A partnership briefing prepared for the Municipality of Anchorage
Advanced Circular Manufacturing — the $0-capital alternative to the $500–700M incinerator.
Three build stages: sizing → commercial structure → capital cost. Press Space or → to walk the Assembly through each stage.
This distinction determines how the facility is permitted, which regulator has oversight, and what the fiscal architecture looks like.
The 30-year CSA is a supply agreement, not a service contract. The Municipality of Anchorage becomes the manufacturing feedstock supplier to the ACM facility; Carbotura is the manufacturer that material stream transfers to under the CSA. Beyond capital, Carbotura brings the industrial platform: manufacturing employment, US critical-materials production, and a circular material loop — located in Anchorage, the logistics hub of the state.
The 30-year CSA is a royalty-producing asset that replaces a waste liability on the City's books. Under the CSA, the Municipality pays a per-ton fee to Carbotura under the manufacturing arrangement, and Carbotura pays a per-ton royalty back that always exceeds the fee from Year 2 onward. At Anchorage scale (400 TPD Phase Initial) the widening spread compounds to a materially larger 30-year stream.
The Municipality of Anchorage becomes a manufacturing feedstock supplier under a 30-year supply agreement. The financial architecture is designed so the effect on both the income statement and balance sheet is unambiguously positive — and both effects are recognized annually in the Municipality's financial statements. It is also the structural alternative to placing $500–700M of WTE capital plus debt service into the rate base.
The Assembly is not choosing a configuration today. The Deployment Study confirms feedstock availability, disposal-cost baseline, and site suitability — then Anchorage elects. ARL receives ~1,000 TPD today — ~2.5× the Phase Initial requirement — all arriving at gates the Municipality already owns.
Anchorage anchors. The boroughs grow into it. The Municipality of Anchorage is the sole counterparty on the anchor CSA — no other jurisdiction's approval is needed to start. As the facility scales, Mat-Su Borough and Kenai Peninsula Borough can join through separately structured CSA addenda — each additive, none a precondition. Phase Expanded (1,200 TPD) matches the exact 3-borough sizing the Municipality’s own WTE feasibility study recommended.
Head-to-head with the $500–700M incinerator. Both projects target the same ~300,000 TPY and even the same siting zone (the ARL footprint). The differences: the WTE consumes $500–700M of public capital plus bond debt service, operates 2030–2032 at the earliest, burns the material in Alaska’s first mass-burn incinerator, still landfills ~10% ash, and returns nothing. ACM requires $0 public capital, targets COD at T0 + 24 months — years earlier — converts the material without combustion into synthetic graphite, graphene compounds, and recovered minerals, accepts biosolids (avoiding the Asplund biosolids-incinerator replacement the WTE was partly justified by — put at ~$75M by the Municipality in 2026, and at up to ~$100M by AWWU’s General Manager in 2019), and pays the Municipality a royalty for 30 years. Every claimed WTE benefit is matched or exceeded at zero public cost.
The Assembly has approved $8M in WTE planning — before that becomes $500–700M in committed capital, the ACM alternative deserves a side-by-side look. The Deployment Study (4–6 weeks, $0 to the Municipality) produces exactly that comparison, on verified Municipality data, in time to inform the next WTE phase decision.
Also called the dewaste pathway. This is the joint regulatory work that lets a manufacturing operation stand up alongside — not inside — legacy waste-domain statutes.
Advanced Circular Manufacturing does not fit within the waste domain and does not operate under waste-domain statutes. 100% elemental recycling requires classification onto the manufacturing predicate.
Carbotura brings: the process-classification evidence, the RCRA §1004(27) / 40 CFR §261.2(e) federal classification basis, and prior regulatory-engagement experience.
The Municipality of Anchorage brings: standing to engage ADEC, political mandate for the transition, and Assembly leadership already engaged on the future of the disposal system.
Endpoint: manufacturing NAICS classification recognized across all permitting, licensing, and regulatory contexts. Interim bridging authorities may apply during the transition.
Each stage has a natural exit ramp. The Council decision today authorizes only the first stage. Actual Commercial Operating Date depends on Anchorage's manufacturing queue position — the sequencing of active Carbotura client deployments at the time of CSA execution.
That is the full extent of what the Assembly is asked to approve today. Everything downstream — configuration, LOI, CSA — is a subsequent Assembly decision informed by the Deployment Study findings. Authorizing now puts a verified ACM-vs-WTE comparison in front of the Assembly before the incinerator’s next phase commits further capital.