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2026

· SowGood To GrowGood

The money is there. The bridge isn’t.

Investors want climate projects. They can’t reach them. On SowGood To GrowGood, Amy McCrae Kessler told John Kane Gonzales what gets a project across.

Underwrite community risk as project risk. Line up investors before construction starts. Earn from more than one stream. Then build projects into portfolios big enough for institutions to allocate to. Local Climate Action. Institutional Scale.™

“There’s $150 trillion of institutional dry powder sitting on the sidelines right now.”

Amy McCrae Kessler, on SowGood To GrowGood

Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on the show’s siteWatch on YouTube

· Facet Power

Bill Orts joins as advisor

More than thirty-five years in federal research. As Research Leader for Bioproducts and Center Director at the USDA’s Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California, Dr. William J. Orts led the team that found value in what farms and cities throw away: crop byproducts, food waste, municipal solid waste.

More than 300 publications. Fifteen patents, several licensed and commercialized. Two Federal Laboratory Consortium Inventions of the Year and a USDA Secretary’s Honor Award for technology transfer. Now he advises Facet.

· Facet Power

Rick Luebbe joins as advisor

Two battery materials companies, built from the ground up. Rick Luebbe co-founded EnerG2 in 2003 and led it to its acquisition by BASF in 2016. He is CEO and co-founder of Group14 Technologies, whose silicon battery material now goes into electric vehicles, aviation and consumer electronics.

Before either, he served as a U.S. Army aviation officer in Desert Storm and came home with the Bronze Star and two Air Medals. Now he advises Facet.

· Nagaland, India

Bamboo from Nagaland. Coal out of Bhutan’s furnaces.

Naga bamboo goes in. Out come engineered biocarbons that replace fossil coal in the ferrosilicon furnaces of Ugen Ferro Alloys in Bhutan, and baseload power for Nagaland’s grid.

Facet Power Climate Systems, Kalulu Resources and Climes Agri launched the Nagaland–Bhutan Industrial Decarbonization EcoSystem. Its first facility, at Tuli, runs on a 15-year feedstock agreement with the Nagaland Bamboo Development Agency, and gives the town back the bamboo market it lost when the Nagaland Pulp & Paper Company closed in 1992.

“When the paper mill in Tuli closed over thirty years ago, the region didn’t just lose an industry… it lost its economic anchor. Today we aren’t only creating a renewable alternative to fossil coal for Bhutan. We are bringing that anchor back to Nagaland.”

Amy McCrae Kessler, Co-Founder, Facet Power Climate Systems

WithKalulu Resources · Climes Agri · Ugen Ferro Alloys

Rendering of mid-rise apartment buildings and landscaped streets planned for Bujumbura Green City
Bujumbura Green City, a rendering.

· Burundi

A city drawn by the people who will live in it

Facet Power, Jeni Eco and BDUSA-VS, the Burundian diaspora organization in the United States, signed a memorandum of understanding to develop Bujumbura Green City: homes, commerce, industry and open public space, on the land overlooking Lake Tanganyika.

It is planned for 18,000 residents, as Burundi’s first urban district powered by renewable energy, and is expected to create 3,000 permanent jobs and 10,000 in construction. DelStarr Design leads the master plan, and residents, business owners and the diaspora help write it. Amy McCrae Kessler called the city “a generational investment in institutional resilience, sovereignty, and inclusive growth.”

“We are not just building homes or infrastructure, anyone can do that. We are building systems that allow a city, a people, and a future to thrive.”

Delphin Niyonkuru, Founder, DelStarr Design

WithJeni Eco · BDUSA-VS · DelStarr Design

Amy McCrae Kessler in profile
Amy McCrae Kessler.

· The Future of Trust

Nature on the cap table

Capital wants climate. It still flinches at the projects. On Demia’s The Future of Trust, Amy McCrae Kessler gave Mat Yarger the fix: write good intentions into the deal. Equal joint ventures with local entrepreneur JV partners. A stake for nature in every project.

The conviction dates to 1992, on a flight home from Borneo, watching forest fall beneath the plane. She decided then that trust is no way to run the world. Facet runs on structure instead.

“We don’t have a capitalism problem. We have a capitalism-without-facts problem.”

