03 February 2021

Canada: Svante has raised US$75m in an investment round. The financing was led by Temasek and includes strategic investors Chart Industries, Carbon Direct and Export Development Canada (EDC). Existing investors OGCI Climate Investments, BDC Cleantech Practice, Chevron Technology Ventures, The Roda Group and Chrysalix Venture Capital also participated in the round.

The investment gives the company will allow the company to advance a number of initiatives over the next three years, including work to support several commercial scale carbon capture facilities to address hard-to-abate emissions from industrial operations such as cement manufacturing, blue hydrogen production and natural gas boilers. Svante has now attracted more than US$150m in funding since it was founded in 2007 to develop and commercialise its solid sorbent technology.

“Lowering the capital cost of the capture of the CO₂ emitted in industrial production is critical to the world’s net-zero carbon goals required to stabilize the climate. Leaders from industry, financial sectors and government agree on the enormity of the challenge and the critical need to deploy carbon capture and carbon removal solutions at Gigatons scale. The carbon pulled from earth as fossil fuel needs to go back into the earth in safe CO₂ storage,” said Claude Letourneau, President CEO of Svante.

Mexico: The Mexican Association of the Ready-Mix Concrete Industry (AMIC) has joined the National Cement Chamber (CANACEM). Jaime Rocha Font, president of CANACEM, said that the inclusion of AMIC would better reflect the cement and concrete sector and aid its work with regulators, according to the El Sol de Mexico newspaper. AMIC was created in 1958 and brings together 42 ready-mix concrete production companies that operate 410 concrete plants and represent 70% of local concrete production.