Counteract

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! 🚀

There aren't many products with the potential to store half a billion tonnes of CO2. Huge congratulations to Tom Robinson and his team at ADAPTAVATE have figured out how to turn plasterboard from an emissions intensive to carbon negative product, just as their 50,000 m2 production facility comes online. 👏

Congratulations to all the team at RepAir Carbon Capture - very big news for the European DAC scene!

After 3 and a half years under "home brew" branding, we're delighted to unveil a new look for Counteract, designed to embody our holistic approach to carbon removal investing and our bold pursuit of new ways to remove greenhouse gases. Check out https://counteract.vc A huge thank you to all the team Domino Studio for all their smart thinking and hard work ❤️

Exciting times ahead! 💛 The Counteract team will be attending multiple events this June. Will we see you there? If you’re in the area, let’s meet up! 🙏 Here’s where you can find us this month: SuperReturn 📅 4-5th June / Berlin, Germany 🎤 Andrew Shebbeare, speaker Carbonfuture Carbon Removal Summit 📅 13th June / London, UK 👥 Sahaj Kumar HackSummit 📅 13-14th June / Lausanne, Switzerland 👥 Roberta Franchi CO₂RE - The Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub International Conference on Negative CO2 emissions 📅 18th-21st June / Oxford, UK 👥 Poppy Russell, Matt Isaacs, showcase Negative Emissions Platform Summit 📅 20th June / Brussels, Belgium 👥 Roberta Franchi London Climate Action Week 📅 22-30th June / London, UK 👥 Andrew Shebbeare, Andy Bonsall, Matt Isaacs, Poppy Russell, Roberta Franchi, Sahaj Kumar

Congratulations ecoLocked! Great news for Counteract portfolio company ecoLocked who have announced completion of their EUR 4 million funding round today. This puts them in a great position to accelerate sales and further development of their innovative products which use biochar to store CO2 in concrete and other building materials. We are honoured to continue supporting them and look forward to doing so in conjunction with the existing extended family plus new investors Matterwave Ventures and Climentum Capital. Go team ecoLocked!  🚀🏢🌱