Rio Tinto invests in mining carbon dioxide from the air
A California startup that aims to suck carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere announced $35 million in new investments today from a coalition
that includes Rio Tinto PLC, the world’s second-most valuable mining company.
CarbonCapture Inc., which launched in 2019, also revealed
plans to establish a pilot program for capturing airborne CO2 with van-sized
units at a nickel mine being developed in northern Minnesota by Talon Metals
Corp. and Rio Tinto.
"The direct air capture space has been around a dozen
years or so. But really, for the first 10 years, it was a bit of a science
experiment," Adrian Corless, the company’s CEO, said in an interview with
E&E News. He previously ran Carbon Engineering, a Canadian direct air
capture (DAC) company.
"We’re entering the market at a point where there is
capital available, a growing public awareness of the need for carbon removal
and I think also a regulatory environment, which is evolving to really support
direct air capture," Corless added.
CarbonCapture’s units, which are being designed to fit on
the bed of a flatbed truck, will each capture 100 tons of carbon dioxide per
year. That’s about as much CO2 that’s released from 22 cars over a year,
according to EPA estimates.
The units will capture carbon with an absorbent mineral
called zeolites. Used in everything from laundry detergent to oil and gas
fracking fluid, zeolites are inexpensive and nontoxic.
Because the minerals are already manufactured in large
quantities, CarbonCapture and its investors say they can economically scale
production of their DAC units.
The company’s growth will also be helped by California’s Low
Carbon Fuel Standard and a national tax credit for carbon removal. The
Senate-passed infrastructure bill, which includes $3.5 billion to create DAC
demonstration hubs, could further aid CarbonCapture, Corless said (Energywire,
July 30).
CarbonCapture will begin feasibility studies later this year
for the planned pilot project at the proposed Tamarack nickel mine near Duluth,
Minn.
"In terms of hardware in the field, we’re looking at
2023, which is actually not that far out," Corless said. "So that’s
our ambitious goal."
Rio Tinto and CarbonCapture are still working out the
details of how the mineralization process will work at the Tamarack site. It
involves converting liquid containing carbon dioxide into rock.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that
to avoid the worst impacts of global warming the world needs to remove 100
billion to 1 trillion tons of carbon from the atmosphere by the end of the
century.
Rio Tinto invested $4 million in CarbonCapture, which has
raised more than $43 million since it was founded by entrepreneur Bill Gross.
The companies declined to disclose how much equity that
investment secured for the mining conglomerate or the valuation it implied for
the startup.
A top official from Rio Tinto suggested the Australian
mining giant is looking into deploying more DAC units at mines where the
geology and economics are conducive to storing carbon.
Our investment in CarbonCapture shows Rio Tinto’s commitment
to supporting innovative technologies that can make a meaningful contribution
to addressing the climate change challenge," said Nigel Steward, the
mining conglomerate’s chief scientist.
"We look forward to working with CarbonCapture to
explore the potential for permanently mineralizing and storing CO2 at Rio
Tinto’s sites, which may also offer new commercial opportunities," he said
in a press release.
Rio Tinto has a market capitalization of about $113 billion.
It aims to reach net-zero emissions by midcentury (Climatewire, Feb. 18).
CarbonCapture’s other investors include Prime Movers Lab, a
Wyoming-based venture capital firm; Idealab Studio, a tech incubator; and Time
Ventures, the investment firm of Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of
Salesforce.com Inc. and owner of Time magazine.
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