Caliche: Grey to Green with Carbon Capture

Everyone loves a good superhero story. Today's superheros are from Caliche, who were working on injecting microbes in oil wells to aid in oil extraction and just couldn't get rid of these hardy little microbes who just loved eating carbon. Insight struck them-what is a huge pain to oil extraction is a huge opportunity for removing carbon.

Caliche was born which isolates extreme-environment microbes to absorb carbon dioxide from effluent/flue gases in power and industrial applications along with several other interesting use cases. They raise a culture of extremophilic organisms in the lab, then use them to convert carbon dioxide into a biomass which can then be further converted into useful inputs such as 5 ALA (used in neutraceuticals), bioplastics, synthetic fuels, fertilizer or animal feed.

What I love about the founders in that they are incredibly technically savvy and working in the oil & gas industry it would have been easy for them to continue lucrative careers drilling for fossil fuels. Instead, they have turned their attention to capturing those same fossil fuels and already have 6 pilot projects in deployment. Their largest project to date capture 50 kg/day of CO2, with a 1000 kg/day plant under construction and a 20,000 kg/day plant under discussion.

By using micro-organisms, they can lower the cost (and carbon impact) of chemical absorbents and are already capturing carbon at $70-$75/tonne, competitive with some of the biggest players worldwide. They are targeting sub-$50/tonne and could potentially drive even lower at scale. For reference, today's EU carbon price is $70/tonne, with highs over $110/tonne just this year.

While this is very high for the power sector (where wind + solar + storage alternatives are already cheaper than coal, as I have discussed), carbon capture is the cheapest alternative for industrial sectors such as metal and minerals (esp. steel), cement and chemical industries. While India does not yet have a carbon price, this is already relevant for companies exporting to Europe (under CBAM) or with internal (corporate) carbon targets/prices. As India develops a carbon price, carbon capture will be a competitive solution, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors.

Caliche is continually innovating, having brought their microbes out of the lab and they can now bring an innocula from the lab to grow on-site to capture carbon from waste streams with carbon dioxide concentrations as low as 5% and as high as 95%. Capturing carbon dioxide at a point source tends to be far cheaper than direct air capture after the fact (which is currently >$250/tonne). They are also a great story for the efforts of Indian PSUs (Public Sector Undertaking) which have supported Caliche with paid pilots, R&D spport, as well as working to find uses for the captured carbon (for example, Caliche is currently collaborating with the Ministry of Fisheries to convert the waste biomass to fish feed). Caliche truly is a testament to what is possible if Indian innovators are backed by government support to research and scale.

Carbon capture will be a significant component of the decarbonization journey (likely 5-20% of today's carbon emissions will not have a ready alternative), and Caliche has the potential to be a leader not just in India but for the world.