Amy McCrae Kessler, on The Future of Trust

Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on Spotify

2025

Mamadi Koumba Diawara, Director of Alliance Ingénierie
Mamadi Koumba Diawara, Director, Alliance Ingénierie.

· Guinea

Guinea’s biggest farm project starts with family farms

Guinea’s largest agro-industrial project is planned across 200,000 hectares, and it is built around family farms. Facet Power, Alliance Ingénierie and Producers Association HG launched the sweet sorghum program: hundreds of farms ringed around one processing hub.

One crop, four markets: sugar, bioethanol, animal feed, engineered biocarbons. Degraded land goes back to work. And the corridor along Guinea’s new railway and Simandou 2040 gets a farm economy of its own.

“By valuing natural systems, local knowledge, and international finance expertise equally in our local partnerships, we show the world that impact and profit aren’t just compatible, they’re inseparable.”

Amy McCrae Kessler, CEO, Facet Power

WithAlliance Ingénierie · Producers Association HG

Amy McCrae Kessler walking a field site in Burundi with partners
In the field with partners, Burundi, July 2025.

· Burundi

From the President’s office to the valley floor

Amy McCrae Kessler and Chad Goodwin led Facet’s delegation to Burundi. On July 2, the sweet sorghum joint venture briefed His Excellency Évariste Ndayishimiye, President of Burundi, on its milestones.

On July 5 and 6, the team walked the Nyamuswaga Valley in Muyinga Province and confirmed it ready for pilot cultivation and the first infrastructure: one crop, refined into sugar, bioethanol, animal feed, electricity and engineered biocarbons, grown by the farms ringed around it.

WithJITMAT (U) Limited · Jeni Eco

Tom Elliott of Kalulu Resources Ryal de Waal of ReinAgri
Tom Elliott, Kalulu Resources. Ryal de Waal, ReinAgri.

· South Africa

Poultry litter in. Power out.

Every South African poultry farm pays to get rid of its litter. ReinPower, the joint venture of Facet Power, Kalulu Resources and ReinAgri, turns it into baseload electricity at the farm gate and engineered biocarbons for the soil. When load shedding takes down the grid, the farm keeps its own lights on.

The first Climate Smart Poultry & Livestock EcoSystem spans the Free State and the Western Cape. A second, reaching into Namibia, is in planning.

WithKalulu Resources · ReinAgri

Amy McCrae Kessler, Chad Goodwin and Joel Nana Kontchou with the PAMOL Plantations team in Cameroon
Amy McCrae Kessler, Chad Goodwin and Joel Nana Kontchou with the PAMOL Plantations team, Cameroon.

· Cameroon

Palm oil’s leftovers, put to work

Every tonne of palm oil leaves empty fruit bunches behind. At PAMOL’s Ndian estate in Cameroon, Facet Power and PAMOL Plantations Plc signed to turn them into baseload power for local electrification, engineered biocarbons for the estate’s soils, and carbon removed and stored.

Restored land around the estate. Local jobs. Food security. Its own power supply. One Food Water Energy Nexus EcoSystem.

“We are not just aiming to transform waste; we are crafting a future of prosperity deeply embedded within natural systems.”

Amy McCrae Kessler, Co-Founder and CEO, Facet Power

WithPAMOL Plantations Plc

· Namibia

The last desert elephants get a corridor. Their neighbors get a stake.

Drought is pushing the world’s last desert elephants onto Namibia’s farms and communal land, and every broken waterpoint sets people and elephants against each other. Facet Power and Elephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA) launched the Namibia Desert Elephant Corridor Fund & Nature Trust to end the standoff.

Amy McCrae Kessler designed it. Safe corridors for the elephants. Communities as co-owners and decision-makers. A universal basic income for participating residents on communal land, with digital access, training and jobs in conservation, eco-tourism and crafts. And a legal stake for nature itself.

WithElephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA)

· Top Tier Impact

An economy that obeys physics

Earth Day, 2025. At Top Tier Impact’s roundtable on systems change, Amy McCrae Kessler made the case for economic life-cycle assessment: accounting that values nature and grounds business and finance in the physics of the systems they run on.

WithTop Tier Impact

Amy McCrae Kessler speaking on the clean tech panel at the Convoy Conference
The clean tech panel at the Convoy Conference.

