Carbon180 just launched the first and only startup accelerator for carbontech, hoping to link entrepreneurs to the resources they need, derisk early-stage technologies, and transition them towards their first double-bottom-line investment.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon, lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Dvorit Mausner, director of Carbon Tech Labs at Carbon 180. Thanks for being here, Dvorit.
Dvorit Mausner: Great to be here, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I stomped all over your toes there. But okay, I’m going to forgive myself. Move on.
Unknown speaker: It’s okay.
Ross Kenyon: What is Carbon Tech Labs and what is Carbon Tech?
Dvorit Mausner: So Carbon Tech Labs is the first and only accelerator focused on what we consider to be a trillion dollar carbon tech market opportunity. So we’re a business accelerator focused on carbon waste to value products and services. Carbon tech is basically the utilization of carbon wastes, taking them from being, let’s say, a liability and turning them into an asset from a waste into value. So it’s essentially taking, let’s say, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but also biomass, Or garbage or manure and using a variety of technological processes, creating valuable products, let’s say like cement or plastics or composite materials, building materials, and especially fuels.
It’s an opportunity for us to take carbon waste and take it back from the atmosphere, let’s say, down to earth, creating new markets that are better, stronger, faster, and ultimately cost competitive.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I love hearing about stuff like this. I love when people see a business opportunity rather than just a policy. I like the creativity of it. I like the reframing of this, not merely as a waste product, but this is actually something of value that in many cases people will pay.
Dvorit Mausner: Yeah, I mean, it definitely is an enormous ecosystem and there are people who play a variety of parts. So there are the funders, there are the educators, there are the platform builders. We’re focused on the entrepreneurs, although at Carbon 180 in general, we also take a research approach and a policy approach. And so the ecosystem really requires everybody to play a part. Our consideration of carbon tech is this is the business opportunity to reverse climate change. So we really use it in a business context. But the more people who want to talk about carbon tech, the more national articles that have carbon tech in their titles and in their copy, we’re thrilled.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, fantastic. Well, this is Carbon Removal Newsroom, so there’s a news angle here, I promise, fair listener. And what is it? Because I saw this go live this morning that you made a big announcement about a partnership and about this program opening up. So why don’t you tell us about what just happened?
Dvorit Mausner: Okay. We’re very excited to announce that Carbon Tech Labs is fully funded to recruit its first cohort. So we have major funding from the Grantham Foundation and As well as an exciting partnership with the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority. Essentially, these groups have come together to say that they understand that carbon tech is a nascent field. And that the entrepreneurs and the startups within this space need additional support to get them over what we call their first valley of death, so to speak, so that they’re ready for their Series A investments. There’s not going to be a way for this carbon tech sector to scale unless people are realizing the potential in it today and the opportunity to get involved at the cutting edge.
So with the funding that we’ve recently been able to announce, we’re now able to accept up to 20 teams in our first cohort, which is extremely exciting. We had a passive call for applications last year received. Over 70 applications. Now we’re doing our active recruiting process. And in Carbon Tech Labs, with this funding now, we’ll be able to provide non-dilutive grants to teams essentially up front to help them with their customer discovery and their tech validation. It’s a three-phase program. It will run for four months. Teams can stay wherever they are.
We’re running the program virtually. And at the end, we have this captive audience of potential investors who have told us in advance that Carbon Tech is a major interest of theirs. So it’s an exciting opportunity for these teams to not only receive the education and the support that they need, but also to be able to meet effectively, immediately after the conclusion of the program, investors that are excited about taking Carbon Tech to the next level, to its market capacity. So the announcement this morning is bringing all of our network into the loop, letting them know that we’re kickstarting this program, we’re launching officially, and all of the information is online at carbontechlabs.
org. Where anyone from an investor to an entrepreneur to just an enthusiast of carbon removal can come learn more about the program.
Ross Kenyon: Wow, that is very exciting. And I hope if any listeners are out there wondering about how to get funding for their carbon tech, carbon removal business, this is something that you should look into. And I’m curious about the Wyoming connection here too. Does it have something to do with the feedstock that companies who are transforming carbon dioxide into some sort of product, are they going to be partnering on that sort of infrastructure, CO2 delivery side? Is that the connection? Yeah.
Dvorit Mausner: Yeah, that’s right. People ask us quite a bit about our connection to Wyoming because some folks understand that they are the largest coal producers in the United States. And what that means is that they have major facilities with flue gases that are ripe for carbon dioxide and removing carbon tech companies to utilize. So they have what’s called the Integrated Test Center, which we’ve partnered with in order to provide opportunities for tech validation for the companies in our program that are particularly interested So I think the Wyoming governor’s announcement just in the last few days of this major grant is indicating that Wyoming is in a position to diversify its economic ability to generate power and business through its natural resources.
