CarbonCure
CarbonCure is a leading provider of CO2 injection into concrete technology, helping customers reduce cement content, save on costs, and permanently sequester carbon dioxide.
CarbonCure is a leading provider of CO2 injection into concrete technology, helping customers reduce cement content, save on costs, and permanently sequester carbon dioxide.
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Concrete is the most abundant man-made material in the world and is one of the largest single contributors to climate change; its manufacture is responsible for 8% of global GHG emissions.1
Concrete’s high GHG emissions are driven by the carbon-intensive process of producing cement, which makes up 10% by mass of concrete. Approximately 60% of GHG emissions come from the CO2 released during the chemical process of making cement, with most of the remaining 40% of emissions coming from the combustion of fossil fuels to heat the cement kilns to temperatures above 1,200oC. In addition to being one of the biggest global GHG emitters, the concrete industry is also one of the hardest-to-abate.
CarbonCure, founded in 2012, offers ready-mix concrete plants a technology that injects CO2 into the concrete mix. The CO2 undergoes mineralization and becomes permanently embedded in the concrete, which enables producers to safely reduce the cement content of their mix designs by up to 5% while ultimately maintaining the same strength level. Cement represents the most expensive component of concrete and almost the entire embodied carbon emissions. This reduction in cement, combined with the permanent capture of CO2, delivers both GHG reductions and cost savings to the concrete manufacturer.
- Technology commercialization – CarbonCure’s business model is built for global scaling via its tried-and-tested technology delivered by a leasing model that requires no capex for customers. CarbonCure provides carbon removal technologies for concrete producers of all sizes and its core solution is currently licensed in around 800 plants worldwide, with a possible market opportunity of ~100,000 plants globally.
- Carbon credit leadership – CarbonCure has built a robust carbon credit valuation methodology, verified by Verra, which offers a higher-value Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) credit in a growing voluntary carbon market (VCM).
- Climate impact – In 2023, CarbonCure’s products helped its customers to avoid 127,000 tCO2e through production of low carbon cement, a figure that should increase by an order of magnitude over the next 5 years as the company scales.
- Peer recognition – CarbonCure’s cutting-edge research and innovation have garnered global recognition and prestigious awards, most notably the Carbon XPRIZE Grand Prize and induction into the Cleantech 100 Hall of Fame, having been recognized for seven consecutive years in the Global CleanTech’s list of 100 most innovative and promising companies contributing to the net zero transition.
As CarbonCure’s first institutional investor, BlueEarth brings its networks with other investors at a time when CarbonCure aims to transition swiftly to being an operationally excellent, profit-oriented company as it scales rapidly. BlueEarth is supporting CarbonCure by helping recruit top talent to the executive team and board, increasing the operational reporting insights, sales introductions to global concrete plant owners, and supporting the management team to rapidly expand the business both organically and via new products.
“Working with Blue Earth gives us an opportunity to collaborate with like-minded leaders who steer the growth of sustainable economies,” said Robert Niven, Chair and CEO of CarbonCure Technologies. “Partnerships like ours are critical to help accelerate decarbonization in the built environment, which is one of the most impactful routes to achieving global warming reduction goals.”
