Today, we’re thrilled to announce our investment in RepAir, Inc. CEO Amir Shiner and the team at RepAir are developing a novel approach to removing carbon dioxide from the air - what is often referred to as direct air capture (DAC).
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere acts as a greenhouse gas (GHG), trapping warmth from the sun in the atmosphere. A small amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is actually really important to keep the Earth’s climate from getting too cold, but in recent years human activities have driven the concentration up 50% from pre-industrial times, fuelling the climate crisis.
To fix this problem, we need to do two things. First, we need to reach net-zero new emissions. Second we need to rapidly reduce the extant concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere. DAC can help with both of these things by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and turning it into a concentrated stream that we can either utilise or sequester.
RepAir’s novel electrochemical approach to DAC promises to require significantly less energy than existing approaches and lets them take a more modular approach to deployment, enabling them to rapidly and easily co-locate with a great sequestration site or alongside a plant that will utilise their carbon dioxide off-take. We believe this balance of low-cost and flexibility will be a key advantage going forward.
This $10m investment round will help RepAir build its first pilot facilities and was led by our friends at Extantia. This is our second investment in an Israeli company, and the team really represents everything we’ve come to expect from startups we’ve seen in that country. Amir and Ben Achrai (RepAir CTO) are smart, driven and focussed on making the world a better place. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with them.