Neustark, a Switzerland-headquartered carbon removal provider, has secured $69 million (£54.4m) in funding to help ‘rapid’ scale-up in the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) market.
The company’s solution ‘allows the durable removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere’, as the company puts it. This involves capturing CO2 at point source, then binding it in mineral waste streams via an accelerated mineralisation process.
Neustark claims that its CDR is ‘permanent, verified and measurable.’ The process involves capturing CO2 from partnering biogas plants, before being liquified and transported to construction waste recycling sites. The CO2 is then injected into concrete granulates from demolished buildings, or waste such as slag or slurry.
Where Neustark comes in is through its technology which is able to bind the CO2 permanently to the pores and surface of the granules, which can then be used to produce fresh recycled building materials.
The growth equity round was led by Decarbonization Partners, a partnership between BlackRock and Singapore-based investment company Temasek. Blume Equity, a climate tech investor, was another participant. One of Neustark’s previous investors, sustainable construction firm Holcim, has a partnership with the company including a commitment to rolling out Neustark’s CO2 storage technology across its demolition sites worldwide.
To date, the company has 19 capture and storage sites in operation, with a further 40 in the pipeline, and 1819 tons of CO2 net removed.
“This growth investment will take us into the next exciting phase of our mission, helping us to further scale our impact across Europe, enter new markets in North America and Asia Pacific, and develop new solutions to store even more CO2 in mineral waste streams,” said Johannes Tiefenthaler, Neustark co-CEO and founder.
Tiefenthaler added that in spite of ‘substantial’ growth in the CDR market, removal of carbon dioxide needs to be exponentially accelerated if 2050 net zero goals are to be achieved. “This target will only be possible by globally deploying highly scalable, measurable and commercially viable carbon removal solutions at the scale of millions of tons per year,” he added.
