Carbon removal & regenerative agriculture · Ecuador

Better soil and permanent carbon removal, from the same tonne of residue.

Yana converts agricultural residue from sustainable sources into biochar formulated for specific crops and soils, financed by carbon removal credits. We are building it as an agricultural input first, so the product earns its place in a farmer's system on its own merits.

Get in touch See how it works

The opportunity

Ecuador's harvests leave behind far more residue than the country puts to use.

It is already harvested and already a disposal problem for the people who own it, and a large share of it is aggregated at mills and processing plants before anyone has to go looking for it. Ecuador's biochar sector is nascent, so only a small share is being converted into anything durable.

More than 1.3 Mt of crop residue left over every year by Ecuador's major harvests, much of it already collected at the mills and plants that process them
1.1 M+ ha of cropland generating it, spread across Ecuador's coastal, lowland and Amazon growing regions
Nascent Ecuador's biochar sector is only beginning, and the conversion capacity to match this supply has yet to be built

Crop production from Ecuador's Ministry of Agriculture (SIPA, reference year 2024), aggregated across the country's major crops and converted at standard residue fractions. Woody biomass from plantation management and agroforestry is additional potential beyond this figure.

Residue, not a commodity

More than 1.3 million tonnes a year, and only a small fraction is put to productive use. Some goes to animal bedding or low‑grade boiler fuel. Most is burned in the open, heaped at the plant gate to rot, or dumped, which costs the producer money in handling and returns the carbon to the atmosphere within a season or two.

We source from sustainable agricultural operations, and we start where the residue is easiest to move. A large share of this volume is generated at processing points rather than scattered across fields, so it arrives concentrated, and that is what makes collection economics work. Field‑scattered residues are real feedstock too, but they need aggregation built for them, so they come later rather than first.

New value in what they already have

Pyrolysis turns that liability into two things at once: a soil amendment the same agricultural network can use, and a verifiable, centuries‑durable carbon removal. For the mill or the plantation, it converts a disposal cost into a revenue line from material they are already handling.

The demand is real. Farmers and plantation owners here have already asked us for this product, and we think biochar can stand as a strong commercial market in Ecuador on its agronomic merits alone. Carbon finance is what lets that market be served properly: it funds the conversion capacity, and it lets us build it faster and larger than product revenue alone would allow.

Agricultural processing residue heaped at a mill in Ecuador
Agricultural waste with limited productive end use, accumulating at a processing plant in Ecuador.

How it works

A self‑reinforcing loop.

Residue comes out of the local agricultural network. Biochar goes back into it. Every turn of the loop teaches us something that makes the next batch better and the next farmer easier to convince.

From agricultural residue to productive soil

1
Agricultural residue Sourced from sustainable operations
2
Pyrolysis reactor Autothermal process
3
Certified biochar Verified production and carbon content
4
Applied to the soil Blended for the crop it is going to
Results
Carbon removal credits
Improved soil and yields
01

Source

Agricultural residue collected from sustainable operations within a short radius, already concentrated at the processing points where it is generated.

02

Convert

Pyrolysis under controlled temperature and residence time, tuned per feedstock rather than run as one generic process, with logged mass balance on every campaign.

03

Formulate

Char charged and blended in specific proportions with complementary organic and biological inputs, matched to the crop and the soil it is going to.

04

Educate & adopt

A blend made for a farmer's actual crop and soil is a product they can be taught to use and can judge for themselves. Results travel between neighbors, adoption spreads, and demand pulls more residue into the loop.

05

Verify & sell

Production and sequestration measured against registry methodology and verified by a third party, then sold as a removal credit into voluntary and offtake markets.

The farmer relationship is the self‑sustaining force. This is a partnership, not a sales channel. Growers tell us what their soils and crops actually do with each blend, and that feedback is what develops the product. In return they get an input built for their conditions rather than a translated datasheet, and a use for residue they were paying to get rid of. The better the agronomy gets, the more residue flows in, and the more carbon stays down.

Why Yana, why now

The agronomy, the carbon and the technology, in one place.

Carbon‑market fluency from day one

Erick has spent his career developing and scrutinizing carbon projects: forest carbon project development inside a $480M institutional fund, technical due diligence across South America, and around 40 AFOLU project reviews as an Expert Project Reviewer for Verra. Registry requirements, additionality, permanence and MRV design are not new territory here, they are the starting point.

Ecuador opened to the voluntary market in 2026

A 2008 constitutional reading effectively closed Ecuador to carbon markets for nearly two decades. The 2026 reform of the Organic Environmental Code expressly permits participation in the voluntary market and establishes a national climate change registry. The rules are being written now, which is the right moment to be building.

