Accelerating Industrial Innovation in Cement, Steel, and Chemicals

Cambridge Electric Cement (Cambridge, United Kingdom) 

Cement and steel production currently both use limestone-derived feedstocks. Cambridge Electric Cement leverages this by using recovered cement paste to partially displace virgin lime as the flux inside electric arc furnaces used in steelmaking. This produces a recycled clinker for cement that meets the same standards for traditional cement — without the same climate pollution. 

Carbon Negative Solutions (Somerville, MA | United States) 

There are over five gigatons of industrial toxic waste that companies struggle to convert into consistent supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) with meaningful cement replacement rates. Carbon Negative Solutions uses proprietary machine learning to optimize the upcycling of industrial waste and captured carbon into carbon-negative SCMs, resulting in a product with twice the typical cement replacement rate. 

Cocoon Carbon (London, United Kingdom) 

Over 200 million tons of steel slag are landfilled or used as a low value aggregate each year. Cocoon’s technology repurposes slag from electric arc furnaces, previously not ideal for use in concrete, into a low-carbon SCM through modular units that integrate into existing slag handling methods in an energy-efficient chemical and mechanical process.  

GreenJams (Visakhapatnam, India) 

In India, over 70 percent of new construction uses a brick and block method. GreenJams produces carbon-negative concrete blocks by transforming crop residues and industrial wastes in an alkali-activated geopolymer. Agrocrete blocks are 3.5 times more thermally insulative and up to 50 percent cheaper than conventional blocks, reducing operational energy, costs, and carbon pollution. 

SaltX Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) 

Cement manufacturing requires ultra-high temperatures that have historically only been achieved by fossil fuel combustion. SaltX has developed an electric arc calciner to leverage plasma, the fourth state of matter, to electrify the calcination stage of cement production with integrated carbon dioxide separation in a compact, modular system. 

Sensytec (Houston, TX | United States) 

Current methods for testing concrete are slow and outdated, leading to project delays and obstacles to reducing embodied carbon. Sensytec leverages patented electrical resistivity technology to deliver real-time, detailed insights into material quality beyond the capabilities of traditional sensors, enabling users to optimize concrete mixes to reduce embodied carbon, accelerate testing, and minimize concrete waste. 

Solid Carbon (McMinnville, OR | United States) 

Biochar can store the carbon once contained in living biomass, but biochar from certain waste streams can have limited applications. Solid Carbon is utilizing this low-grade biochar to produce carbon-negative additives, SMCs, and aggregates to enable cost-effective concrete that maintains product performance while reducing carbon pollution. 

Theseus Development (Accra, Ghana) 

Cement demand in Africa is expected to grow 175 percent by 2050. Theseus Development eliminates the need for cement by producing interlocking geopolymer concrete blocks using upcycled aluminosilicate wastes from quarries and mines. Their blocks are 25 percent cheaper than traditional blocks, and their interlocking shape enables rapid construction without the need for mortar — making sustainable home production faster and more affordable in a region with a massive housing deficit. 

Urban Mining Industries (New Rochelle, NY | United States) 

In addition to carbon pollution, the extensive use of concrete contributes to the urban heat island effect. Urban Mining Industries is producing Pozzotive, a ground glass pozzolan, which can replace up to 50 percent of the cement in concrete to achieve lower embodied carbon and higher performance. The resulting concrete is a brighter color, which reduces the urban heat island effect by increasing reflectivity and reducing heat absorption. 

Binding Solutions (Middlesbrough, United Kingdom) 

Iron ore is agglomerated at 1000°C or more to create pellets or sinter. Binding Solutions produces cold agglomerated pellets without high temperatures, reducing energy use by up to 80 percent and carbon emissions by up to 70 percent — while matching or exceeding the performance of conventional pellets. 

DexMat (Houston, TX | United States) 

Together, steel, aluminum, and copper production consume about 12 percent of global energy and contribute about 8 percent of global emissions. DexMat produces Galvorn, a high-performance carbon nanomaterial that is stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, electrically and thermally conductive, flexible, corrosion-resistant, non-toxic, and recyclable. Galvorn has a variety of possible use cases to displace steel, aluminum, copper — and potentially most impactful — steel cabling. 

Greenore (Salt Lake City, UT | United States) 

Steelmaking produces over 500 million tons of solid waste per year. Greenore converts iron and steel slag and waste carbon dioxide into valuable products — including carbon-negative precipitated calcium carbonate, a filler material to reduce the carbon intensity of paper, plastics, and rubber, and carbon-negative SCMs to reduce cement content and carbon intensity of concrete. 

Helios (Tzur-Yigal, Israel) 

Cleaner alternatives to the combustion of coal in blast furnaces are often limited by iron ore quality, high temperature requirements, and clean hydrogen supply. Helios can leverage all grades and types of ore in their low-temperature sodium-based iron reduction process, yielding significant cost and energy savings and producing zero direct carbon emissions. Their low-temperature process avoids emissions from direct combustion and is not reliant on large volumes of hydrogen, which is currently a commercial bottleneck.    

Hertha Metals (Conroe, TX | United States) 

Conventional direct reduced iron-based clean steel production has often been limited by iron ore quality. Hertha’s novel platform technology for oxide smelting reduction, which can combine electricity with either green hydrogen or abundant natural gas, is uniquely able to utilize low-grade ores in a variety of formats (lumps, fines, etc.), not just high-grade pellets. This innovation enables a pathway to cheaper and greener steel compared to incumbents.

