Carbon Ridge Raises $9.5M For Maritime Carbon Capture Tech

Carbon Ridge is a cleantech start-up dedicated to lowering emissions in maritime shipping. The company has raised $9.5 million in funding. The funding will propel the further development of its modular, low-cost carbon capture solution and aid it in helping decarbonize the maritime industry, which accounts for about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Maritime shipping is an important contributor to global emissions, and one of the strategic focuses of companies looking to reduce "Scope 3" emissions in their value chains.

Carbon Ridge is a 2021-founded OCCS-onboard carbon capture and storage technology specialist with headquarters located in California and Texas. How does the OCCS technology by Carbon Ridge work? Carbon Ridge's system captures exhaust gases emitted by a ship's funnel, separates CO2 into a compressed, liquefied state to be offloaded at some subsequent port for permanent sequestration or to be converted into valuable products. This innovative approach presents a significantly smaller system footprint, which would take as little as 75% of the space, and additional energy consumption under 5%.

For example, the OCCS system at Carbon Ridge has an environmental advantage. The technology, aside from trapping CO2, removes more than 99.9% of particulate matter, NOx, and SOx emissions. It has been estimated that the cost of such an OCCS system would be five times cheaper than competitive alternatives such as methanol or ammonia as fuel, which makes it economically and environmentally viable.

Carbon Ridge CEO and Founder Chase Dwyer underlined the need for onboard carbon capture in shipping, the rising costs and availability issues of alternative clean fuels. "Carbon Ridge has developed the most modular, low cost and operationally efficient carbon capture solution in the market to address current and future decarbonization targets," Dwyer said.

Crosscut Ventures and Western Technology Investment (WTI) led the round with existing investors including The Grantham Foundation, Berge Bulk, Rusheen Capital Management, and Plug and Play Ventures. Katapult Ocean, Incite, Spitzer Industries, and Canopy Generations Fund also provided support to the round.

Rick Smith, Co-founder and Managing Director at Crosscut Ventures said, "The brilliant answer by Carbon Ridge to reduce close to entirely emissions from huge maritime vessels, by tackling head-on one of the primary sources of man-made carbon emissions in a cost-effective way.".

This fresh capital will enable Carbon Ridge to hasten the commercial demonstration of its OCCS technology toward a wider goal of decarbonizing the maritime industry as it looks for sustainable paths to more stringent emissions reduction targets.