🌐 Hemp Grows Up: A Long-Awaited Crop Now Insulates U.S. Homes

A Carbon-Negative Hemp Supply Chain

In the summer of 2021, I spent time exploring fields of industrial hemp across North Carolina.

To my untrained eye, the crop looked a lot like cannabis. Same recognizable leaf. But that’s where the similarities stop. Industrial hemp has about 100 times less THC than the other plant.

And I wasn’t there looking to get high. I was there to assess—and frankly marvel at—the plant’s height.

A hemp crop is something to behold. The plant grows incredibly fast, reaching heights of nearly 20 feet in a matter of months.

Its stalk has a storied history that maps to much of American history, some of it fact, other parts lore.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp. Early drafts of the Declaration of Independence were purportedly written on it. And the Navy is said to have made ropes out of it.

But I wasn’t in those fields to reconnect with America’s past.

I was looking to the future.

I had just teamed up with Huade Tan and Nathan Silvernail (both SpaceX engineers) to launch Plantd—a company with a mission to manufacture carbon-negative building materials.

We were searching for a biomass that could grow rapidly enough to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—much faster than trees—and whose fibers would be strong and structural enough to replace lumber in homebuilding.

In hemp, we found many answers. We also met a movement—people across the U.S. and overseas who saw in this plant the potential to build a bio-based economy. One that replaces the high-carbon footprint materials still embedded in construction, manufacturing, and consumer goods.

Ultimately, Plantd selected a different biomass—a perennial grass better suited to our process. But I never stopped thinking about hemp.

And the most compelling company leading the way in American hemp today is 

Hempitecture.

Growing The Future

Imagine you’re Mattie Mead.

It’s 2012. You write your college thesis on hemp’s potential revival in America. You see its future—what it could mean for farmers, agricultural communities, regional economies, and the climate.

The laws on the books are still in the way. But you catch a glimmer in the 2014 Farm Bill. So you incorporate. You launch a company aimed at rebuilding the hemp economy from the ground up.

You have vision. You have plans. But progress is slow. There’s no supply chain. No processing. No precedent.

You look to Europe, where hemp is already industrialized and thousands of acres are grown annually. You start importing products. Hempcrete. Insulation. You find your early adopters. You align with a legion of near-zealots who see in hemp their hopes, dreams, and fortunes.

The plant draws everyone—hippies, stoners, serious builders, and the businessman with a bottomless bag of promises.

You navigate it all. Hell, you lead it. You organize gatherings. You become the convener. The steady one. The one who stays.

Then the 2018 Farm Bill passes. Hemp’s future sharpens into view.

Your energy, five years in, is contagious. 

That’s when Tommy Gibbons catches the vibe. A former Goldman Sachs banker, he’s looking to insulate his van for surfing trips in the Pacific Northwest. He hears about Hempitecture’s European hempwool. He investigates.

He starts to see his future in hemp as well. So he joins up—becoming Mattie’s co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer.

In 2019, Mead and Gibbons convene the first U.S. Hemp Building Summit in Ketchum, Idaho, near Hempitecture’s headquarters. 

300 hemp industry leaders from around the globe show up.

Now the vision kicks into execution.

Here’s what it looks like.

The First Commercial-Scale Factory

In 2021, Hempitecture broke ground in Jerome, Idaho—not exactly a household name in climate tech manufacturing. But that was the point: local crop, local processing, local customers. Fewer miles. Lower carbon. Better margins.

They built America’s first hemp insulation factory. Learned what broke. What clogged. What warped under heat. They troubleshot. They iterated. 

Then they shipped to contractors and homebuilders in 48 states. The demand was there. The distribution wasn’t, so they went direct.

The product: HempWool®—soft, dense batts that lock away carbon and install like fiberglass, without the downside.

Here’s how it stacks up:

✅ Soft, dense, touch-safe batts
Comfortable to handle. No gloves, no irritation.

✅ Fits standard framing
Installs like fiberglass—without the downsides.

✅ Safer to install
No glass shards. No protective gear required.

✅ Quieter interiors
Natural acoustic insulation for a calmer space.

✅ Stores thermal energy
Reduces heating and cooling swings.

✅ Improves indoor air quality
No VOCs, toxins, or airborne fibers.

✅ Carbon-locking by design
Every batt stores CO₂ pulled from the atmosphere.

They replaced fiberglass—the most-hated material on a job site—with something far less hazardous for the people who handle it. And they did it at scale.

“Anyone can install it,” says Gibbons. “We’ve had children install it. Supervised, of course.”

To date, Hempwool is in over 1500 projects from coast to coast.

Standing Up A Supply Chain

The U.S. wasn’t growing the right kind of hemp. For the building industry, the CBD boom wasn’t helpful. The cannabis market was irrelevant. What Hempitecture needed was bast fiber—tall, fast-growing stalks harvested for strength, not oil or flowers.

