Another ClimateTech Podcast
Another ClimateTech Podcast is a weekly interview series that explores the fight against climate change through the lens of entrepreneurship, investment, academia, activism, and art. Join Ryan Grant Little, a seasoned climatetech founder, advisor, and investor, as he interviews the climate warriors trying to save us from ourselves.
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Another ClimateTech Podcast
A primer on Direct Air Capture with Viktoria Oseyko of Carbominer
Viktoria Oseyko is CMO of Carbominer, a startup that uses direct air capture (DAC) to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and use it for productive purposes, like growing our fruits and vegetables in greenhouses. We talked about how this technology works, how founder can attract public money for green interventions, and what the future of Ukrainian climatetech looks like.
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Promo partner for this episode is Grizzle, helping B2B ClimateTech companies generate demand and customers through high-quality content, social media, and SEO services. Podcast listeners can book a free consultation here.
Welcome to another Climate Tech podcast interviews with the people trying to save us from ourselves. Viktoria Oseyko is CMO of Carbominer, a startup that uses direct air capture to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and use it for productive purposes like growing our fruits and vegetables in greenhouses. We talked about how this technology works, how to attract public money and what the future of Ukrainian climate tech looks like. I reach Victoria in Warsaw. I'm Ryan Grant. Little Thanks for being here. Viktoria, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.
Viktoria Oseyko:Ryan, thanks for having me.
Ryan Grant Little:You are the chief marketing officer of Carbominer, which has a direct air capture technology for CO2. And direct air capture, or DAC for short, if I remember correctly, is one of those technologies where I think a lot of people are culturally aware that this is a thing, but that awareness outpaces the understanding of how it works. I wonder if you could give us a primer, without getting too technical, on what direct air capture is.
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, sure.
Viktoria Oseyko:So basically, direct air capture is a technology to capture carbon dioxide from the open air, so it belongs to the wider scope of CCUS, so carbon capture and utilization technologies. But it sort of is a new and like a novel field where scientists and engineers are trying to extract CO2 from the ambient air. The challenge here is that CO2 in the atmosphere is at very low concentration, so it's like less than 1%. So in order to actually capture it you need to put a lot of energy to it, you need to pump the air through the fence and make a lot of effort to make sure that technology is as efficient as possible, to do it at a low cost, or at least at a medium cost, at an affordable cost. So direct air capture is about capturing carbon dioxide and this is the technology from this environmental climate tech scope that we are. The main goal, the ultimate goal of the direct air capture is to make sure that we remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the long run and prolong our existence on this planet. Let's put it that way.
Ryan Grant Little:I'm thinking of this movie from the 1980s with John Candy called Spaceballs, where they're like holding up a giant vacuum in the atmosphere, and so I mean, basically, if I think about this, 1% saturation of CO2, that's not a lot. You need to then probably find a way to capture this in a way that's not using more kind of electricity or some form of energy than it's worth.
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, and the challenge actually is that if you use with many technologies it is so that if you use non-renewable but fossil-based traditional electricity or electricity mix, then your technology can actually emit more carbon than it captures. So it's sort of a huge challenge for the industry and that's why we are sort of everyone like under big pressure of making sure that technology will use utilize mainly renewable sources, like it's okay sort of for the pilots, for the proof of concept, to utilize traditional energy, but for the long run renewable is the only way to go.
Ryan Grant Little:And you talked about fans and what does this thing look like? What is it a containerized unit? Or can you just kind of walk through how, what the physical footprint of this is?
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, sure. So basically you just said it, it's a container sized unit. For many technologies it is so, of course, like different technologies, different startups approach it in a different way. But mainly the idea is to make container sized, like modular, this unit that has a fan and that has some magic inside, going on filtering the CO2 out from the air. And for you probably have heard of the biggest DC players out there. They are building huge plants, so their plants are consisting of many such container sized models, so many containers put on top of each other, and that is, they are like plants. So that is the great way of how they can make it easy to scale, easy to transport, easy to unload and start the plant.
Ryan Grant Little:And who is it for? Who are you getting the most interest from? So is this something where I decide that I want my business to be carbon neutral and so I buy a bunch of these and put them in my parking lot? Or who is it for?
