Sustaera Inc. – a startup developing a novel direct air capture system, based in Cary has raised nearly $5 million in capital from two investors, according to an SEC filing. The filing discloses that the amount was raised from two investors and there is also a potential of $10 million in total from the round.
The funding could be used for working capital or normal compensation to executive officers. Sustaera is a startup that is a spin-out of Susteon – a climate tech company focused on developing hydrogen, carbon capture, and carbon capture utilization and storage technologies.
The company received a grant of $75,000 in February 2021 to work on “a direct air capture (DAC) technology for capturing and converting carbon dioxide directly from large emitting sources.”: It is also funded in Series A by leading climate tech investors.
Sustaera’s novel direct air capture system uses alkali-based sorbent materials and directly integrates renewable electricity to achieve the capture of CO2. The system does not require new manufacturing or special material supply chains for scale-up. It manages to reduce the use of land as compared to existing DAC technologies.
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The goal of the team is to rapidly develop this idea and enable DAC at a cost of less than $75/ton CO2. The company wants to provide a solution to the economies of scale problem associated with the direct air capture method – they are currently not economically feasible and operating costs start at around $300 per ton of CO2.
The carbon capture investment is needed to help the technology move further in its deployment stage. As it is one of the most expensive carbon capture technology out there, it would need innovation and more cost-effective solutions to take off and make a tangible contribution to the goal of decarbonizing the economy.
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