💨 150+ Carbon Capture and Removal Startups to Scale Ups

There’s no way we can get on track to reach our climate goals without drastically scaling up carbon capture and removal.

Having now passed the point of going for avoidance and reduction vs. removals, it is clear we need both. And while there is no silver bullet to hitting net zero, a wide range of innovations are making great strides, including nextgen Direct Air Capture (DAC), Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), and Ocean CO2 Removal.

“In order to stand a chance in fighting climate change, Carbon Capture and Removal Technologies will play a key role in achieving net-zero emissions and tackling legacy emissions. 

Despite existing challenges, recent funding rounds in that space underscore the growing confidence and potential in these technologies. 

As they mature and become more cost-effective, they are expected to create substantial economic and environmental benefits, reinforcing their critical role in our climate strategy,” Cristina Doumitrachko and Dr. Anne-Kathrin Hinze at DTCF tell us.

To better understand the carbon capture and removal landscape, here at Hack we mapped 100 leading pioneers and put together this growing list of 150+ startups scaling groundbreaking pathways to reduce emissions. 

The list includes:

• Innovators in the Global South: Mexican biochar startup Húmica and Tierra Prieta, Kenyan BCR BIOSORRA and DAC startup Octavia Carbon, carbon-negative construction startup FormWork based in Hong Kong

• Industry Scaleups: Climeworks, building the world’s largest DAC plant and Heirloom who built the US’ first commercial DAC plant

• Recently funded startups: Ucaneo raising €6.75 million seed funding, Yama announcing $3 million seed funding, Graphyte securing $30 million Series A as well as Applied Carbon closing $21.5 million Series A

As a handy primer let’s first dive into 10 carbon capture and removal technologies with insights from industry insiders.

🌳 The What: Afforestation is about planting trees in areas that haven’t seen forest cover in 50+ years. By creating new forests in previously barren land, the aim is to restore ecosystems, capture carbon, and combat the impact of climate change.

🔎 The Why: Afforestation mitigates climate change by absorbing CO2, while also creating new habitats that support biodiversity. It helps prevent soil erosion, stabilizes water tables, and reduces local air pollution. It also supports local economies through job creation and counters the effects of desertification and deforestation.

💡 Industry Insights: “At MORFO, our approach ensures at least 300 tCO2e/ha in carbon capture, designed to be resilient even in climate scenarios of up to 5°C by 2100. We use advanced AI to analyze 100 hectares per minute at an ultra-high resolution of 0.5 cm, giving precise biodiversity insights. Additionally, we’ve increased operational efficiency by 50x while reducing costs by 40%, making large-scale, cost-effective restoration a reality,” notes Adrien Pages of MORFO.

“Cultivo’s AI-driven platform identifies afforestation projects around the globe that have the highest regeneration potential, and then forecasts how much carbon would be removed over 30 years if that degraded area land were to be afforested. Moreover, the platform also forecasts and measures the increase in water retention, biodiversity, climate resilience and social impact allowing investors to screen afforestation projects as speed and scale,” adds James Clifton of Cultivo.

⚡The What: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is a process that captures and stores carbon dioxide (CO2) from biomass to generate energy.

🔎 The Why: According to the IPCC, carbon removal with BECCS should scale to between 30-780 Billion tonnes within the century to meet the 1.5° climate target. 

💡 Industry Insight: “The BECCS technology, unlike some other carbon removal methods, has already reached TRL8, meaning we are already capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at scale. To accomplish this, we don't need to develop new technologies but rather implement those that are already proven,” shares Adam Grachek of Biorecro.

🏭 The What: Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS) leverages photosynthesis to capture carbon from the atmosphere, then process it for long-term storage.

🔎 The Why: BiCRS combines natural processes and engineering to absorb CO2 and store it in long-lasting products or underground, helping to limit global warming to 1.5°C. It can also generate income from biomass products, reduce wildfire risk, and replace fossil fuels, while avoiding emissions from waste decomposition or burning.

💡 Industry Insights: “Waste biomass can play an important role in removing carbon dioxide from the environment when the waste is no longer incinerated or decomposed without use. At RECOAL, waste biomass is converted via thermal carbonization into a stable coal and then permanently stored in a geological repository,” explains Joachim Hanssler of RECOAL.

“Removing carbon via biomass will be essential for global net zero and can accelerate this new industry by deploying rapidly and benefitting several stakeholders. For example Charm can build and deploy new machines in months, not years like most carbon removal technologies. Additionally Charm hires ex-oil workers for climate roles, prevents wildfires and improves the health of forests by reducing wildfire fuel load, and shuts down old oil wells once Charm fills them with bio-oil,” adds Sebastian Smith of Charm.

🌾 The What: Creating biochar sequesters carbon. Plant material contains a lot of unstable carbon as it decays and if left as is, this would leach into the atmosphere. But in the biochar production process, this carbon is converted into a stable form. When that biochar is applied to the soil it stores carbon in the ground and enriches the soil reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers.

🔎 The Why: Using biochar in agriculture allows carbon to be locked away in the soil for hundreds, potentially thousands, of years. It sequesters carbon in a more efficient way than if the biomass used as a feedstock was just left to decay of its own accord. It also enhances soil structure, reduces pollution from heavy metals and boosts soil porosity. It allows soil to hold water for longer and regulates nitrogen and microbial activity.

