Frontier, an advance market commitment to accelerate permanent carbon removal, announced today that it awarded an R&D grant to Leilac to support the production of zero carbon lime on behalf of Frontier buyers Stripe, Shopify, and Google.
The Leilac technology produces zero‑carbon lime with electric heating and by capturing the CO₂ released unavoidably from the raw material during calcination. The lime product has near-zero associated carbon emissions—making it a necessary enabler for scaling lime‑dependent carbon removal methods like ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE).
Frontier was founded by Stripe, Google, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability. Its members have committed to purchase over US$1 billion of permanent carbon removal by 2030.
Leilac CEO, Daniel Rennie said Leilac looked forward to working with Frontier to help restore ocean health and mitigate climate change. “Ocean alkalinity enhancement has enormous potential to simultaneously improve ocean health and remove legacy and hard-to-abate carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere at the gigatonne scale.
“We look forward to working with Frontier, building on the solutions we are developing to reduce the cost and carbon emissions from cement and lime production. By enabling flexible electric heating and efficient capture of unavoidable process carbon dioxide, Leilac’s patented technology aims to produce the materials needed to seize this opportunity at the lowest possible cost.”
Initially, Leilac will produce OAE materials for testing and conduct an engineering study that aims to develop the lowest cost solutions for producing zero carbon lime for OAE.
The ocean stores approximately 25% of global carbon emissions, making it the world’s largest carbon sink. The absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide, however, makes the ocean more acidic, harming marine life and limiting the ability of the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide.
OAE involves adding alkaline substances, like lime and magnesia, to seawater. The OAE material converts the carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater into safe neutral salts, which are already common in the ocean and known to be stable for several thousand years. This process reduces the ocean’s local acidity, helping to improve conditions for marine ecosystems and enabling the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide from the air—resulting in safe, long-term and verifiable atmospheric carbon dioxide removal.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates OAE has the potential to remove 1-15+ billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, supporting the level of carbon dioxide removal required to meet global climate goals.
About Frontier:
Frontier is an advance market commitment to buy an initial US$1 billion of permanent carbon removal between 2022 and 2030. It was founded by Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, McKinsey Sustainability, and tens of thousands of businesses using Stripe Climate. Frontier’s goal is to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies by guaranteeing future demand for them. In practice, its team of technical and commercial experts facilitates purchases from high-potential carbon removal companies on behalf of buyers. More information at frontierclimate.com
About Leilac
Leilac aims to enable the most cost-effective production of conventional cement and lime, while delivering future-proof solutions to mitigate hard-to-abate industrial emissions at the lowest cost.
Leilac’s retrofittable technology is designed to reduce production costs through a hybrid indirect heating system that can operate flexibly using low-carbon and/or low-cost fuels and electricity. In doing so, it efficiently separates unavoidable carbon emissions ready for use or storage, without additional chemicals or processes.
Through the production of zero emissions lime, Leilac also aims to support the decarbonisation of other hard-to-abate sectors, as well as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Leilac, a subsidiary of Australian technology company Calix Limited, is working with multiple partners across Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific to support industrial competitiveness and decarbonisation.
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