Making stuff out of thin air: 10 companies reducing CO2?emissions that will WOW you

Why is this relevant?

• What could you make with CO2? Basically anything, from?vodka, diamonds and activewear, to industrial materials such as concrete, plastic, foam and carbon fibre, and even food etc...
• The sector could have the potential to reduce the world’s CO2?emissions by more than 10%, according to?analysis?by the University of Michigan’s?Global CO2?Initiative.
• This year, over $550m had flowed in by the end of September according to research and consulting firm?Cleantech Group; that’s more than in the previous five years put together.

?Hand-picked company selection

• ?Twelve (2015) / $57m?funding boost in July / Make essential products from air, not oil. Claims is the world’s first carbon neutral, fossil-free jet fuel produced by electrolysing CO2.?
• ?On?/ IPO in September / Develops running shoes - with half of all its shoe bottom foam from?captured carbon instead of petrochemicals.
• Air Company (2017) / Sells CO2-made vodka and perfume, and produced hand sanitiser during the pandemic.?
• LanzaJet / produces?aviation fuel that captures waste gas emissions and uses bacteria to turn it into useable ethanol fuel.
• SynHelion / Uses solar energy to transform CO2?to syngas.
• CarbonCure (2012) / funded by Bill Gates’s investment firm / creates, develops, and licenses solutions that consume waste CO2 to make better concrete.
• Solar Foods?in Finland, and?Air Protein?in California – use the tagline “meat made from air”
• ?Deep Branch,?develops a scalable technology aimed at transforming the polluters of today into animal feed ingredients.
• ?Made of Air, takes low-value wood waste and transform it into high-value, carbon-negative thermoplastics.?
• Online marketplaces such as?Expedition Air?and?SkyBaron?are even springing up to sell consumer goods made with CO2?emissions.

Bottlenecks and what’s needed

• Customers are not ready - Products need to spend a lot in marketing to communicate the value of their products to their consumers. Big distributers still see the CO2 benefit as a novel idea, rather than mainstream.
• Therefore inter-industry communities and accelerators are an important step - like the C2V Initiative or the FightBack Community. But more and bigger ones are needed.
• Governments are still reluctant, and there is little transparency to where the money is spent.
• Better and more detailed guidelines and certificates for carbon accounting might also be needed to boost consumer acceptance.

Take on this

• There is no way around it, the best way to drive down emissions is to move away from fossil fuels in the first place.
• Innovation can support that process, and cool tech is showing up by the day. There is a market for it, with the right teams and products, something big could happen.?