3 sustainability questions to Rahul Misra, Head of Carbon Product & Operations at CarbonCure Technologies

What is the history and mission of CarbonCure?

CarbonCure was founded in 2012 by Rob Niven in Halifax, Canada, where the company’s headquarters remain today. Rob had recently graduated with a Masters in Engineering from McGill University, where he studied the benefits of utilizing CO2 in fresh concrete. That year, Rob attended a United Nations summit on Climate Change, where he saw a global demand for solutions to reduce carbon emissions. Inspired by the summit, Rob was determined to find a way to use CO2 in every-day concrete, and help concrete producers respond to the demand for green building products. Since 2012, in collaboration with our network of low carbon concrete producer partners around the world, CarbonCure has achieved more than 265,000 metric tons in carbon savings.
CarbonCure’s mission is to deliver a portfolio of carbon dioxide removal solutions that annually reduce and remove 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere by deploying our technologies across the global concrete industry.

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What is unique in the way CarbonCure contributes to reaching our global targets to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change?

Concrete’s key ingredient, cement, accounts for around 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions each year. That’s three times the emissions of global aviation. CarbonCure aims to transform concrete from a climate challenge into a climate solution. We inject CO2 into concrete, where it is chemically transformed into a mineral, calcium carbonate, increasing the concrete’s compressive strength. Importantly, this mineralized CO2 is permanently stored within the concrete material and will never be released into the atmosphere. At the same time that concrete stores this CO2, the strength gain from mineralization enables concrete producers to reduce the amount of carbon-intensive cement used in their concrete while maintaining its strength and performance. This means they can produce the same high quality material with a lower carbon footprint. It’s a win-win for our climate.

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What do you see as the most promising trends when it comes to decarbonization?

We’re very excited to see surging demand for lower carbon building materials, especially concrete, across the private sector. We’re also glad to see policymakers tearing down barriers to innovation and pulling levers to start to incentivize emerging carbon removal technologies and low carbon concrete solutions. But with more than 125,000 concrete plants around the world, what we’ve accomplished so far is just a drop in the bucket of concrete. Much more policy, investment and private sector acceleration of these technologies is needed.
Carbon credit revenue is an important tool in the effort to scale, while simultaneously enabling corporate partners and credit buyers to take an active role in decarbonizing a hard-to-abate sector. At CarbonCure, we use funds from carbon credit sales to develop and enhance our technologies and make entry into new markets around the world. We also share carbon credit revenue with our concrete producer partners to incentivize the industry to adopt our technologies, expand green jobs in their communities, and more rapidly deliver climate benefits.

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CarbonCure Technologies is a fast-growing carbon dioxide removal tech company on a mission to reduce and remove 500 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually — equal to taking 100 million cars off the road each year. CarbonCure’s suite of technologies permanently store captured CO₂ in concrete through carbon mineralization. With hundreds of systems operating across the global concrete industry and a methodology verified by Verra, CarbonCure’s technologies currently save from the atmosphere thousands of metric tons of CO₂ each month — with significant growth and impact, year-over-year. CarbonCure’s cutting-edge research and innovation have garnered global recognition and prestigious titles, most notably Carbon XPRIZE Grand Prize Winner, 2022 CNBC Disruptor 50 List Company and Cleantech 100 Hall of Fame Company. CarbonCure’s investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Amazon, Microsoft, Carbon Direct, and Mitsubishi Corporation.

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