A Houston-based startup and nine other companies were selected for an accelerator aimed at commercializing technologies that capture and convert carbon dioxide into new end products and services.
Houston-based Cemvita Factory was tapped as a member of the Carbon to Value Initiative, a collaboration among The Urban Future Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Greentown Labs and Fraunhofer USA, the organizations announced April 28. Cemvita Factory and the nine other "carbontech" companies were selected from more than 130 applicants from 26 countries.
Cemvita Factory’s technology platform uses synthetic biology to genetically engineer microorganisms to absorb carbon dioxide and other molecules as feedstock. After absorbing CO2, these genetically altered microbes can then be used to produce industrial chemicals, such as ethylene.
Cemvita Factory was also recently selected as an inaugural cohort member at Somerville, Massachusetts-based Greentown Labs’ new Houston location. North America’s largest climate tech incubator program expanded into Houston earlier in April, representing its first expansion outside of the Boston region.
“We know that to effectively address the climate crisis and mitigate the effects of climate change, we need to rapidly scale and deploy carbontech solutions to accelerate the energy transition,” said Emily Reichert, CEO at Greentown Labs. “We're proud to support these startups from all over the world and look forward to the collaborations that will spark among the startups and our [Carbontech Leadership Council] members!”
San Antonio-based CarbonFree, which develops technologies to capture and convert industrial CO2 emissions into minerals for sale or storage, was the other Texas company accepted for the C2V Initiative.
The other eight startups selected for the first C2V cohort are:
- New York City-based Air Company
- Reykjavik, Iceland-based Carbfix
- New York City-based CarbonQuest
- Toronto-based CERT
- Berlin-based Made of Air
- Oakland, California-based Mars Materials
- San Francisco-based Patch
- Dartmouth, Canada-based Planetary Hydrogen
The six-month C2V Initiative accelerator program will kick off with a virtual, public event on May 6 to meet the selected startups and hear from experts in the carbontech field. The C2V Initiative will announce the opening of applications for its second cohort of carbontech startups in the coming months.
Separately, Cemvita Factory is working with Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: OXY) subsidiary Oxy Low Carbon Ventures to construct a bio-ethylene pilot plant. The pilot project will serve as a starting point to scale the technology, jointly developed by Cemvita and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, which showed to be competitive with hydrocarbon-sourced ethylene processes in lab tests.
