From C02 Concrete, Diamonds Prop Up Investor Interest

What do diamonds, sunglasses, high-end lululemon sportswear and concrete have to do with climate change? They can all be made using carbon dioxide (CO2), locking up the planet warming gas. And tech startups behind these transformations are grabbing investor attention, Jane Lanhee Lee and Nia Williams reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Aether Diamonds are the world's first carbon-negative diamonds.

Some use bacteria. Some use proteins. Some use chemical processes to speed natural reactions. Most pull apart the carbon and the oxygen in CO2 to create another chemical that is used to make consumers goods.

Companies in the area raised over $800 million so far this year, more than tripling from 2020, according to a Reuters review of data from PitchBook, Circular Carbon Network, Cleantech Group, and Climate Tech VC.

"I don't want to call it a green tax, but our consumers who really do care … have demonstrated that they're willing to pay a bit of a premium," said Ryan Shearman, chief executive of Aether Diamonds, which grows diamonds in the lab using captured CO2.

On the opposite end of the glamor spectrum, the concrete industry, green also is good for marketing, said Robert Niven, CEO of CarbonCure Technologies, which makes technology that injects CO2 into fresh concrete, and strengthens it by locking in the carbon.

"About 90% of our uptake has been from independent concrete producers large and small that are just looking for that competitive edge."

The world needs to capture and store 10 billion tons of CO2 annually by midcentury to slow climate change, according to United Nations estimates, a scale the companies can only dream of when current carbon capture pilots often are at scales of hundreds and thousands of tons.

Humans produce greenhouse gases that are the equivalent of around 50 billion tons of CO2 each year, and governments will gather in Scotland in late October and November for a UN climate conference on cutting emissions.

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