Equinor Ventures invests in Carbon Clean

Carbon Clean’s technology enables its customers to tackle emissions from hard-to-abate industries, including Equinor’s.

Carbon Clean is a UK-based company offering proprietary technology and solvents that are used in CO2 recovery from flue gas, enabling the utilization and storage of CO2. Their technology is utilised in commercial industrial-scale facilities worldwide, and is proven to capture CO2 more efficiently and at a lower cost.

The investment will enable Carbon Clean to scale up and deliver an existing pipeline of global projects to lower emissions from industry. Carbon Clean will also continue the development of their next generation carbon capture technology, in order to achieve further 50% cost reductions and even lower environmental footprint.

Enabling a CCUS value chain

Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is expected to play an important role in the transition to a low-carbon energy future. The capturing part accounts for 60-70% of the total CCUS cost. Reducing the cost of capture through technological development and scaling up can open up CCUS as a viable option to more industrial players, such as customers of the Northern Lights project and other storage solutions.

“This first investment completed by the unified Ventures team demonstrates one of the future focus areas for the new team: Increasing activity and technology development within the venture capital space related to decarbonization. This ensures Equinor is accessing technology through the ventures ecosystem to support our low carbon ambitions”, says Sophie Hildebrand, Head of TPD R&T.

Working together for a green recovery

Carbon Clean has a global reach and a network of industrial partners determined to capture the carbon necessary to stop climate change. “It is also an opportunity to form new collaborations across the globe to shape CCUS business opportunities”, states Torbjørg Klara Fossum, Head of Global CCS.

Aniruddha Sharma, CEO of Carbon Clean, said: “As the world tries to recover from an unprecedented pandemic, achieving net zero ambitions remains a top priority for a green recovery. This investment demonstrates the need felt by major industrial companies for break-through technology in the carbon capture space. We look forward to working closely with Equinor to support a number of CCUS projects in the coming months to limit the climate impact of the use of fossil fuels.”

Equinor acquired a minority shareholding in the (MUSD 22) Series B financing round together with Chevron Technology Ventures, Icos Capital, Marubeni Corporation, Wave Equity Partners and other existing investors. Equinor will have an observer seat on Carbon Clean’s board of directors.