JPMorgan buys 55,000 carbon removals

JPMorgan just bought 55,000 carbon removal credits from Mast Reforestation, and the unusual part is what the money is paying for: not only pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, but also clearing wildfire-killed wood that can feed future fires. (axios.com) Mast works in burned landscapes where forests often do not grow back on their own because seed sources are gone, soils are damaged, and landowners do not have enough money to replant at scale. The company says its model is post-wildfire reforestation funded by carbon removal credits. (mastreforest.com) The carbon part comes from what happens to dead trees after a fire. If they are left to rot or are pile-burned, the carbon in that wood goes back into the air, so Mast buries some of that biomass in oxygen-limited underground chambers designed to slow decomposition for decades. (mastreforest.com) That means one project is doing two jobs at once. It removes fuel from fire-scarred land that agencies already want treated, and it turns that cleanup bill into something companies can finance through carbon purchases. (mastreforest.com) Mast started pushing this model hard in February 2025, when it announced a $25 million Series B funding round to expand biomass burial alongside reforestation. In that announcement, it called the combined product a new class of “restorative carbon removal credits.” (mastreforest.com) By January 2026, Mast said it had already sold and delivered more than 80% of the credits from its first big Montana project, called Mast Wood Preserve MT1. The company said that project buried more than 10 million pounds of wildfire-killed trees and financed post-fire restoration in southern Montana. (prnewswire.com) JPMorgan’s deal shows what buyers want from this market right now. Axios reported that the bank is treating the purchase not just as a climate claim, but as a way to back work with near-term operational value in a country where wildfire smoke and fire losses have become a recurring business risk. (axios.com) The timing also says something about the carbon removal market itself. On the same day, reports said JPMorgan signed a separate 10-year deal with Graphyte for 60,000 tons of biomass-based carbon removal, suggesting the bank is spreading bets across multiple methods instead of waiting for one winner. (esgtoday.com, esgdive.com) For carbon removal companies, that is the pitch getting sharper in 2026: do not sell only a ton of removed carbon in the future, sell a project that fixes a visible problem on the ground now. Mast’s version is a forest that gets replanted and a burn scar with less dead fuel sitting on it before the next fire season. (axios.com, mastreforest.com)