That’s enabled LanzaTech to expand the number of products that utilize CO2. “There’s a lot more interest because consumers have become much more interested in buying things that are lower carbon,” says Holmgren. Almost every major airline in the world has pledged to use at least 10% sustainable jet fuels by 2030, yet SAF makes up only 0.1% of global aviation fuel supply - and much of it is made from sources other than captured CO2, such as used cooking oil. Yet for all the hype around sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using captured carbon, the industry is still an extremely small player. And LanzaJet, the company’s spin-off, plans to start producing sustainable jet fuels at a commercial scale this year. LanzaTech has also inked agreements with airlines including Japan’s All Nippon Airways to supply CO2-derived jet fuel. In 2018, the company’s jet fuel produced from the emissions of a Chinese steel mill helped power a Transatlantic flight. But the tide began turning later that decade. In the early 2010s, when Holmgren touted carbon-derived ethanol to prospective customers, her sales pitch was met with skepticism. The Illinois-based company uses a carbon-eating bacteria – discovered in the guts of rabbits and preserved as powder – to make alternative ethanol in bioreactors not dissimilar to how breweries ferment beer. Jennifer Holmgren, chief executive officer of LanzaTech Global Inc., has experienced the shifting sentiment firsthand. “It’s just a whole different landscape today than it was a decade ago,” says Sasha Mackler, executive director of the energy program at Washington, DC-based non-profit Bipartisan Policy Center. That’s in stark contrast to 2015, when barely any venture money went to technologies that utilize CO2. To grow the emerging sector, global venture capitalists in 2022 poured nearly $500 million into carbon utilization businesses, according to the IEA. Most companies working on CO2-sequestering products are still in their infancy. Carbon-derived fuels and chemicals, for example, could theoretically grow to the scale of billions of tons of CO2 use per year if companies could perfect their technology and lower costs. While roughly one-third of that is reused to force more oil from the ground - hardly a carbon-neutral process - CCU advocates say that the number of companies coming up with new uses for carbon has mushroomed in recent years, paving a way to unlock climate benefits. Roughly 230 million tons of CO2 are utilized every year, according to a 2019 report by the International Energy Agency. Using it - so-called carbon capture and utilization, or CCU - to create new products from perfume to jet fuel could be an important tool in the fight against climate change, too, though the nascent industry has major hurdles to overcome. Large amounts will likely be stored underground. The world will almost certainly need to capture billions of tons of the gas annually in the coming decades. Renewable energy and electric cars alone won’t be enough to cut CO2 emissions to zero. Its package reads: “Turning CO2 into something beautiful.” While the volume of CO2 utilized in the bottle is extremely small, Air Company’s perfume showcases one way the coming wave of captured carbon can be put to use. 5, Sheehan says his product is uniquely valuable: Every 50-milliliter bottle uses 3.6 grams of CO2 that otherwise would have been released into the atmosphere. It takes some brave souls to venture into this domain, but those who win could reap very rich rewards.īreathe appears to be one of those intrepid startups from India - we perhaps need more of them.While the pale yellow-color Air Eau de Parfum is about 50% more expensive than Coco Chanel’s signature No. Even more important, the economics of CO2 based products are currently unfavourable for many products and pathways. For one, there is significant technology turbulence on the optimal pathways to convert CO2 into end products. Breathe’s solution can be considered as belonging to the broad trend of CO2 utilization in which CO2 captured from power plants, industries or even directly from air is utilized to make a range of products - fuels, chemicals, food and even diamonds, yes, diamonds!Įxciting as it may sound, CO2 utilization is still in its early stages. This is where ideas such as these that result in indigenous methanol production as well as simultaneous use of captured CO2 come in useful. India currently imports almost 90% of its total demand of methanol. In addition to its direct uses (as a fuel, as a fuel additive etc), methanol is important because it is the starting material to produce a wide range of other chemicals that can be used to make or used in plastics & polymers, polymers, construction materials, pharmaceuticals and agrichemicals. Methanol is one of the most important chemicals.
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