💡 Industry Insight: “With a patented technology leaning on science and R&D, BIOSORRA integrates end-to-end biochar carbon removal production and regenerative agronomic know-how to demystify Biochar Bora and utilise carbon removal to restore tropical farming soils and climate justice,” highlights Ines Serra Baucells of BIOSORRA.

🪨 The What: Carbon mineralization happens everywhere on geologic timescales of thousands of years. But there are ways to speed it up to human timescales, and this could help the fight against climate change.

🔎 The Why: The right kind of mineral-rich rock is present in about 5% of the earth’s surface. CO2 is all over the atmosphere. Availability of the raw materials for mineralisation is a huge advantage, even if scale-up has challenges. This abundance is one factor behind estimates that carbon mineralisation could remove up to 1 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2035 (significant, since the IPCC models a need for 8-10 billion tons of annual carbon removal by 2050)

💡 Industry Insight: “Carbon mineralization competes - or goes together - with storage of CO2 in offshore underground wells. It needs to be safe, durable and affordable. And to make sense at all it needs to be large scale," says Silko Barth of Blue Skies Minerals.

🧱 The What: Concrete is widely used in construction and can absorb a tiny amount of CO₂ from the air during its lifetime (say 100-150 years, assuming its fully exposed to the air). That CO₂ is chemically bonded in the cement in concrete, so even when that concrete is demolished at the end of its life, the CO₂ does not leak - unless heated up to 800+ degrees. Cement in concrete in theory can absorb up to 30% of its weight by CO₂. 

🔎 The Why: Around 14 billion m3 of fresh concrete is produced each year, which equates to roughly 4 billion tonnes of fresh cement required in that concrete. Therefore, in theory, that cement could have just over 1.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ mineralised into its structure.

💡 Industry Insight: “As opposed to trying to inject CO₂ as a gas from the outside into a setting concrete which has many limitations, most pertinently that CO₂ can be lost to the atmosphere, Concrete4Change has developed a ‘carrier’ material that absorbs CO₂, holds the CO₂ in air, and only once mixed as a small additive in fresh concrete does the carrier begin to slowly release its CO₂ into the mix, permanently locking away the CO₂ forever and improving the properties of concrete as a result,” explains Dalraj Nijjar of Concrete4Change.

☁️ The What: Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology uses chemicals or minerals to selectively react with and trap CO2, pulling it out of ambient air. Unlike carbon capture, which generally happens at the source of emissions, DAC can theoretically happen anywhere. It’s a viable, but energy-intensive and expensive method for atmospheric carbon removal.

🔎 The Why: DAC is a promising solution with a relatively small land and water footprint for removing already-emitted carbon pollution from our atmosphere to curb further global warming.

💡 Industry Insights: “Direct air capture technologies are described as having relative ease of monitoring, reporting, and verification compared to other carbon dioxide removal approaches. Carbon dioxide storage has also been proven to be generally safe and effective when properly implemented and monitored," Tank Chen of CDR.fyi tells us.

“At Ucaneo, we are developing an advanced electrochemical Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology mimicking the human lung. We combine innovative biomimetic solvents and unique designs with proven components to build a modular mass-producible product. This modular product can be integrated into renewable energy sources, runs fully at room temperature and promises huge cost and energy savings compared to traditional heat based technologies. Imagine 35,000 trees on 15m2,” adds Florian Tiller of Ucaneo.

🪨 The What: In the ‘wild’, rock weathering takes thousands of years but scientists have now found ways to speed up the method by a factor of 50000, so it can capture carbon in mere decades rather than millennia.

🔎 The Why: Enhanced rock weathering is the process of crushing rocks into powder and spreading it over farmland or beaches, where it can improve the soil or be quickly washed out to sea, storing the carbon on geologic timescales in the process.

💡 Industry Insight: “At UNDO, we are doing community-based carbon removal while being designed with scale in mind. It's very much a "Think globally, act locally" mindset. By activating global partnerships with mining and quarrying partners and working with local farming networks to bring co-benefits to their soils and crops through a regenerative farming practice, UNDO's enhanced rock weathering solution is set to remove hundreds of thousands of tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the near term,” tells Jim Mann of UNDO.

🌊 The What: Ocean-based carbon dioxide removal supercharges the ocean’s natural ability to absorb and store CO2 from the atmosphere using the planet’s biggest inbuilt carbon sink: the ocean.

🔎 The Why: Oceans are vital for absorbing carbon dioxide, and have the potential to remove more than 10Gt/year of CO2. Accurate measurement, reporting and verification solutions will be crucial in delivering and scaling up ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) strategies.

💡 Industry Insight: “Oceans are vital for absorbing carbon dioxide, and have the potential to remove more than 10Gt/year of CO2. Accurate measurement, reporting and verification solutions will be crucial in delivering and scaling up ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) strategies," explains Roberta Franchi of Counteract VC.

🚢 The What: The transport sector faces mounting pressure to reduce GHG emissions from new global regulations, customers, and shareholders, but has limited viable options. Onboard carbon capture systems and retrofits are some of the ways to achieve this.

🔎 The Why: Transport is responsible for around 23% of the world's energy-related CO2 emissions, and is the largest emitting sector in many developed countries.

💡 Industry Insight: “We see carbon capture playing a pivotal role in decarbonizing the shipping industry by capping the emissions from as many of the existing global fleet of ~60,000 ships as possible and by reducing the emissions from new ships in concert with other clean fuels and technologies,” concludes Alisha Fredriksson of Seabound.

150+ Carbon Capture and Removal Pioneers

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