Global investors, including Future Planet Capital, are supporting the development of Captura’s scalable and cost-effective Direct Ocean Capture technology.
Captura Corporation, a California-based carbon removal company, today announced the closing of a $12 million Series A financing round which targeted the firm’s Direct Ocean Capture technology offering.
The raise was led by Equinor Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of multinational energy company Equinor, and was joined by Future Planet Capital, Aramco Ventures, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Hitachi Ventures, and mTerra Ventures. Following this investment, Ed Philips, Partner and Head of Origination at Future Planet Capital, is taking a seat on the company’s board.
““We are very excited to have this diverse cohort of investors join the Captura team. We’re now poised to combine technical innovation borne at Caltech with the proven experience of our global industry and financial partners to make low-cost carbon removal at scale a reality.””
Future Planet Capital is backing Captura’s Caltech-developed Direct Ocean Capture technology, as it has significant potential as a low-cost and highly scalable carbon removal solution. Future Planet Capital has identified carbon removal technology as a key sector to support in efforts to tackle climate change. The group of investors bring extensive experience and expertise across the energy and engineering sectors, including large-scale project delivery and building out ocean-based infrastructure, helping to support Captura to scale rapidly to meet growing customer demand.
Future Planet Capital has identified carbon removal technology as a key sector to support in efforts to tackle climate change
Using only renewable electricity and ocean water as inputs, Captura’s Direct Ocean Capture technology removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the ocean and delivers a measurable and verifiable stream of CO2 that can be permanently locked away, or used as an input for in low carbon products, such as sustainable aviation fuel. The CO2-depleted water returned to the oceans then draws down an equivalent quantity of CO2 from the atmosphere, harnessing the ocean’s natural capacity as one of the world’s largest carbon sinks.
““Captura has fast become one of the most promising carbon removal companies on the market by leveraging the world’s greatest natural carbon sink, the ocean. Of all the solutions we’ve seen, Captura stood out, both on technology and track record of delivery. We are thrilled to partner with Steve, CX, Harry and the Captura team as they build commercial, gigaton scale, sub-$100 carbon removal solutions at a fraction of the capital cost of competing approaches.””
Captura’s approach is highly scalable and cost-effective. By leveraging the ocean’s ability to remove atmospheric CO2, Direct Ocean Capture avoids many of the technical engineering challenges that face land-based Direct Air Capture technologies. The process requires no rare earth elements, produces no by-products, and can take advantage of existing ocean-based infrastructure for large-scale deployments, such as desalination plants or retired oil and gas platforms. By reducing emissions, Direct Ocean Capture also has the potential to assist in addressing ocean acidification.
The Series A funding will allow Captura to accelerate its piloting programme, while simultaneously continuing to improve Direct Ocean Capture technology.
In 2022, Captura began ocean trials of its first pilot system that is capable of capturing one ton of CO2 annually in Newport Beach, California. Captura is currently building its next-generation pilot system that will have 100x the capacity of the first. This next-generation Direct Ocean Capture system is expected to be installed at a desalination plant in early 2023. In parallel, Captura’s engineers and scientists are developing proprietary optimized membranes to increase electrical efficiency, and further reduce carbon removal costs of using the company’s technology.
Since its inception, Captura has secured funding from a combination of private investment, government funds, and innovation awards, including the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E SEED fund and support from SoCalGas. Captura was named one of 15 Milestone Award winners in the Musk Foundation’s Carbon Removal XPRIZE competition and secured its first carbon removal pre-purchase from the corporates Stripe and Shopify, facilitated by the Frontier Climate initiative.
Captura’s team combines expertise from the carbon removal industry, large-scale engineering experience and world class researchers, and is led by Steve Oldham, former CEO of Direct Air Capture company Carbon Engineering.
““Captura is thrilled to welcome investment from this group of industry-leading companies. Our investors are not only providing the funding to accelerate our technology development efforts, but also bring the global reach and expertise to help drive our business to the next level. Combined with our unique technology and world class team, Captura is now well positioned to become a major player in the growing carbon removal field.” ”