Mast Reforestation has sold all carbon removal credits from its first biomass burial project in southern Montana within six weeks of issuance, with buyers including Bain & Company, BMO, Royal Bank of Canada and CNaught.
A total of 4,277 credits from the MT1 project were issued in January 2026 under the Puro.earth registry, marking the largest issuance so far under its biomass storage method. The project moved from construction to credit issuance in nine months, one of the fastest timelines globally for such projects, Bioenergy Insight reported.
The MT1 project involved burying more than 10 million pounds of trees destroyed in the 2021 Poverty Flats wildfire in an engineered underground chamber designed for long-term carbon storage. The biomass would otherwise have been burned, releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.
The credits come with a 100-year durability certification and have received an A rating from BeZero Carbon, a level achieved by fewer than 8 per cent of similar carbon removal projects.
Company officials said the project combines long-term carbon removal with efforts to restore wildfire-affected land. Proceeds from the credit sales are being used to fund reforestation at the site, where planting of more than 6,000 native conifer seedlings began on April 15.
The trees have been grown from locally sourced seeds at Mast’s Silvaseed Company nursery in Roy. The 2021 wildfire had damaged the area so severely that natural regrowth was considered unlikely without intervention.
Mast said it has identified over 6.5 million tonnes of burned biomass in Montana as suitable for similar projects and is planning a second project for credit issuance in 2027. The company aims to scale up to 150,000 tonnes of annual deployment by 2030.
