Temasek’s decarbonisation-focused investment subsidiary GenZero has invested in Carbo Culture’s US$18.3 million ($24.46 million) Series A round. The Finnish-American firm aims to bring to market its proven carbon removal technology by 2025.
The round was co-led by GenZero and San Francisco-based venture capital firm True Ventures, with participation from Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment Ltd) and “notable climate tech investors and family offices”, according to a Nov 28 statement.
Carbo Culture is a climate solutions provider and biochar carbon removal technology developer. The company says it converts carbon dioxide bound by plant matter into stable carbon, “locking it away for 1,000 years”.
Its patented Carbolysis process creates “vast amounts” of high-grade renewable energy and promises permanent, solid carbon removal. The resulting carbon material, called biochar, is a “high-quality” soil amendment used alongside nutrients in agricultural soils, says the company.
According to Carbo Culture, biochar technology is “one of the only functional ways” to remove carbon in an “energy-generating manner”. “Carbo Culture salutes all the efforts made in farm-scale and in-field conversion technologies, and is aiming to lead the industrial-scale segment of biochar.”
Having successfully commissioned R3, one of Europe’s largest biochar plants in August, the company intends to use fresh capital to start developing commercial scale projects, which will be financed with project capital.
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Frederick Teo, chief executive officer at GenZero, says: “Carbo Culture’s work leverages the power of both technology and nature to produce biochar with superior carbon sequestration capabilities. By undergoing Carbo Culture’s Carbolysis process, a greater amount of carbon is locked in per unit of biochar and stored more durably than conventional production methods.”
This proprietary technology also avoids the production of bio-oil, resulting in higher yields of clean syngas from waste biomass, which in turn can be used to generate renewable electricity and heat, says Teo. “We look forward to supporting Carbo Culture in their next stage of growth and scaling its decarbonisation impact across more markets.”
“GenZero is such an important partner for us at this growth inflection stage,” says Carbo Culture CEO and co-founder Henrietta Moon. “To accelerate the green transition, companies like us need partners who understand the global energy transition and carbon markets, and are able to support companies in leading the space as they scale.”
Henrietta and the Carbo Culture team have proven with their R3 reactor pilot that carbon can be removed from the atmosphere and locked into stable form, says Toni Schneider, partner at True Ventures. “It was an imaginative idea and now it’s real. This next step of building a commercial facility is going to be a notable milestone in decarbonisation efforts.”
