Carbon Re raises £4.2m seed funding to tackle gigatonnes of emissions from the highly pollutive cement industry
News, by AlbionVC
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Carbon Re, a climate tech company building state-of-the-art AI to decarbonise energy-intensive industries, has raised £4.2 million seed funding to scale up development and deployment of its novel technology. Their Delta Zero AI platform enables the highly pollutive cement industry to reduce over 50 kilotonnes of annual CO2 emissions per plant. Each installation of the software saves as much CO2 as taking 11,000 cars off the road.
Energy-intensive industries, such as cement, steel and glass, account for over 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions and are one of the hardest sectors of the economy to decarbonise. The current plan for these industries relies heavily on Carbon Capture and Storage, a technology that will take decades to scale and increases the cost of these fundamental materials by as much as 60%. Carbon Re’s platform, in contrast, is already reducing emissions today, cuts the cost of production, and requires no new equipment.
Planet A Ventures, a Berlin-based climate tech venture capital firm led the investment, with follow-on participation from Clean Growth Fund, UCL Technology Fund and Cambridge Enterprise. The new investment will enable product roll-out into the global cement market and expand into other energy-intensive industries, such as steel and glass.
In just two years, Carbon Re’s innovative software is already being used in pilot projects to cut fuel use and CO2 emissions by up to 10% at cement plants in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Sherif Elsayed-Ali, CEO of Carbon Re said, “At a time of escalating fuel prices and increasing emphasis on CO2 reduction targets, there is an urgent need for action. Carbon Re is connecting the biggest challenge of our time – climate change – with the biggest opportunity – advances in AI. Our cement plant trials have demonstrated that Delta Zero can deliver dramatic CO2 savings on a near-live basis.
“Our platform provides a unique solution for energy-intensive industries that delivers £2 million in fuel cost savings and 50,000 tonnes of CO2 savings per plant. This latest funding round will enable us to accelerate our mission to reduce carbon emissions by gigatonnes every year.”
“Even at this early stage, CarbonRe are already reducing the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere by meaningful amounts. At scale their impact will be enormous, equivalent to removing all the cars from the roads in the UK and beyond. This is a fantastic example of university Deeptech leaving the lab and changing the world, and we’re delighted to continue supporting”
DAVID GRIMM, INVESTMENT DIRECTOR
Tech Crunch has more here.
Silicon Canals has more here.