The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has announced investments totaling $44 million in support of efforts to develop and scale promising technologies that will help address climate change.

Financing strategies include grants, investments, and carbon removal purchases to support promising technologies, including carbon dioxide removal, which encompasses a range of approaches that absorb existing carbon dioxide (CO²) from the atmosphere and store it in a stable form or use it in products such as concrete. Recipients include Twelve, a chemical company that aims to eliminate emissions by turning CO² into products like jet fuel and electric car parts, which received a $20 million strategic program investment to develop advanced capabilities for CO² electrolysis; and the University of California, Los Angeles Institute for Carbon Management, which received $21 million to bring three promising carbon removal solutions—the SeaChange process, electrochemical direct air capture, and a new electrochemical process for portlandite production—from the lab to the field to validate real-world efficiency at scale.

In addition, CZI purchased $2.5 million in credits for removing carbon from the atmosphere from six organizations, including Charm Industrial, which uses plants to capture CO² from the atmosphere and then converts the biomass into a stable, carbon-rich liquid that is pumped underground; Freres Lumber, which produces lumber-based products with a 100 percent biomass-fired rotary bed boiler; Mission Zero, which is developing direct air capture technology that will recover high-purity CO² from the air; and Running Tide, which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by growing kelp and sinking it in the deep ocean. 

“Scaling carbon removal to a consequential level will require massive advances in technology and innovation,” said CZI co-founders and co-CEOs Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg. “That’s why we’re supporting companies and researchers through a variety of financing methods. We also partnered with Watershed to purchase carbon removal credits from several companies to help scale promising technologies.”

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