· Vanderbilt University

New asset classes, built from the ground up

Vanderbilt’s Convoy Conference, the clean tech panel: Amy McCrae Kessler with Alexander Pistner of Cox Enterprises and Matt Kisber of Silicon Ranch. Her case: carbon removal and natural capital are asset classes under construction, and private innovation and investment decide how fast they arrive.

“The task is immense; so is the opportunity.”

Amy McCrae Kessler, Convoy Conference
The Facet and Jeni Eco delegation standing with President Évariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi
The Facet and Jeni Eco delegation with President Évariste Ndayishimiye, Washington, D.C.

· Washington, D.C.

A bioeconomy plan, delivered to a President

Amy McCrae Kessler and Chad Goodwin of Facet, with Jeni Eco CEO Jean Marie Nizigiyimana, put a private-sector roadmap before His Excellency Évariste Ndayishimiye, President of Burundi. The goal: grow the country’s farm economy into a bioeconomy.

Sweet sorghum in Muyinga Province, refined into sugar, bioethanol, animal feed, electricity and engineered biocarbons. Materials grown from mycelium on farm residue, in place of plastics and imported building materials. A proposed Burundi Water Sovereign Fund to hold the nation’s freshwater as a national asset. And, as a separate program, Bujumbura Green City: housing, a hospital, schools and an industrial park for building materials, on solar and bioenergy. The President placed it all inside Vision 2040–2060.

WithJeni Eco

· India

A record carbon removal deal, powered by a Facet partner

Google and Varaha signed the world’s largest carbon removal agreement built on engineered biocarbons. Facet Power partner Ankur Scientific powered it. Indian farmers made it possible.

WithAnkur Scientific Energy Technologies

Kofi Debrah, co-founder of Oko Energy
Kofi Debrah, Co-Founder, Oko Energy.

· Ghana

Ghana first. Then West Africa.

Facet Power and Oko Energy, the Dutch-Ghanaian company co-founded by Kofi Debrah, formed a strategic alliance to build Facet EcoSystems across West Africa. Ghana goes first: Food Water Energy Nexus, Climate Smart Agriculture and Forest Circular Economy, with advanced energy materials made from the same residues.

“This collaboration will not only address the pressing climate challenges we face but also unlock significant economic opportunities for our communities.”

Kofi Debrah, Co-Founder, Oko Energy

WithOko Energy

2024

· Burundi

One crop. Five products.

In Burundi’s Muyinga Province, JITMAT (U) Limited, Jeni Eco and Facet Power formed Facet Power Jeni Eco JitMat, a joint venture built on sweet sorghum. It stands on the public-private partnership JITMAT signed with the Government of Burundi in October 2022.

Sugar first, for the region. Then bioethanol, animal feed, electricity for rural microgrids and engineered biocarbons for the farms that grow the crop. Jeni Eco, led by Jean Marie Nizigiyimana, brings a waste-to-cash model built to put women and young people to work.

WithJITMAT (U) Limited · Jeni Eco

U.S. Biochar Coalition Washington, D.C. fly-in badge, September 17 to 19
The Coalition’s September fly-in.

· Washington, D.C.

The Coalition goes to Washington, twice

March 2024: U.S. Biochar Coalition members sat down with NRCS leadership on Code 336, the conservation standard for soil carbon amendments. Delivery costs, meant to be paid separately, were going unpaid.

September: three days back in Washington. EPA, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture and NRCS, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, and offices across the House. The industry’s answers on delivery costs came with them.

WithU.S. Biochar Coalition

Speaker card for Amy McCrae Kessler at the 2024 North American Biochar Conference
Amy McCrae Kessler, 2024 North American Biochar Conference.

· Sacramento

Sacramento: policy and permitting, ten months in

At the 2024 North American Biochar Conference, hosted by the U.S. Biochar Initiative, Amy McCrae Kessler took the stage for Navigating the Future: Biochar Policy and Permitting Perspectives.

Ten months after launch, the U.S. Biochar Coalition had a founding board seated, government relations in place through SMART Policy Group, policy and standards committees at work, congressional briefings and hearings behind it, and a March fly-in on the calendar.

