As calls for quick action on climate change continue to grow, new tools are being developed around the world to help remove the heat-trapping greenhouse gases from the air.
A Direct Air Capture (DAC) startup called Octavia Carbon is showing the way in Africa. Octavia was started in Kenya two years ago. It makes DAC machines that it uses to pull carbon out of the air and store it underground. Carbon is a greenhouse gas that is the main cause of global warming.
After working on the technology for a while, Octavia started capturing carbon in February. Now, the company wants to build more machines to add to the two it already has that can catch 50 tonnes of carbon per year. The startup wants to remove more carbon from the air in Kenya after getting $3.9 million in a seed round and, according to the company, $1.1 million from the early sale of carbon credits.
The equity investment for Octavia was raised in a round led by Lateral Frontiers and E4E Africa. Catalyst Fund, Launch Africa, Fondation Botnar, and Renew Capital also took part.
Martin Freimüller, co-founder and CEO of Octavia, told TechCrunch that the company plans to be able to catch 1,500 tons of dust every year starting in 2025, when it is fully operational and a storage site run by a partner company, Cella Mineral Storage, opens.
“The technology has been in the works for a while, and now we’re taking it out of the lab to use on a large scale in the field,” said Freimüller, who co-founded the company with mechanical engineer Duncan Kariuki.
Freimüller said that while Octavia takes carbon out of the air and turns it into a liquid, the company has teamed up with Cella, a carbon sequestration business, to store the carbon in the ground.
The first batch of carbon caught by the startup should be injected before the end of the year. Freimüller said that the project will be one of the first in the world to turn carbon captured into rock underground.
“Once we have that liquid carbon dioxide, we give it to our storage partner. They would then inject it underground at high pressures so that it could seep into the pores of volcanic rock. Volcanic rock is full of calcium and magnesium, which reacts with the CO2 to make carbonate minerals like calcium carbonate or limestone,” Freimüller explained. “Naturally occurring materials and naturally occurring processes. We’re just speeding that up in geological areas where that hasn’t really happened for a long time.”
Kenya’s Edge In The Market
Freimüller said that one reason the startup chose to set up shop in Kenya was because of its geography. He said that the Rift Valley region of the country has the right kind of rocks for storing carbon.
There is no other place like Kenya that has the East African Rift Valley. This is important for two main reasons. The rocks are cool because they are thin and volcanic, especially basalt rocks, which can store CO2 underground. The bedrock can hold a lot of water. He said, “You could store all of humanity’s CO2 up to this point in Kenya alone, because the East African Rift Valley has about 8,600 cubic kilometers of that pore space.”
Additionally, removing carbon from the air requires a lot of energy. For Octavia, the founders chose to set up shop in Kenya because of its many green energy sources, especially geothermal energy. They say that Octavia has an advantage over its peers in the developed world that use fossil fuels for their DAC activities and then buy renewable energy credits, which is not a good idea.
In Europe, North America, Japan, and the Middle East, 27 DAC plants have been put into service. These plants can collect 0.01 Mt CO2 per year. Five of these plants have the ability to absorb more than 1,000 tons of CO2 per year. The Climeworks Orca plant in Iceland, which opened in 2021, the Global thermostat headquarters plant in Colorado, and the Heirloom facility in California, both of which opened last year.
As the business grows, more are likely to come. In fact, 130 DAC facilities are being built around the world to absorb 65 MtCO2 per year. This is how much capacity will be needed by 2030 to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
Freimüller says that it can be done, though it won’t be easy.
“Who would have thought that batteries could power an SUV?” He also said, “That has been done, and that’s the power of engineering to kind of change the boundaries of what’s possible.”
Freimüller used to work for Dalberg, a global consulting company that specializes in planning for international development. It was there that he first learned about the huge opportunities in the climate business.
Since then, his business has grown to have a staff of 60 people, with 40 engineers working on research and development and the rest doing bench scale chemistry, which tests materials, methods, and chemical processes.
As Octavia, a finalist in the Xprize Carbon Removal competition, grows its business, it plans to give more DAC and storage carbon credits to make more money. A Danish carbon removal market called Klimate is one of the startup’s biggest customers. It says it has signed up 12 customers so far.
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Freimüller said, “That many customers at seed stage is rare for a deep tech company.” “Getting these customers took a lot of work, but it’s clear that people want what we’re offering.”
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