Prize Capital, LLC today released a comprehensive Carbon Capture and Recycling (CCR) Industry Overview report detailing an emerging industry whose technologies are using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a feedstock in the production of valuable products such as fuel, building materials, animal feed, specialty chemicals, and plastics, among others.

The report takes an initial look at this industry and the innovators within it.  It examines the rationale for CCR, current CCR approaches, the forces shaping such approaches, and focuses the majority of its content on providing snapshots of the innovators leading the creation of this new industry, including their respective stages of development as they march towards commercialization.

“While carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the most frequently discussed approach to carbon mitigation, we’ve discovered another potential option and complement in CCR,” said Matt Peak, Prize Capital’s director of clean technologies and the report’s author.  “With the right catalyst, this nascent industry could be spurred to not just reduce carbon emissions, but also to enhance operators’ bottom lines.”

As outlined in the report, the industry’s technologies fall into three categories: Biological, chemical and catalytic, and mineralization.  The report identifies, profiles, and provides contact information for 136 different entities working on various CCR approaches: 37 biological, 63 chemical and catalytic, 23 mineralization, 1 blended approach, and 12 uncategorized entities.

In addition to 136 CCR entities, the report recognizes the attention that the biological category has received in recent years by not only profiling the 37 biological entities that are either applying or have applied their technologies to the utilization of power plant flue gas, but also providing names, descriptions, and contact information of an additional 260 biological companies, universities, and laboratories in an appendix that have the potential to utilize flue gas but aren’t known to explicitly do so at this time.

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a consumer-owned, not-for-profit wholesale power supplier serving 44 electric cooperatives in four western states, provided funding for the report to help identify the range of CCR technology opportunities that could assist the power supplier to cost effectively manage carbon emissions.

“The innovation in the CCR space will be revolutionary for our industry,” said Ken Anderson, Tri-State’s chief executive officer.  “Turning carbon liabilities into assets is a significant shift in thinking that could help ensure cost-effective solutions to keep electric power affordable and reliable.”

Altogether, the CCR entities vary in size from unfunded concept to over $50 million in funding received.  They’re being developed within private companies as well as at universities and laboratories around the world.  They have received government and private funding totaling approximately $1 billion.  Some are offering full spectrum solutions from capture to reuse, while others focus only on reuse and need viable capture solutions to realize their potentials.

As the report outlines, the challenges associated with commercializing and deploying CCR technologies include: being able to recycle carbon year round, in various climactic conditions; thermodynamic and thermochemical logistics and efficiencies; scalability; proximity to necessary resources; as well as others.

With the emerging array of technologies and producers, as well as the current slate of technological challenges, the report states that investors and other interested parties, as well as the CCR industry itself, would benefit from models that promote diversity of innovation as well as financial diversity, rather than placing “bets” on single technologies and producers.

The report concludes that in the near-term, this new industry represents a paradigm change that could avert the need to resolve complex issues associated with CCS and prompt renewed action on carbon mitigation.  Such action is essential as a carbon-constrained world emerges.

The report is available for $10,000 via the Prize Capital website: http://www.prizecapital.net

About Prize Capital, LLC
Prize Capital, LLC was established by entrepreneur and environmentalist Lee Stein to provide capital to environmental start-ups worldwide while reducing risk for investors.  Its proprietary methodology diversifies risk and widens market access, enabling Prize Capital to deliver capital to innovators from early-stage companies not served within current financial markets.  Prize Capital’s parallel investment funds mitigate risk through a unique option equity strategy and create additional leverage through the prize mechanism.  For additional information, visit www.prizecapital.net

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CONTACTS – Prize Capital, LLC

Matt Peak, Director of Clean Technologies
Mobile: +1 (213) 327-8935
Email: matt@prizecapital.net