Dive Brief:
- Captura, a carbon capture company whose technology extracts carbon dioxide from the ocean, announced Monday it raised $21.5 million as an expansion to its Series A funding. The venture arms of shipping and logistics company Maersk, Portuguese electric company EDP and North Carolina energy company Eni all became investors in the new round.
- The company currently has two operational pilot plants in California, with a third in development with Norwegian oil company Equinor, who invested in both Captura’s initial Series A round and reinvested in the expanded round — set to come online this fall in Norway.
- The startup’s ocean-reliant technology uses seawater and renewable electricity to power its carbon capture and removal process, which extracts CO2 directly from seawater to be permanently stored or reused, according to the company. Captura said removing carbon dioxide already stored in the water will give the ocean additional capacity to store atmospheric CO2 in its role as a natural carbon sink.
Dive Insight:
Captura’s expanded round of funding brings the company’s total Series A haul to over $31 million, including $12 million the carbon capture company raised last January. The pilot plant set to be installed in Norway will have the capacity to capture 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the ocean annually.
The company’s technology turns captured carbon dioxide into lower emission fuel or stores it permanently through processes like geologic sequestration. Carbon dioxide is around 150 times more concentrated by volume in the ocean compared to the air, according to the release, which gives the company hope its technology will be scalable and useful for hard-to-decarbonize industries.
U.K.-based firm Future Planet Capital, who invested in the first round, led the expanded round of funding. Future Planet was joined in its reinvestment by Equinor, India-based Freeflow Ventures, the venture arms of Japanese conglomerate Hitachi and Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco, mTerra Ventures and the energy-focused EIC Rose Rock Venture Fund.
Maersk also committed to invest in a variety of green fuel and GHG reduction products. The logistics company has a 2040 net-zero target and aims to transport a minimum of 25% of its ocean cargo using green fuels by 2030. EDP also has a 2040 net-zero goal and a commitment to use 100% renewable energy generation by 2030.
“With our growing network of deployment partners and investors, and the success of our technology pilot program, Captura is now well-positioned to bring our technology to market and deliver climate solutions at [a] meaningful scale,” Captura CEO Steve Oldham said in the release.
Direct ocean capture is still a nascent technology, and Captura was one of three projects funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy when the California Institute of Technology researchers who founded the company were first exploring the project.
“Direct ocean capture technologies are a promising option for servicing a very large and diverse carbon removal industry needed to mitigate legacy carbon dioxide emissions that are exacerbating anthropogenic climate change,” ARPA-E says on its website.
Following the completion of its pilot program with Equinor, Captura plans to begin operating commercial plants, each with the scale to remove at least tens of thousands of carbon dioxide annually, according to the release.
