Archer Daniels Midland

Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) was founded in 1902 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when George Archer and John Daniels established a linseed crushing business. Over more than 120 years, ADM grew into one of the world's largest agricultural processors and commodities trading corporations, operating across six continents. The company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, employs approximately 44,000 people, and is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: ADM) as an S&P 500 component. ADM processes corn, soybeans, wheat, and other grains into ingredients for human and animal nutrition, industrial chemicals, and transportation fuels.

ADM's relevance to the cleantech and carbon capture space is primarily through its decade-long carbon sequestration operation at its Decatur, Illinois facility — one of the world's most significant industrial carbon capture and storage projects. Since 2011, ADM has injected more than 4 million tonnes of CO₂ captured as a byproduct of its corn ethanol fermentation operations into deep saline geological formations more than a mile underground, using EPA Class VI-permitted injection wells. This infrastructure represents one of the best-characterized and longest-operating CO₂ storage sites in the United States, with a proven track record of safe, permanent geological sequestration.

This storage infrastructure became the foundation for the Broadwing Energy project, a landmark partnership announced in October 2025 between ADM, Low Carbon Infrastructure (LCI, backed by I Squared Capital), and Google. Under this arrangement, LCI is building a 400 MW natural gas cogeneration plant on ADM's Decatur site, which will capture approximately 90% of its CO₂ emissions using Mitsubishi Power's capture technology, with the CO₂ injected into ADM's existing Class VI wells. Google will purchase the majority of the electrical output, making it the first-ever corporate PPA for a CCS-enabled power plant.

ADM also operates bioenergy facilities, produces one of the largest volumes of US fuel ethanol, and has established a substantial biorefinery complex in Decatur that co-produces food ingredients, industrial starch, corn oil, and fermentation products alongside energy and CO₂. The company's deep integration of carbon management into its industrial operations makes it a unique player in the intersection of agriculture, industrial biotechnology, and carbon capture infrastructure.