Counteract

NEWS SPLASH 💦 River alkalinity enhancement is becoming a reality 🚀 Congratulations to CarbonRun, one of Counteract’s portfolio companies, on their exciting $25m Frontier offtake agreement! And read how their solution is "like Ozempic" in their NYT feature released today (Link below). We’re thrilled to support their pioneering work in River Alkalinity Enhancement (RAE), a semi-open system approach that could be a key precursor to future ocean-based carbon solutions. At Counteract, we see immense potential in "semi-open" systems like rivers. These environments present fewer technical and commercial challenges compared to fully open marine systems, particularly when it comes to the critical development of high-integrity Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) protocols. Expect to hear more from the amazing CarbonRun team as they lead the way in demonstrating how RAE can not only reduce carbon but also restore ecosystems, enhance biodiversity and revive fisheries 🌱 NYT feature 👉 https://lnkd.in/eYBJS8wj Frontier announcement 👉 https://lnkd.in/eWri8UPn

At long last.. we get to talk about Alithic! Since we first met Quentin Philippe, Wang Bu, Rob Anex and Hamp Thornton at the start of last year, we've been stunned by the breakthrough their technology unlocks.  Alithic combines DAC mineralisation in a one-step process that removes the need for energy to regenerate their sorbent. This means energy savings of up 90%, yields valuable co-products and removes the common headache of CO2 sequestration.  We're proud to support Alithic from the outset, grateful that our good friends at Kiko Ventures and Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) joined the journey and delighted to see the smart people at Frontier recognise their potential with this pre-purchase.

What an energizing couple of days in Malmö at The Drop! 😍 A huge thanks to Paebbl and all our CDR friends for joining us at our third annual CDR dinner - definitely one of our highlights. Benjamin Tincq (Marble) and Poppy Russell discussed CDR portfolios, with investors and founders debating risks of open vs. closed systems, pricing MRV uncertainty, and the role different types of finance play in scaling both high- and low-tech solutions. Meanwhile Sahaj Kumar and Timon Sanktjohanser (Earlybird Venture Capital) unpacked common (mis)conceptions about direct air capture. With some healthy debate on the future cost and price of CO2, use vs storage and weather we should be optimising DAC around intermittency or for lowest total energy. Thanks to everyone who got involved, and to The Drop and Pale blue dot for putting on a stellar event! 💫

***HUGE*** congratulations to our portfolio company Phlair on pulling together some of the smartest climate investors on the planet (and us!) in their seed round, alongside this transformational grant from the EIC. Altogether a great testament to how much this team has achieved. We're so proud to be along for the ride with Malte Feucht, Paul Teufel and Steffen Garbe and delighted to be working with so many friends and partners including Extantia and Planet A Ventures.

💛 Back to school and that means.. it's conference season! September is packed with events for the Counteract team - if you are are you attending any of these please do say hello: XPRIZE / Santander Carbon Removal Capital Summit 📅 10th-12th September / San Francisco, USA 👥Andy Bonsall Carbon Unbound Europe 📅 11-12th September / London, UK 👥 Andrew Shebbeare, Matt Isaacs, Roberta Franchi The Drop 📅 16-17th September /Malmö, Sweden 👥 Andy Bonsall, Poppy Russell, Sahaj Kumar 🔥THE HEAT 📅 20th September / Oxfordshire, UK 👥 Sahaj Kumar New York Climate Week 📅 22nd-29th September / New York City, USA 👥  Matt Isaacs, Sahaj Kumar

Congratulations to Phlair on securing a €2.5m EU Grant to help build their first of a kind electrochemical Direct Air Capture plant. We're proud to be part of the journey!

We are excited to announce our investment in Fugu, a Direct Air Capture (DAC) company out of Sydney, Australia! 🎉 The closer we got to Luke Marshall and Mac Thompson’s vision, the more convinced we became that they had a great shot at building DAC systems that scale quickly, responsibly, and cheaply, while skirting the pitfalls that we’ve often seen with solid sorbent DAC. Fugu’s design reduces heat and pressure losses, and with a low temperature liquid regeneration process, they can more easily integrate with abundant (but intermittent!) renewable electricity. These are major aspects that - until recently - we hadn’t seen great solutions for, and we’re stoked to see them tackled head-on in one elegant system. Combine that with low-cost sorbents, and we think you’ve got a recipe for success. Expect to see big things come out of Fugu & Australia as global carbon removal markets continue to heat up. Thanks to Luke & Mac for the opportunity to join them on this journey, and Investible for assembling the round. Article 👉 https://lnkd.in/gYUmaqqK https://lnkd.in/eMVR7qzd

Benjamin Tincq and I are hosting a Ripple at The Drop this September on building diverse carbon removal portfolios that balance speed and certainty. If you're planning on heading to the Drop, let me know! It's going to be a heated discussion, sign up here 👉 https://lu.ma/qusob5uw

Last week, Matt Isaacs and Poppy Russell had the opportunity to attend the International Conference on Negative CO₂ Emissions in Oxford alongside some of the leading CDR scientists from around the world. It was an enriching week and we left with a lot to think about. Here are some of our reflections: 🤝Bridging Science and Industry. As CDR scales, science and industry need to learn from each other and in supporting policymakers to craft great policy. This requires the CDR industry to collaborate closely with academia, which may mean sharing data, to ensure accurate tracking of carbon and environmental efficacy. We were encouraged by Sophie Gill, Ph.D. from Isometric's announcement that their platform will publish all relevant MRV data from issued credits—a step in the right direction for transparency.  And also by the hopefulness from policymakers Cameron Hepburn, Jennifer Wilcox, Fabiola Zerbini, Fabien Ramos, and Gideon Henderson in a Plenary Session to discuss policy developments across the US, EU, Brazil and the UK: with acknowledgement that progress is slower than needed but accelerating year by year. 🌍Ensuring CDR supports emissions reductions. CDR’s success is contingent on reducing emissions in parallel. Effective communication is vital to ensure the industry is not seen as a hindrance to mitigation. A session with Holly Jean Buck, Nils Markusson, Sara Nawaz, and Zeke Hausfather highlighted concerns that CDR might slow down emission reductions. It’s currently too politically convenient to avoid reducing emissions, which needs to change and the carbon removal industry needs to be more engaged and proactive in the discussion to ensure it takes the risk of mitigation deterrence seriously. 🔒The Challenge of Durability. In his opening speech, Steve Smith pointed out that durability remains a loose thread in the CDR industry. The issue arises when emitters use non-permanent removals, like tree planting, to offset permanent CO₂ emissions. Equating permanent emissions with non permanent removals has real climate impacts. Various mechanisms were discussed on how policy can address this, including separate targets for shorter term emissions and like-for-like removals, while others highlighted the risks of current policies.  Distinguished scientist @Myles Allen presented a poster on the potential risk from the current carbon accounting embedded in the COP process, well described by our friend Robert Höglund here (t.ly/e1xx5). Continued in comments..

"We understand it is uncommon for two-year-old technology companies to sell metal" - congratulations to all the team at Magrathea for breaking moulds and bending rules! 🚀