WithU.S. Biochar Initiative · U.S. Biochar Coalition

2023

· Carbon Removals at COP28

No time, no money for climate solutions that wait

Ahead of COP28, in two conversations with Sebastian Manhart for Carbon Removals at COP28, Amy McCrae Kessler put it plainly to investors: there is no time and no money for solutions a decade away. Engineered biocarbon systems that remove, store, avoid and displace carbon, and earn while they do it, are ready now.

“The discipline and principles investors apply to any other investment class should apply to climate solutions as well.”

Amy McCrae Kessler, Carbon Removals at COP28

· Washington, D.C.

Capitol Hill hears the industry’s case

Longworth House Office Building, 11 a.m. Amy McCrae Kessler and Sebastian Manhart hosted the U.S. Biochar Coalition’s congressional briefing, with panelists from the House Committee on Natural Resources, the U.S. Forest Service and a Senate office. On the agenda: natural resources, disaster risk, rural economies and fiscal responsibility.

By the afternoon, Coalition member Metzler Forest Products was testifying before the House Committee on Natural Resources on the BIOCHAR Act.

WithU.S. Biochar Coalition

Joel Nana Kontchou, Chief Operating Officer of Facet Power
Joel Nana Kontchou, Chief Operating Officer.

· Facet Power

Joel Nana Kontchou joins as COO

More than thirty-five years in energy. At Eneo Cameroon he led a financial turnaround and a 170 billion FCFA investment plan, raised the country’s electrification rate by 20 percent and grew customers from 858,000 to more than 1.3 million.

He ran Schlumberger across West and Central Africa, founded Makoe Ventures to back young African entrepreneurs, and sits on the board of United Bank for Africa in Cameroon. Now he runs operations at Facet.

Chad Goodwin, Joel Nana Kontchou and Amy McCrae Kessler at the Central Africa Think Tank Forum in Yaoundé
Chad Goodwin, Joel Nana Kontchou and Amy McCrae Kessler, Yaoundé.

· Yaoundé, Cameroon

Yaoundé: Central Africa’s first think tank forum

The Nkafu Policy Institute and the Denis & Lenora Foretia Foundation convened the inaugural Central Africa Think Tank Forum, and Amy McCrae Kessler and Chad Goodwin were in the room. Joel Nana Kontchou, then a Facet senior advisor and a former Managing Director of Eneo Cameroon, gave the keynote: culture and context first, for the policy, enterprise and institutions that will carry Central Africa’s economy.

WithNkafu Policy Institute · Denis & Lenora Foretia Foundation

Africa seen from orbit at night

· Africa

Four regions, one agreement

Facet Power and CAC-H2 Pte Ltd, an integrated climate technology, finance and project delivery company, signed a strategic Collaboration Agreement to design, develop and deliver Facet EcoSystems across Southern, East, West and Central Africa. On the list: baseload renewable power, bio-hydrogen, bio-methanol and bio-ammonia, with engineered biocarbons and nanocarbons made alongside.

WithCAC-H2 Pte Ltd

· UNFCCC

On the record at the UN

The UNFCCC’s Article 6.4 Supervisory Body opened a consultation on removals. Its information note said engineered removals neither support sustainable development nor suit developing countries. Amy McCrae Kessler signed the U.S. Biochar Coalition’s reply: removal from biomass, with the energy made alongside it, does both, and is among the few permanent pathways already operating at scale.

The asks: adopt the IPCC’s definition of carbon dioxide removal. Set removal targets apart from emissions cuts. Hold every removal credit to durability, verifiability and additionality, whatever the technology.

Read the submission

Facet at the Africa Futures Symposium, University of Pennsylvania
Africa Futures Symposium, University of Pennsylvania.

· Philadelphia

Philadelphia: a first meeting with the Africa Investment Forum

At the Africa Futures Symposium, hosted by the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, Amy McCrae Kessler met Chinelo Anohu, Senior Director and Head of the African Development Bank’s Africa Investment Forum: the table where private capital and governments prepare and close project deals at the speed of business.

WithAfrica Investment Forum

· Webinar

Two weeks old, and on the Farm Bill panel

Two weeks after launch, Amy McCrae Kessler spoke for the U.S. Biochar Coalition on a Farm Bill panel convened by the Carbon Business Council, the International Biochar Initiative and the U.S. Biochar Initiative. The question: how the bill could bring the industry’s products into agriculture and conservation programs, and what that means for carbon removal markets at home and abroad. On the panel with her: Wendy Lu McGill, Ben Rubin, Sebastian Manhart, Dr. David A. Laird and Lauren Breynaert.

