Chevron invests in carbon capture tech firm

A carbon capture technology firm is getting financial backing from Chevron.

Chevron New Energies (CNE), a division of Chevron U.S.A., and Svante announced that Chevron is the lead investor in Svante’s Series E fundraising round, which raised US$318 million to accelerate the manufacturing of Svante’s carbon capture technology.

“We are advancing a full value chain carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) business and believe Svante is poised to be a leader in enabling carbon capture solutions,” said Chris Powers, vice president of CCUS with CNE. “Innovation is key to enabling these types of breakthrough technologies and lower carbon solutions, and we look forward to applying our experience and expertise to help drive this effort forward.”

Since its founding in 2007, Svante has developed carbon capture and removal technology using structured adsorbent beds, known as filters. This funding will support Svante’s commercial-scale filter manufacturing facility in Vancouver, which is anticipated to produce enough filter modules to capture millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year across hundreds of large-scale carbon capture and storage facilities.

The companies said that the size and cost of installing carbon capture technology has been a barrier to industry adoption. Svante’s modular solid sorbent technology is designed to capture CO2 from industrial flue gas. It then concentrates it into a high-purity, 95-percent pipeline-grade CO2 to prepare it for storage or further industrial use. Its approach is tailored specifically to the challenges of separating CO₂ from nitrogen in diluted flue gas, which is typically emitted at low pressures, and in dilute concentrations. Svante’s technology is targeted toward industrial decarbonization activities in fields including hydrogen, pulp and paper, lime, cement, steel, aluminum, and chemicals. Svante’s filters are also available for direct air capture and carbon dioxide removal.

In 2021, Chevron launched CNE to accelerate lower carbon business opportunities in CCUS, hydrogen, renewable fuels and products, offsets, and emerging technologies. Chevron plans to invest $10 billion in lower carbon projects through 2028 and remains committed to collaborating in new ways to accelerate progress.

“We are proud that Chevron and a group of existing and new strategic and financial investors have demonstrated their confidence in Svante to be a key player in building a commercially viable carbon management industry,” said Claude Letourneau, President and CEO of Svante. “We are working to remove the biggest barriers to rapid deployment of industrial carbon capture by building this manufacturing facility, which we expect will enable us to rapidly expand our order book.”

Chevron Technology Ventures made an initial investment in Svante in 2014. In 2020, Chevron launched a project to pilot Svante technology to capture CO2 from post combustion of natural gas. The project has received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (project #DE-FE0031944). In collaboration with Svante and the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the technology will be tested at Chevron’s Kern River facility in San Joaquin Valley, California, with startup underway this month.

Other fundraising round participants include existing shareholders Temasek, OGCI Climate Investments, Delek US and Hesta AG, and new investors, 3M Ventures (the venture capital arm of 3M Company), Full Circle Capital, GE Vernova, Japan Energy Fund, Liberty Media, M&G Catalyst, Samsung Engineering, TechEnergy Ventures and United Airlines Ventures. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as Svante’s lead placement agent with RBC Capital Markets as co-lead placement agent. Full Circle Capital acted as financial advisor to Svante in connection with the transaction.