Rooted in Ecuador, not parachuted in

Karolina is Ecuadorian, an environmental engineer, and directed the national research and policy initiative behind Ecuador's first circular economy framework, coordinating 60 stakeholders and co‑authoring the white paper that informed the Circular Economy Law drafted by the National Assembly. She also led operations for the world's first hydrogen‑powered haul truck proving grounds at First Mode in Seattle, taking first‑of‑a‑kind industrial infrastructure through construction and into operation. Feedstock access and producer relationships start from her network, not from a cold start after funding closes.

Our reactor, and our technology partner, are Ecuadorian

Our technology partner is Nina Energy, an Ecuadorian pyrolysis company that builds reactors, produces biochar and is developing its own carbon removal supply. Working with them keeps the iteration loop short and the capital in the country, inside a domestic CDR ecosystem rather than at the end of an export order.

Nina Energy Nina Energy · Ecuadorian pyrolysis technology partner · EBC‑certified biochar produced in country · nina.energy

Built for the soil and for the community

Biochar on its own is a real product and we expect to sell it that way. The larger opportunity is in what it gets blended with. What we are really building is a tested formulation library developed with farmers rather than at them: this feedstock, at this pyrolysis temperature, blended in these proportions, at this rate, for this crop on this soil. Two‑way learning is the method, and it is what a competitor cannot copy from a spec sheet.

Research from a source farmers already trust

Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE is our research arm under a cooperation agreement. ESPE is one of Ecuador's respected agricultural universities, and its extension work and field research are what many growers here already turn to when they want to know whether something works. A recommendation carries differently coming from them than from a supplier.

They run replicated trials with untreated controls on the crops and soils we intend to sell into. Formulation behavior does not transfer cleanly from data generated somewhere else, so growers get local numbers rather than a translated datasheet, and the formulation library gets built on independent agronomy rather than on our own marketing.

A platform, not a single plant

We are starting in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, one of Ecuador's agricultural hubs, where palm, cacao, plantain and livestock systems meet the coastal lowlands and the road network that serves them. The first reactor is a proof point rather than the destination. The local track record, registry relationships and operating discipline we build here are what let us develop a broader pipeline of nature‑based carbon projects across Ecuador.

Replicated field trial plots with biochar treatments, Ecuador
Replicated plots with untreated controls, laid out for our trials. Biochar‑amended beds are visible dark against the untreated soil.
Maize harvested from a field trial in Ecuador
Harvest from a trial block: untreated control cobs at the top, biochar‑treated at the bottom.
The Yana and Nina Energy teams at a pyrolysis reactor in Ecuador
With the Nina team.

Where this goes

Four stages, each one earning the right to the next.

Stage 1

Validate

Feedstock characterization, sourcing relationships with producers, and the first on‑farm agronomic trials with ESPE.

In progress
Stage 2

First reactor

Commission a single commercial‑scale reactor in Santo Domingo with Nina Energy and prove the sourcing, production and verification loop end to end.

In progress
Stage 3

Formulate & scale

Turn the trial season into specified, priced blends moving through established agricultural distribution, while performance on reactor one earns the case for a second and third.

Stage 4

NbS platform

Use the credibility, MRV infrastructure and local relationships built through biochar to develop a wider portfolio of nature‑based carbon projects across Ecuador.

Team

Two founders, two complementary sides of the same problem.

Karolina Chamorro

Karolina Chamorro

Co‑founder

Ecuadorian environmental engineer with an MS in Sustainable Resource Management from TU Munich, and roots in the country's agricultural sector. Directed the national initiative behind Ecuador's first circular economy framework, coordinating 60 stakeholders and co‑authoring the research that informed the Circular Economy Law drafted by the National Assembly.

At First Mode in Seattle she led delivery of the world's first hydrogen‑powered haul truck proving grounds, taking a first‑of‑a‑kind decarbonization technology through permitting, construction and operational readiness. At Yana she leads operations, producer partnerships and regulatory navigation on the ground in Ecuador.

Erick Larsen

Erick Larsen

Co‑founder

Carbon project developer with an MS in Sustainable Resource Management from TU Munich. Developed and managed forest carbon projects across a $480M institutional forest climate fund, and delivered field and desktop due diligence on nature‑based projects throughout South America, from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest to the Peruvian Amazon and cacao agroforestry in Ecuador.

Served as an Expert Project Reviewer for Verra, conducting around 40 technical reviews of AFOLU projects for registration and verification. At Yana he leads carbon accounting, registry strategy and buyer relationships, which is why the project starts with MRV, permanence and regulatory pathway rather than arriving at them late.

Contact

Building carbon infrastructure in Ecuador. Let's talk.

Whether you are a producer with residue to move, a research institution, a potential partner or a carbon buyer, we would like to hear from you.

karolina@yana.earth