Cleantech startup Equatic has entered into an agreement with aerospace company Boeing for the pre-purchase of over 60,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide removal using Equatic’s ocean-based direct air capture technology. Equatic has also agreed to sell more than 2,000 metric tons of carbon-negative hydrogen to Boeing.
Equatic, a spinoff from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has developed a process that utilizes electrolysis to pass an electrical current through seawater and trap CO2 from the atmosphere as dissolved bicarbonate ions and solid minerals. The process also produces carbon-negative hydrogen that can be used as a clean energy source or sold as fuel for sustainable aviation or trucking.
Equatic aims to remove 100,000 metric tons of carbon per year by 2026, scaling up to millions of tons by 2028 at a cost of less than $100 per metric ton. The agreement with Boeing helps address the challenges of carbon dioxide removal and reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Equatic’s technology combines chemistry principles with the ocean’s natural carbon removal capabilities to provide a scalable and cost-effective solution for decarbonization.
This pre-purchase agreement is part of a growing trend of future carbon removal agreements made by companies like Microsoft, JPMorgan, and the carbon removal buyer coalition Frontier. These agreements help mitigate risks associated with the development of carbon removal technologies by ensuring future demand.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the need for large-scale carbon dioxide removal methods in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C. While existing CO2 capture and storage solutions are limited in scale, innovative approaches like Equatic’s offer promise for significant carbon removal and mitigation efforts.
Lorenzo Corsini, Principal Advisor at Equatic, said:
“The world has two unprecedented challenges: how to remove and permanently store gigatons of carbon dioxide and how to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Equatic’s first-of-its-kind technology solves both. It combines basic principles of chemistry with the natural capabilities of the world’s best carbon removal tool, the ocean, to create the most promising solution for scalable decarbonization — cost-effectively and at a globally-relevant scale.”
Sheila Remes, Boeing’s Vice President of Environmental Sustainability, said:
“The aviation industry has an important role to play in global decarbonization efforts. Reaching aviation’s sustainability goals will require a multi-faceted approach and Boeing sees immense value in Equatic’s technology. SAF is enormously important to reaching the commercial aviation industry’s net zero by 2050 goal, and we are excited to partner with Equatic on both green hydrogen feedstock and carbon dioxide removal.”