Sucking up CO2Giant carbon-sucking vacuums.
Big Picture
It’s too late to limit global warming simply by reducing emissions. Preventing runaway temperature rise will require removing carbon from the air. One way to do this is through direct air capture, which involves sucking up ambient CO₂ from the atmosphere. This carbon in turn can be buried underground, used for industrial processes, or become a feedstock for synthetic fuels and other chemicals.
How it Works
Carbon Engineering’s direct air capture technology uses large turbines to pull in air and extract CO₂ through a series of chemical reactions, compressing a geological process from millions of years to just a few hours. They are currently building a facility capable of removing upward of one million tons of CO₂ per year for geologic storage and better building materials in the Permian Basin.
Unfair Advantage
While Carbon Engineering has produced valuable IP, their process was designed from the outset to rely exclusively on off-the-shelf equipment and processes from other industries in order to reduce aggregate engineering risk. This bet is paying off as they working on building the world’s first-ever megaton scale carbon removal facility, which will remove CO₂ as well as provide feedstocks for ultra-low carbon fuels.
04
Gigatons of CO₂
potentially removed by 2050
DANIEL FRIEDMANN CEO
Daniel previously spent nearly four decades as an executive at robotics and space manufacturing company MDA.
KERRI L. FOX CFO
Kerri has more than 20 years of finance and corporate growth experience.
SUSAN KOCH COO
Susan is a finance veteran in pre-commercial alternate energy/clean technology companies, with over 30 years’ experience as a CPA and CFO.
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