So they partnered with growers. Set specs. Created demand. Today, Hempitecture is the largest hemp fiber buyer in North America—running the entire business on just 1,500 acres across Idaho and Montana.

“It’s not a land issue,” Tommy says. “Sugar beets take up 170,000 acres in Idaho alone.”

And when Mead and Gibbons looked East—to Florida, to Georgia, to Tennessee—they saw potential to do it again. To build regional hubs where hemp once thrived and ag land still stretches wide.

They applied. And they won.

An $8 million U.S. Department of Energy grant gave them cost-share funding, technical validation, and access to Oak Ridge National Lab, where HempWool is now being tested head-to-head against fiberglass.

They’ve got science behind them. And a second factory coming.

They Cut Out The Middlemen

No distributors. No retail displays. Hempitecture knew Home Depot wasn’t going to push hemp. Neither would national or regional distributors.

So they did an end-run around business-as-usual and bypassed traditional distribution channels.

The team built the technology stack for a direct-to-builder model. An e-commerce website that quotes freight. A backend that manages delivery. A system that serves everyone from small contractors to large-volume developers.

That strategy is now their moat. Hempitecture knows the customers. They know their markets. They don’t divvy up margins with third parties. They don’t rely on sales reps pushing a basket of products from different brands.

“We invested in our own sales infrastructure,” says Tommy, “because no one else was going to do it for us.”

They Rewrote The Funding Playbook

No VC round. No convertible notes. Hempitecture conducted crowdfunded equity raises that drew thousands of investors—and a surge of brand evangelists and customers.

The funding strategy gave them capital, alignment, and time. It’s also ensured ongoing majority control.

Today, the startup is cash-flowing, with audited financials and leverage on every future raise. They don’t need to chase a 10x software return. They don’t need to convince anyone that insulation is sexy. They only need to keep serving real demand.

Now they’re headed beyond buildings.

European automakers have used hemp for years. Hempitecture saw the same opportunity in the U.S.—in EV battery wraps, dashboards, door panels. Light, strong, sound-absorbing fiber that beats synthetics.

“We think we can match or beat synthetic blends,” Tommy says, “on cost, carbon, and weight.”

Same crop. New markets. And a whole industrial category still up for grabs.

Supercool Takeaway

Hempitecture is scaling a carbon-storing material with U.S.-based production, direct distribution, and a supply chain rebuilt from seed to wall.

✅ Thousands of installs across 48 states
✅ Direct-to-builder sales with no middlemen
✅ Crowdfunded capital aligned with early adopters
✅ Regional operations designed for efficiency and scale
✅ Strategic expansion backed by the U.S. Department of Energy

A century after hemp was banned, the manufacturing base is back—with low-carbon and high-performance to match.

And this time, it scales.

Listen to this podcast episode on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all other platforms.

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Stat of the Week: $6.8 Billion

The global hemp market is often estimated to be worth $6–7 billion. But that includes everything—CBD, food, supplements, and seeds.

The part that matters for industrial products? Just 10–15% of that total, or just shy of $1 billion. That’s the space where Hempitecture operates. It’s not the biggest, but it’s rapidly growing.

Quote of the Week:

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Related

The Real Status: Hemp Isn’t Everywhere—Yet

For all its promise, hemp still isn’t widely used in global manufacturing. Supply chains are young. Standards are scarce. And most big brands haven’t moved beyond pilot programs.

But that’s starting to change.

Over the past 18 months:

🚗 Volkswagen partnered with German startup Revoltech to develop a hemp-based leather alternative for future car interiors.

🚙 Peugeot rolled out hemp–plastic composites in dashboards and consoles across several models.

✈️ Boeing suppliers and European composite firms began prototyping hemp panels for aviation—targeting lightweight, high-strength interior components.

🛋 West Elm launched a hemp capsule collection—rugs, poufs, and upholstery under its “Hemp • All Local” label.

These aren’t mass-market products. They’re signals. And behind the scenes, the raw supply is catching up.

U.S. hemp acreage jumped 64% in 2024, with more than 45,000 acres planted—according to USDA data. Fiber hemp still accounts for a minority of that total, but it’s gaining share as interest in insulation, biocomposites, and building materials grows.

Meanwhile, China remains the global heavyweight, cultivating over 160,000 acres. Europe trails in second, with roughly half that amount..

The industrial hemp economy is still early, but the signals are clear, the acreage is rising, and the shift from niche to mainstream has begun.

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Where Supercool traveled this week:

Articles:

🌐 Fast Company: Africa’s Solar and EV Revolution is Here by Josh Dorfman

Podcasts:

🌐 An Hour of Innovation with Vit Lyoshin: The Future of Climate: Carbon Capture, Carbon-Negative Homes, and Sustainability with Josh Dorfman

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