![]() ![]() The company has not disclosed its valuation. The deal marks the first significant investment by energy groups into the technology, known as direct air capture, which pulls CO₂ from the atmosphere by using chemicals and fans.Ĭarbon Engineering, a Bill Gates-backed start-up based in Squamish, British Columbia, said the new investment was part of a $60 million fundraising round that would help it design and build commercial-scale plants. (NYSE: OXY) are taking a minority stake in a Canadian start-up that has developed technologies to suck CO₂ directly from the atmosphere and use it to make synthetic fuel. (NYSE: CVX) and Occidental Petroleum Corp. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries.Oil majors Chevron Corp. Share PriceĪdani Ports & Special Economic Zone. Most Searched Stocks Bharat Petroleum Corporation. “If they have any concerns, we are addressing those concerns,” he said of the company’s engagement with the local Pine Bluff community. Although the land above the buried blocks could be usable for, say, solar farms, getting regulatory buy-in to do carbon removal projects at scale “is often a challenge,” Rogers said. In Sanchez’s view, there is enough residual biomass in the US for Graphyte’s purposes and “more than enough for any one company to work with.”Įssentially carbon landfills, Graphyte’s carbon blocks will be buried underground, following similar permitting requirements as construction waste landfills. One other key concern for carbon removal pathways that involve waste biomass is availability of the material. The company has also elected Puro.earth as its carbon registry, a first step towards independent verification of its removals. To monitor and measure the CO2 within the blocks, Graphyte will install sensors and proprietary tracer systems in the storage sites. Graphyte’s approach of drying, condensing and wrapping the biomass will help prevent that process from happening, he said. A key risk of biomass-based approaches to carbon removal is that, like landfills, these biomass sinks could release methane, a harmful greenhouse gas, if exposed to bacteria that anaerobically digests the material. That insurance policy is going to be key to ensuring that the CO2 stays buried and the blocks don’t produce and release methane, according to Brian Snyder, associate professor at Louisiana State University’s Department of Environmental Sciences. The polymer barrier, in addition to drying and condensing the blocks, acts as “a helpful insurance policy” to prevent degradation of the blocks, Sanchez said. Leakage in these scenarios is possible if the biomass gets wet or experiences significant microbial activity, according to Dan Sanchez, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who is a science advisor to Graphyte. Commercialization challenges are manifold, from courting enough buyers willing to pay for these removal services to getting regulatory and community buy-in.Įnsuring that the blocks remain buried and that the CO2 trapped within them doesn’t get released, either through degradation or decomposition, is critical. ![]() The path to rapid scale-up is by no means guaranteed. The startup projects the project will have the capacity to remove 5,000 tons of CO2 per year by the end of 2023 and 50,000 by July of 2024. The first carbon blocks are expected to be produced by January 2024. It’s also in the process of signing customer offtake agreements, or a contractual commitment to buy carbon removal services at a predetermined price upon delivery. Graphyte is in the process of building its first plant in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, near local timber and rice mills that could serve as biomass sources, according to Rogers. The process is also land-efficient, with the potential of removing 10,000 tons of CO2 equivalent per acre, he said. It also requires a tenth of the energy of direct air capture, and the carbon blocks are projected to be durable for over a thousand years, due in part to the proprietary polymer barrier protecting them, according to Rogers. Cheaper, nature-based options like planting trees also have drawbacks when it comes to durability and measurement challenges.īy comparison, Graphyte says its levelized cost of production is currently under $100 per ton, a moonshot target for carbon removal that direct air capture is still far from achieving. ![]() Existing carbon removal technology like direct air capture currently costs hundreds to thousands of dollars per ton of CO2 removed and would require large amounts of renewable energy at scale. ![]()
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