We are pleased to share that, for the second year in a row, Carbon Engineering (CE) has been named on the prestigious Global Cleantech 100 list by Cleantech Group. Today, CE was also awarded the 2021 North American Company of the Year Award – an honour bestowed upon the highest-ranked company on the list from the region.
The Global Cleantech 100 is an annual list of companies with the most promising solutions for a more digitized, de-carbonized and resource-efficient world. It features private, independent and for-profit companies that are best positioned to drive sustainability and change, and have the greatest potential to make a significant market impact within five to ten years.
“Carbon Engineering is honoured to be named the Global Cleantech 100 North American Company of the Year,” said CE CEO, Steve Oldham. “We share this honour with the entire community of cleantech innovators that have been recognized by Cleantech Group and that are working tirelessly to progress solutions to the world’s climate and energy problems.
“Despite the tremendous challenges the global community faced in 2020, we are buoyed by the momentum we are seeing in the effort to act on climate change. For CE, 2020 was a particularly significant year. We signed a world-first licensing deal with Occidental and 1PointFive to build megaton-scale Direct Air Capture facilities in the US, and greatly progressed the engineering of the first of these facilities. We also secured our first corporate customers in 2020; Shopify and Virgin Red. Receiving this award is a significant acknowledgement of this progress. It also highlights the growing recognition of the need for carbon removal tools like ours in the global race to reach net zero emissions.”
This is the 12th edition of the widely respected list and this year’s cohort includes innovators from 15 countries, with just over half located in the US and the rest hailing from Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe and the Middle East. Awardees are selected through a combination of research data and qualitative judgements made by a 91-member expert panel of leading investors and executives active in technology and innovation scouting.
“This year’s Global Cleantech 100 list was striking for how many carbon-related companies there were in it, a far cry from even 3-4 years ago,” said Richard Youngman, CEO, Cleantech Group. “I hope we will look back at 2020 as the year in which the foundation stones for Direct Air Capture enabling major new industrial markets in carbon management were laid, in large part through Carbon Engineering’s licensing deals with deep-pocketed development companies in both the US (with Occidental/1PointFive) and in the UK.”
Carbon Engineering is thrilled to announce that our Chief Technology Officer, David St. Angelo, has been recognized by Business in Vancouver as the 2020 B.C. CTO of the Year.
B.C. CTO of the Year honourees are chosen based on their ability to develop and use technology in innovative ways that create competitive advantage, optimize business processes, enable company growth and impact the bottom line.
David was recognized for his tremendous leadership in driving forward the development of CE’s groundbreaking Direct Air Capture technology. He has been instrumental in the momentum behind the company’s technical development and commercialization strategies. Additionally, David places great emphasis on mentoring younger team members and inspiring the next generation of change-makers through community and industry involvement.
Also recognized were CJ Ritchie, Chief Information Officer at the Government of British Columbia as CIO of the Year, as well as Colin O’Connor, CTO at Precision OS, as Startup CTO of the Year.
Read the full announcement from Business in Vancouver here, and watch a video interview with David below.
We are pleased to announce that the CE team has received Canada’s 2019 Clean50 and Clean16 Awards for demonstrated leadership in sustainability through the development of our Direct Air Capture and AIR TO FUELSTM technology.
Announced annually by Delta Management Group and the Clean50 organization, Canada’s Clean50 Awards recognize those 50 individuals or small teams, from 16 different categories, who have done the most to advance the cause of sustainability and clean capitalism in Canada over the past two years.
Recipients of the team award for Carbon Engineering include Steve Oldham, CEO, David St. Angelo, CTO, Kenton Heidel, Director of Engineering, and Geoff Holmes, Business Development.
“Delta’s criteria in determining Honourees is to carefully consider actual measurable accomplishments, demonstrated innovation, collaboration with other organizations, and the power of the Honouree’s contribution to inspire other Canadians to take similar action,” said Gavin Pitchford, CEO, Delta Management Group.
“The Carbon Engineering team was chosen after rigorous screening and research by Delta Management, with advice from internal researchers and external advisors, and was among Honourees selected from an initial pool of approximately 600 well qualified nominees.”
In addition to the Clean50 Award, the CE team was selected as the leader in the R&D category, receiving further recognition as a Clean16 Award winner for 2019.
“We are honoured to be selected as Canada’s leader in the R&D category by Delta Management Group and the Clean50 organization,” said Steve Oldham, CEO of CE. “Sustainability is at the heart of what we do and we’re thrilled to be recognized for our contributions to advancing sustainable industry in Canada through our Direct Air Capture and AIR TO FUELSTM technologies.
“I wish to share this recognition with the entire CE team, and to thank our partners and investors who continue to support us as we commercialize our technology and work together to help the world move to a carbon-neutral economy.”
All of us at Carbon Engineering are very excited to have been short-listed for the Virgin Earth Challenge this month! Dr. Alan Knight, VEC Director, was recently in Calgary for a press release to announce that further showcasing of the prize and its competitors would occur at Calgary’s Global Clean Energy Congress in November. Dr. Knight also revealed that Carbon Engineering is the only Canadian entry among the roughly ten remaining competitors for the prize. These competitors have been selected over a multi-year review process, from an initial pool of over 2600 applicants. The Virgin Earth Challenge was formed in 2007 by Sir Richard Branson, as a $25 million prize to incentivize the necessary innovation and development to allow direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The VEC website states:
“The Virgin Earth Challenge is US$25 million for whoever can demonstrate to the judges’ satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of the Earth’s climate system.”
We are thrilled to be a part of this challenge, and to be recognized for our efforts in commercializing large-scale and cost-effective direct air capture technology. Our company President, David Keith, has been working and publishing in this field for over a decade now, and a number of our technical team employees have dedicated full-time hours (and overtime hours too) to air capture for over three years. It’s great to see the public visibility and business interest that is building in direct air capture technology. Plus, according to our specific instructions from the Virgin Group, we are now permitted to refer to ourselves as “Virgin Earth Challenge Air Capture Gurus”. Virgin’s sense of humour is icing on the cake! -GH.
