Carbon Upcycling is a leader in circular decarbonization solutions for hard-to-abate sectors, including cement, steel, and mining.
The Calgary-based company recently raised a $34.3 million Series A funding round co-led by BDC Capital’s Climate Tech Fund and Climate Investment to reshape how heavy industry approaches carbon emissions.
At the Energy Disruptors: UNITE 2024 conference in Calgary this week, Carbon Upcycling’s Apoorv Sinha laid out an ambitious strategy to create value from carbon and provide scalable solutions for hard-to-abate sectors.
Addressing Carbon Challenges in Heavy Industry
The CEO of Carbon Upcycling began his presentation by emphasizing the enormous challenge facing the world in the coming decades: building infrastructure equivalent to a city the size of New York every month between now and 2060. Such urbanization is necessary for the development of the global south, but it poses a significant challenge to achieving a green future, especially given that materials like cement are inherently carbon-intensive.
Unlike transportation, which can be decarbonized through electric vehicles, cement production involves processes that naturally release large amounts of CO2. Cement, the building block of modern infrastructure, is produced by baking limestone at very high temperatures—a process that releases both fossil fuel emissions and CO2 from the decomposition of limestone itself. For every ton of Portland cement produced, approximately 700 to 800 kilograms of CO2 are emitted.
This carbon problem extends beyond cement to other hard-to-abate sectors, such as steel, fertilizers, and petrochemicals. Sinha highlighted the need for scalable solutions to tackle emissions across these industries, and Carbon Upcycling aims to provide one such solution.
Transforming Byproducts into Low-Carbon Materials
Carbon Upcycling’s solution focuses on utilizing industrial byproducts—such as slags from the steel industry, coal ash, and mineral tailings from EV mining operations. The company chemically activates these materials with the presence of CO2, enabling them to act as sponges for carbon while simultaneously creating a useful end product.
This approach, Sinha explained, not only sequesters CO2 but also produces a blended cement that can reduce carbon emissions by up to two-thirds compared to conventional cement. With three of the 20 largest cement companies in the Western world partnering with Carbon Upcycling, the company is on track to scale its technology further.
“What we’re doing,” Sinha said, “is fundamentally transformational, allowing not just cement companies but heavy industry at large to decarbonize even where traditional carbon capture and storage (CCS) may not be viable.”
From Lab to Real-World Applications
Over the past four and a half years, Carbon Upcycling has scaled its technology from the lab to real-world applications. The company has produced over 3,000 tons of low-carbon cementitious product for the Calgary marketplace, using it in sidewalks, home foundations, and even state-level Department of Transportation projects in the United States.
Sinha underscored the importance of considering the end users’ experience, stressing that a successful green product must be functionally equivalent or superior to existing alternatives—and crucially, affordable. He highlighted that achieving cost parity is essential for driving the adoption of low-carbon materials in a highly commoditized sector like cement.
Building the World’s First Carbon-to-Value Plant
Carbon Upcycling’s progress has caught the attention of major industry players, including CRH, one of the largest cement producers globally. CRH has invested in Carbon Upcycling and committed to building a full-scale carbon-to-value plant integrated with the largest cement plant in Canada, located in Mississauga. This facility will demonstrate that Carbon Upcycling’s technology can seamlessly integrate with existing cement operations, providing a cost-effective, low-carbon alternative without requiring changes at construction sites or other downstream processes.
Sinha emphasized that removing the “green premium”—the price difference between low-carbon and conventional products—is critical for the industry’s adoption of new technologies. Carbon Upcycling has already managed to achieve competitive pricing with conventional cement in the North American market, moving closer to widespread adoption.
Expanding Beyond Cement
While Carbon Upcycling’s immediate focus is on decarbonizing cement production, Sinha outlined a broader vision for the company. Cement, he explained, is just the first sector where they are proving their technology and scaling up operations. To achieve gigaton-level impact by 2050, Carbon Upcycling aims to expand into other heavy industries such as steel, petrochemicals, and fertilizers—sectors responsible for 60-70% of industrial emissions globally.
“The core technology we’ve developed can be tailored to solve the emissions problems faced by these industries,” Sinha said. “While the world moves towards an information age with AI and other advances, we cannot forget the foundations—metals, steel, cement—that support this progress.”
A Vision for a Carbon-Neutral Future
Sinha concluded by discussing Carbon Upcycling’s goals for the next decade. The company aims to become the most impactful carbon-to-value company of this decade, enabling decarbonization in regions where CCS is not an option—such as Japan, Turkey, and Greece—by sequestering carbon into mineralized forms that are stable and usable in construction.
“Our vision is to increase the GDP of heavy industry by helping it become part of the solution to climate change, rather than a major contributor to the problem,” Sinha said. By partnering with industries across the globe, Carbon Upcycling intends to transform how heavy industry operates and help drive the world towards a carbon-neutral future.
Carbon Upcycling is tackling one of the most complex challenges in the transition to a green economy: decarbonizing heavy industry. By converting industrial byproducts into valuable, low-carbon construction materials, the company is making significant strides in reducing emissions where they are hardest to abate.
With partnerships already established with some of the largest cement producers, and a vision to expand to other sectors, Carbon Upcycling is poised to play a pivotal role in reshaping the future of heavy industry for a sustainable world.
