stronger hurricanes; infectious diseases that spread more quickly; and falling populations of fish and wildlife, are all made more likely by further warming. By extracting significant volumes of CO2 from the atmosphere, a number of carbon-capture firms aim to buck this trend.

Heirloom Carbon, one of those businesses, revealed on Wednesday that it has secured $150 million in Series B funding to support the expansion of its carbon-removal technology.

According to the startup’s own estimations, the cost of removing one metric ton of CO2 now ranges from $600 to $1,000. The business is hoping that by growing larger and capturing more carbon, it can lower this cost. According to company spokesperson Scott Coriell, Heirloom anticipates that by the early 2030s, industry-wide rates would fall to $200 to $300 per metric ton, as reported by TechCrunch.

“Heirloom has line of sight to profitability at those prices,” he said.

Although Coriell stated that the company is “on a trajectory” to reach that price in the long run, that is still much higher than the $100 per metric ton that experts believe is the sweet spot to make carbon capture a viable industry.

To put Heirloom’s fundraising efforts in perspective, the latest round would be sufficient to purchase between 150,000 and 250,000 metric tons of carbon credits at current pricing. That amounts to roughly ten years’ worth of carbon reduction from the company’s anticipated 2026 plant in Louisiana. (However, carbon credits for investors are not included in the latest round.)

Heirloom uses crushed lime made from limestone rather than a liquid to extract carbon dioxide from the air, in contrast to many other direct air capture (DAC) businesses. To increase the lime’s capacity to absorb CO2, the business applies a proprietary chemical to it. The business warms it to release the carbon dioxide so that it can be stored somewhere when the absorbed gas turns enough of the lime into limestone.

Even while most people believe that carbon removal is too costly to implement extensively right now, climate scientists have realized that, as long as fossil fuels are burned unchecked, the technology will be needed in the ensuing decades.

The financing was led by Future Positive and Lowercarbon Capital, with participation from Siemens Financial Services, Ahren Innovation Capital, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Carbon Direct Capital, Japan Airlines, MCJ Collective, Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsui & Co., MOL Switch LLC, and Quantum Innovation Fund.

Heirloom already has agreements to sell carbon credits to Stripe’s advanced market commitment company, Frontier, and Microsoft, a major purchaser of DAC credits.

Japan Airlines’ involvement in the round is noteworthy since, according to some experts, it will be simpler and less expensive to keep using jet fuel derived from fossil fuels and use direct air capture to eliminate the carbon pollution that results. Airlines are obviously looking at DAC as a potential substitute for e-fuels, which are still too costly.