Fluor Selects Eight Startups for Year 2 of C2V Carbontech Accelerator

The Carbon to Value (C2V) Initiative is a unique partnership among the Urban Future Lab, Greentown Labs and Fraunhofer USA, with Founding Partner NYSERDA. It combines a best-in-class accelerator program with exclusive access to the Carbontech Leadership Council including Fluor, BHP, Carbon180, Carbon Direct, CarbonPlan, Circular Carbon Network, ConEdison, Consulate General of Canada in New York, CRH, Johnson Matthey, NRG, NYSERDA, TechEnergy Ventures, Unilever, W.L. Gore & Associates and XPRIZE.  

The goal of the initiative is to create a more robust set of commercialized technologies that can convert the world’s excess carbon dioxide into valuable end products or services.

After a highly competitive deliberation over nearly 100 applications submitted from 19 countries, experts and key resources from Fluor selected eight companies spanning a diversity of innovations to participate in the second cohort of C2V’s accelerator program, announced July 12, 2022.

• Aluminum Technologies (New Orleans, U.S.) has developed Carbo-Chloride Reduction (CCR) aluminum manufacturing technology, which captures process CO₂ and also reduces power consumption relative to conventional methods.
• Carbon Upcycling Technologies (Calgary, Canada) utilizes point-source CO₂ and mineralizes it with waste materials to create supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) that can be used in building materials.
• Carbonova Corp. (Calgary, Canada) utilizes CO2 and methane as a feedstock to produce carbon nanofibers (CNF) that may be used in various fields such as transportation and buildings.
• ecoLocked (Berlin, Germany) converts waste biomass into biochar to create admixes that can replace a share of the cement used in concrete manufacturing, and thus sequester carbon within buildings.
• Full Cycle Bioplastics (San Jose, U.S.) has a patented bacteria-based technology that converts organic waste into Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a biopolymer that can be used to replace a wide range of oil-based plastic applications.
• Lydian (Somerville, U.S.) develops an electro-thermal reactor technology that converts captured CO₂ into fuels and chemicals.
• Molecule Works (Richland, U.S.) develops a solid sorbent direct air capture (DAC) system using a novel reactor and contactor configuration.
• Osmoses (Boston, U.S.) develops polymers for gas separation, enabling membrane-based carbon capture applications.

“The C2V initiative has truly created an innovation ecosystem around carbon capture, bringing together disruptive start-up technologies with commercial acumen, operational expertise, policy and project execution,” said Curt Graham, vice president, Office of Technology, Fluor. “By doing so, this paves the way to rapidly advance these technologies toward commercialization, thus positively impacting the carbontech challenges we’re facing today.”

As the C2V Year 2 Cohort Champion, Fluor brings rich expertise in commercializing early-stage technologies and risk mitigation across a wide variety of industries and applications. The cohort will have the opportunity to leverage Fluor’s wide range of expertise via mentorship on topics including commercialization, scalability, balance of plant, techno-economics, constructability, process safety, operability, maintainability and supply chain considerations. Fluor’s support will help these startups translate carbontech innovations from ambition to reality, while reducing the risk of their technology for financial backers, industry partners and customers.

Through this, Fluor strives to propel forward as a climatetech innovation ecosystem and sustainability leader, and to strategically position itself as an EPC partner from pilot to commercial scale.

“Stepping up as the C2V Year 2 Cohort Champion is both a privilege and a mission,” said Jim Shih, executive director, Business Incubation. “Fluor’s early engagement approach to disruptive climatetech provides compelling value-add with bootstrap nimbleness. We aim to apply this approach to the cohort and the overall accelerator program.”