AspiraDAC News
World's first solar powered Direct Air Capture company launches with first purchases from Frontier
30 June 2022
Officially launched: Australia is seeing the rise of a new early-scale carbon removal company, AspiraDAC, using leading innovative technology; solar powered Direct Air Capture (DAC).
The launch of AspiraDAC comes with the endorsement of global financial infrastructure company Stripe as its first customer. Stripe is making the purchases via Frontier; an advanced market commitment launched in partnership with Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey.
AspiraDAC has been selected to be part of Frontier’s first round of carbon removal purchases, following the announcement earlier this year that Frontier’s members would spend $925M (USD) on carbon removal over the next nine years, to stimulate and accelerate the development of carbon removal technology.
AspiraDAC - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate Carbon - is working in partnership with innovative Australian start-up Southern Green Gas under an exclusive collaboration agreement* to produce and deploy the project’s solar-powered modules by the end of 2022.
“With Southern Green Gas pioneering this technology - harnessing Australia’s incredible solar power resource and world-class storage reserves - we are currently completing the demonstration phase of this project and are looking to enter the construction phase later this year,” said Julian Turecek, Executive Director of AspiraDAC.
“What Frontier sees in AspiraDAC is the enormous potential in the range of technology developments we are ready to scale in the carbon removal sector,”
“This carbon removal purchase agreement demonstrates a resounding global market endorsement for solar-powered DAC technology, and a deep understanding that reducing emissions must go hand in hand with emission removal, as evidenced by the IPCC** if we are to meet projections to address climate change,”
“The DAC solar-powered modules being delivered in this project are at the heart of the agreement with Frontier, being a global-first use of this technology,”
“This agreement is highly significant as it is part of Frontier's Spring 2022 carbon removal purchase round - continuing to demonstrate their prominence and extensive due diligence as global leaders in carbon removal purchasing.” said Turecek.
The Frontier advisory panel of 19 scientists and industry experts reviewed over 26 applications from five continents, to align with AspiraDAC and five other global providers.
Nan Ransohoff, who leads Frontier, said: "Getting durable carbon removal to gigaton-scale will likely require a diverse portfolio of approaches that have a path to low costs. AspiraDAC's low temperature heat requirements, path to affordable material costs, and modular design will allow for a more distributed scale-up, and make this approach highly promising."
AspiraDAC and Southern Green Gas are currently working on the world’s first solar-powered DAC project of one tonne per day (tpd), or 310 tonne per annum (tpa), which has been made possible by funding from the Australian Government’s Carbon Capture Use and Storage Development Fund (CCUS).
Turecek explained further, "Australia's abundant solar energy potential means it is a perfect location for DAC, and with the use of solar-powered modules the facility can operate independently of traditional energy sources,"
"Additionally, the compact nature of DAC facilities means production can capture equivalent CO2 emissions using less than 90% of the land needed in reforestation carbon capture projects,”
“It is not without challenges, DAC technology is in its nascent stages, and agreements with customers such as the Frontier group will catalyze further development of the sector,”
“This will increase our ability to bring down the costs per tonne of carbon to a competitive level to take removal to a megatonne scale within the next decade, and gigatonne scale the decade following,” said Turecek.
AspiraDAC is delighted to be applying Australian ingenuity and innovation to the world’s most pressing problem in reaching net zero by no later than 2050, “This is truly an Australian success story - there is no doubt early support of DAC requires strong vision and investment, but the opportunities being realised here today can see this become a trillion-dollar industry globally.” concluded Turecek.
Media enquiries: Claire Maloney 0431 279 785 | [email protected]
Available for interview: Julian Turecek, Executive Director, AspiraDAC
About AspiraDAC: AspiraDAC is a globally leading Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology and innovation company, delivering modular, scalable and solar powered DAC projects. AspiraDAC is an Australian based and owned company, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate Carbon.
* Exclusive collaboration agreement signed March 2022