SUN METALON (Chicago, IL | United States) 

Traditional recycling methods degrade the quality and utility of metals, resulting in significant value loss. SUN METALON's microwave-based metal recycling process uses special electromagnetic energy and booster materials to enable fast and efficient metal heating to reduce energy consumption and enable the recycling of contaminated or non-ideal scrap with near-zero emissions. 

Aerleum (Strasbourg, France) 

Methanol can be used as an alternative fuel or chemical building block, but current pathways for green methanol face structural limitations like limited feedstocks and high production costs. Aerleum is developing an integrated, single-step carbon dioxide capture and conversion process to produce carbon-neutral e-methanol at price parity with fossil fuels. Their novel reactor design and proprietary support structure that co-hosts sorbent and catalyst materials avoids the common energy penalties faced by separate capture and conversion steps. 

Bloom Biorenewables (Marly, Fribourg | Switzerland) 

Biomass-derived chemicals and fuels provide a promising alternative to fossil-fuel feedstocks, but existing processes are limited by high costs and lower product performance. Bloom’s innovative biorefining approach, Aldehyde Assisted Fractionation, allows for separation of hemicellulose and lignin from cellulose during biomass processing, enabling full conversion of biomass waste into chemicals and fuels. The resulting materials compete with fossil-based products in performance and cost while preventing undesired degradation during fractionation. 

Cascade Bio (Denver, CO | United States) 

Biomanufacturing — the use of living cells or microorganisms to produce chemicals — has great potential to decarbonize the chemicals sector but often relies on microbes that are low-yield and hard to control, making it difficult to scale. Cascade Bio moves beyond this with a cell-free approach. Their “Body Armor for Enzymes” technology is a coating that stabilizes enzymes to create longer lasting and more resilient biocatalysts suited for industrial conditions, which increases productivity and reduces costs to enable effective and scalable biomanufacturing. 

CERT Systems (Toronto, Canada) 

Ethylene, derived from fossil fuels, is the foundation for many plastics, textiles, materials, and chemicals we use every day. CERT uses an electrochemical process that only requires carbon dioxide, water, and electricity to produce clean ethylene that can be used as a drop-in replacement for traditional ethylene. Their single-step reaction improves the overall process conversion efficiency compared to other electrochemical carbon conversion pathways. 

Rubi Laboratories (Alameda, CA | United States) 

60 percent of the global economy’s raw materials are poised to be replaced with biomanufacturing, but current sugar-based methods of bioproduction are limited by scalability and food-based feedstock competition. Rubi uses carbon dioxide-based enzyme conversion in modular, low-capex reactors to overcome these barriers. Their cell-free biocatalysis platform converts waste carbon captured on-site into essential chemicals and materials, starting with cellulose textiles and extending in the future to ethylene, plastic replacements, CPG ingredients, and more. 

Tereform (Englewood, CO | United States) 

Over 90 million tons of textile waste is landfilled or incinerated every year — nearly a full dump truck of material every second — but material complexity and contaminants in waste streams create obstacles to efficient textile recycling. Tereform has developed a chemical recycling process for blends of synthetic textiles that can recycle multiple synthetic polymer types simultaneously even in the presence of dyes, additives, and contaminants present in post-consumer waste streams. Their proprietary process uses oxygen and bio-based solvents to deconstruct these materials into their base chemical building blocks, converting waste materials back into polyester while minimizing costly sorting and pre-processing steps. 

Via Separations (Boston, MA | United States) 

Separating various chemicals is critical to manufacturing the products and materials we use every day including paper, plastics, and fuels. Via Separations is displacing thermal separation with electrified mechanical separation. Their mass manufacturable graphene oxide membrane can be finely tuned to replace low-to-moderate temperature separations, resulting in up to 90% energy savings and reduced operational costs. 

To support electrification of high-heat processes across industrial sectors, we accepted several innovative industrial heat solutions. 

Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (Fort Collins, CO | United States) 

Thermal processes account for about 75 percent of industrial manufacturing — however, 60 percent of industrial energy is lost as waste heat. Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems deploys a modular, solid-state waste heat recovery solution to provide temperatures of 150°C–500°C, applicable to most industrial heating applications. Their unique solution enables the capture of waste heat from previously unavailable sources, including cement kilns. 

HyperHeat (Offenburg, Germany) 

50 percent of industrial heat requires temperatures above 1000°C, a range that current electrical solutions cannot typically reach without thermal battery storage, as current commercial resistive heating elements start to degrade above 1200°C. HyperHeat is filling this technology gap with their high-temperature electrical e-furnace using zirconia heating elements, which is designed to reach temperatures of up to 2000°C with an efficiency rate of up to 98 percent. Their solution can work with or without resistor-based thermal storage. 

Kraftblock (Sulzbach/Saar, Germany) 

Alternative sources to fossil fuel combustion are limited by intermittency. Kraftblock's modular thermal solution with separate heating and storage modules bridges the gap between intermittent energy sources, supplying heat around-the-clock at temperatures from 100°C to 1300°C. Their core storage material is a mixture of steel slag and proprietary binders that can tune the charge rate and heat retention capacity of the system, enabling bespoke solutions for a variety of applications across industry, district heating, and power plants. 

NOC Energy (Houston, TX | United States) 

Direct electrification of industrial processes offers the promise of cost efficiency and scalability, but electrified industrial heat is constrained by high temperature requirements, large equipment footprints, and non-competitive costs. NOC's system leverages advanced electrification using core-shell metal spheres paired with inductive heating, rather than resistive heating. Their modular and compact solution, made with off-the-shelf components, can deliver direct heating at 1500°C with a uniquely low footprint and lower levelized cost than natural gas.