And so while they are the number one coal producer, they’re also one of the most Progressive states, in my opinion, of looking for new opportunities for capitalization within this diversifying energy environment. So we’re very proud to have them as our partner. We’re excited to send our teams to their test center. And we feel that having their support, not only through funding, not only through the test center, but also just through their advocacy will be a major boon for the carbon tech industry overall.
Ross Kenyon: I’m of two minds about that, and they’re equally weighted or thereabouts. There is a thing I really like about this, which is that Wyoming, as a coal producer and coal consumer, giving them an upside to climate change. I think it’s more persuasive than moral arguments a lot of the time. I think that is a very practical way to talk about climate change, especially with states that are... Are red in nature and coal producers and consumers. I think that’s great. But one of the criticisms that occasionally comes up with carbon capture and use is that does this technology actually transition into carbon capture and storage?
Is this something that will cause drawdown or is this going to be dependent on being attached to coal-fired power plants? Is this eventually going to be able to swap out where direct air capture can take that first step of producing the feedstock that is carbon dioxide?
Dvorit Mausner: Yeah, it’s such a good question. So because the sector is so nascent, one of the ways that I think about it is that anyone who’s focusing their attention right now on building out technologies and markets for carbon capture will eventually be building the markets of the future where we’re not dependent on flue gases, we’re not dependent on industrial sources like coal, for example. So say that there are companies that are able to test their production, their technology, and At something like the Integrated Test Center, which requires coal manufacturing. But then they’ve proven that they can use captured carbon dioxide to create fuels, let’s say, or some sort of valuable chemical, additive, feed, fertilizer, diamond.
The uses are sort of limitless. And given that, then we’re also seeing that we can then turn to direct air capture and So essentially, all of the technology needs to develop in parallel, whether it’s direct air capture from the atmosphere or it’s direct air capture from flue gases. And that these conversion technologies are proven to be able to scale. So that while we may be able to create plastics from the waste carbon of coal, one day those plastics will come straight from the atmosphere. And of course, you know, the reason we’re all here, the reason we’re discussing carbon removal is we all understand that there’s already too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and one way or another it has to come out.
So part of that is reducing the emissions from industrial practices today and part of it is just taking it out of the air. So my point is, Carbon tech can only advance if all of the technologies are advancing simultaneously. So today we’ll test them in one place and tomorrow we’ll implement them somewhere else. And to me, it’s an opportunity for development that we have now that hopefully we won’t need to rely on in the future, but I think they’re both equally important.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I gave you such a wimpy hedging preface of a question for that because I definitely think that the tendency will be to swap those out and I hope that’s the case. Of course. This is a common thing that people object. I love being told I’m right. I’m happy to hear that I’m not totally out of left field there. So that’s good. Has anyone been accepted yet into the accelerator? Have you recruited?
Dvorit Mausner: Right. Not just yet. So our program is going to kick off in June, which means we have April and May to continue to recruit the teams for whom we feel we can provide the most value. There’s many carbon tech companies out there. Our goal is to accept those companies for whom we feel we can make the greatest difference, whether that means our grant funding is going to be most valuable to them, or also that they’re interested in the customer discovery process that So in June, we’ll be making the announcement of which teams we’ve accepted, as I mentioned, up to 20 teams.
In the meantime, because of the passive call for applications last year and all of the networking we’ve been doing in the meantime, we’re currently actively working with about 10 teams just to better understand what they need from us, what we’re able to offer. So we’ve been using the last few months as a test opportunity to refine our programs. But we don’t have an official cohort yet. We’ll be making that announcement in June. And so if any companies are listening or you know of anyone who’s taking carbon waste, turning it into value, they can apply easily by going to our website, which again is carbontechlabs.
org. You can also skip it and go straight to the application. We have a bit. ly link, which is bit. ly slash carbontech labs application. That’s another opportunity for folks to see what we’re asking for. It’s a short application. We do a brief intake and then we just continue our research from there until we’re ready to accept the top teams.
Ross Kenyon: That is tremendous. And I hope that as a giant success, many people should apply. I hope that you find some of those companies that will become the brand names of tomorrow in what I hope to be a trillion dollar industry as well. I think carbon removal and Carbon Tech. It’s time is here. And it’s very exciting to see these resources develop to start fostering this talent in these early stages for which accelerators already exist for many, many, many other sectors of the economy. So the carbon 180 octopus grows, it appears.
Unknown speaker: Yeah. I like that ecosystem.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, you have this ecosystem that you’re cultivating. I think that’s super important. So we’re big fans of the Carbon 180 newsletter. Please check that out and go apply if you have a business. And thank you, Dvorit, for being with us. That was really good.
Dvorit Mausner: Great. My pleasure, Ross. Thanks so much for having me.