WithCarbon Business Council · International Biochar Initiative · U.S. Biochar Initiative

· Washington, D.C.

An industry gets its voice in Washington

March 2023. The Farm Bill was open, and the industry had no organized voice in it. Amy McCrae Kessler and Maureen Walsh moved to hold its place. Sebastian Manhart and Lauren Breynaert joined as co-founders, and in April the U.S. Biochar Coalition launched: one trade association for federal advocacy, standards and the markets that use the industry’s products, from farms and forests to construction. Facet Power took a seat on the founding board.

Between 2023 and 2025, the American Biochar Institute reports, the U.S. biochar market tripled, to $157 million.

WithCarbonfuture · Myno Carbon · Quintessential Carbon · Sitos Group · SMART Policy Group

A restoration tree nursery in Cameroon, rows of seedlings with field staff Women planting seedlings in a restored landscape
A restoration nursery, Cameroon. Planting, from WWF’s FY22 annual report for the FLR in Africa Initiative.

· Cameroon

From forest residue to forest restoration

WWF Cameroon and Facet Power signed a memorandum for WWF’s forest landscape restoration work under AFR100, the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative. Facet builds the facilities that turn forest residues into energy, engineered biocarbons and carbon removal, then supplies the biocarbons, with regenerative agriculture and restoration programs, to WWF’s work in the north of the country.

WithWWF Cameroon

World Hydrogen Leaders event masthead: World Hydrogen Blue, CCS and Pyrolysis

· World Hydrogen Leaders

Bio-hydrogen takes the stage

At World Hydrogen Leaders, Facet made the case for bio-hydrogen from biomass residues, produced alongside baseload power and engineered biocarbons. One process, several markets: removing, storing, avoiding and displacing carbon at once. Facet still makes that case.

WWF and forest company staff in hard hats at a timber yard in East Cameroon
Meeting forest products companies, East Region, Cameroon.

· East Region, Cameroon

Cameroon’s certified foresters come to the table

In Cameroon’s East Region, WWF Cameroon Forest Coordinator Alphonse Ngniado Wouala met FSC-certified forest products companies with one proposal: route their certified residues into Facet facilities.

The bigger pressure on the forest is shifting agriculture. So Facet designs engineered biocarbon programs for smallholder farms outside it. Cleared land yields more. Standing forest stays standing.

WithWWF Cameroon

2022

Facet and WWF Cameroon at a planning meeting in Douala
Planning joint implementation, Douala.

· Douala, Cameroon

Douala: the joint work begins

Joel Nana Kontchou, then a Facet senior advisor, and Dr. Peter Mbile Ngembeni, WWF Cameroon’s Field Program Coordinator, met in Douala to plan how WWF and Facet would carry out their forest landscape restoration partnership together.

WithWWF Cameroon

Amy McCrae Kessler with Yofi Grant of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre
Amy McCrae Kessler and Yofi Grant, Washington, D.C.

· Washington, D.C.

Washington: the Ghana conversation starts

At the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, Amy McCrae Kessler met Yofi Grant, Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, at the U.S. National Black Chamber of Commerce’s African Diaspora Business Forum. Facet was readying Food Water Energy Nexus EcoSystems in Ghana for development.

WithGhana Investment Promotion Centre

A cheetah sitting on a red dune in Namibia
Cheetah country, Namibia.

· Namibia & South Africa

The bush that chokes Namibia, turned into power

Encroachment bush and invasive plants are national emergencies in Namibia and South Africa. They drain groundwater, overrun cheetah habitat and take farmland out of use. Facet Power and Kalulu Resources, a Namibian ethical biomass company, agreed to deploy Facet’s technology against them.

Harvested with care, the bush becomes baseload electricity and engineered biocarbons, with bio-hydrogen to follow along the region’s trucking corridors. The land goes back to wildlife and farming. Regenerative agriculture training and local microgrids are built in from day one.

“Facet’s unique approach to recycling biomass waste to optimize carbon removal, carbon negative energy, and community benefit is the model we hoped to find when we set out to solve Namibia’s and South Africa’s encroachment bush crises.”

Thomas Elliott, President, Kalulu Resources

WithKalulu Resources