Carbon Upcycling secures US$26m funding to assist scaling up

Carbon Upcycling, a leader in circular decarbonisation solutions for hard-to-abate sectors, has just closed a US$26m Series A round, co-led by BDC Capital’s Climate Tech Fund and Climate Investment. The Calgary-based decarbonisation company is part of a growing Canadian cohort of innovators bringing technology to scale to reduce the high greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of cement and concrete. 

Carbon Upcycling is a carbontech company. It has developed and patented a novel technology to help reach a circular net-zero emissions future. The technology produces a low-carbon cement replacement that can reduce up to 50 per cent of clinker in cement, claims the company. The technology reduces GHG emissions in two ways. First, by sequestering CO₂ from industrial flue gas into waste materials used to replace cement (CO₂ removal) and second, by reducing the amount of cement required in concrete (CO₂ avoidance).

Abundant and low-cost industrial by-products, like steel slag and fly ash, are taken and combined with CO₂ to permanently mineralise it. The result: a low-carbon, high-performance cement replacement that is permanently storing CO₂, and improving strength and durability of the end product concrete.

The performance of several of Carbon Upcycling’s low-carbon cement replacements have been validated by some of the largest global cement producers including CEMEX, CRH and others. Carbon Upcycling  is now engineering and deploying their first two industrial scale projects at cement plants with CRH and CEMEX.

BDC Capital’s investment in Carbon Upcycling is part of BDC’s commitment to sustainability and contribution to help advance Canada’s 2050 net-zero ambition. The new round of funding will be used to deploy a string of industrial scale projects to validate the cost effectiveness of Carbon Upcycling’s solution. It will support the first fully industrial-scale carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) deployments at cement plants in North America and Europe. 

BDC Capital has previously invested in CarbiCrete, a Canadian carbon removal company whose patented technology enables the production of cement-free, carbon-negative concrete made with industrial byproducts and captured CO₂. BDC Capital’s Industrial, Clean and Energy (ICE) Technology Venture Fund also invested in CarbonCure Technologies, another Canadian company whose solution enables concrete producers to use captured CO₂ to produce reliable, low-carbon concrete mixes.