Viktoria Oseyko:Well, no, it's not for a bit to see, it's mainly for bit to be. So we are selling, for instance, carbomanner. We sell CO2 to indoor farmers. They need carbon dioxide that we capture from the air to boost the plant growth of their farms and this is an already viable product. So they already buy CO2 and inject it in their farms. So for us it's like, not for them it's not something new. The novelty comes only with the understanding that this is a sustainable CO2 instead of commodity gray one right.
Viktoria Oseyko:But the application amount, the number of potential applications of direct capture, is enormous. The whole carbon tech opportunity is just crazy. So it's valued over one billion just only in US, according to researchers, and it includes all of the applications that CO2 is potentially can be used for, for instance, fuels, sustainable synthetic fuels, for instance, some fertilizers. It also can be used in fire extinguishers. It can be used in medical applications. So anyone who needs carbon dioxide can come to a direct capture company.
Viktoria Oseyko:The other very important market to like state and to give you here as an information piece of information, is the carbon removal market, and the clients there are the corporate buyers, so some big corporations that are looking to reduce their current footprint or, for instance, mainly it is the thing is about their historical emissions. So, for instance, amazon, they have a lot of research done about what the historical carbon footprint they did over the course of their existence as a company and they are taking responsibility over it and in order to help them sort of deal with it. This is where decarbonization companies come into place and CDR startups and those can be many other technologies, but DCC plus storage comes also in this category.
Ryan Grant Little:Okay, interesting. So from a business model perspective, you're potentially making money on the capture itself from companies that have a footprint that they want to offset, and then you're also making money potentially with selling CO2 as a commodity to everything, from it sounds like greenhouses through to fire extinguisher companies or whatever. You can store it and basically sell it as a commodity out there. Is that right? So you have these two revenue streams.
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, so basically, you either sell CO2 as a product or you sell the removal of CO2 as a not a product but already a service, you know as a, as a certificate that's a company gains that verifies that it has paid for the CO2 removal.
Ryan Grant Little:And so if I think of like the indoor agriculture market, if I think of greenhouses they're getting bigger and bigger over the past number of years. They must be that huge users of CO2. Is that kind of the market entry point for you?
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, for us definitely. We have decided that at this point. We see a lot of demand in the indoor agriculture market. We see that farmers are like they need this CO2 and they will need it more and more increasingly in the coming years due to the carbon footprint regulations regulations in the European Union, for instance, on the combustion on site. So it's sort of they will get a taxation if they stay the way they are.
Viktoria Oseyko:So the best way for them is to switch to sustainable CO2 or at least search for ways of how they can switch in the future, due to the fact that it can become just basically unfeasible for them. It does not apply to each and every country, it applies more of a general trend, you know, but if we can bring the same products, so CO2 is just the same. It's 99.8% pure CO2. So if for them there is no difference, so why not switch to sustainable one? And this is like the huge work that we as a company and industry need to do, because for clients to sometimes understand the need to go to sustainable it's sometimes it's a quick way to go, but sometimes it's a long road to go.
Ryan Grant Little:It's so funny. I mean it makes total sense that it's sustainable CO2. I've never heard this term before. I'm just thinking in my mind you know, putting my marketing hat on like Carbo Miner, your source for sustainable CO2 since 2020.
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, but yeah you can.
Ryan Grant Little:That's free, that's free. The last question I have kind of about the technology itself. So you mentioned that you know there's some specific things about the technology that kind of differentiates you, and one of the terms I caught on your website is electrochemistry regeneration, which sounds to me like maybe the thing that Dr Frankenstein pioneered, and I wonder if you could just talk a little bit. You know again, in very basic terms, what is electrochemistry regeneration?
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, sure. So let me like give you a week overview of Carbo Miner technology overall, because we sort of Carbo Miner DC technology combines several engineering innovations and including electrochemistry is one of them. For instance, on the capturing stage we combine dry and wet capture methods and this is how we enable better efficiency compared to most known DC technology on the capturing stage. But the issue with the director capture is that the biggest energy need is on the regeneration stage. So on the later stage, at first you capture CO2 and then you need to sort of regenerate it and you need to like make a pure output. So you capture it to some filter and then you need to detach it from the filter, if we speak like in the easy terms.
Viktoria Oseyko:And on the regeneration stage, it is where we use, indeed, the electrochemistry regeneration. This is one of the most promising and cheapest ways in the industry to release CO2. And in our case it also allows us to consume intermittent renewable energy in hours of overproduction when the prices are significantly low. So it sort of gives us the way to make sure that we so these engineering innovations. They are designed to make sure that we make the cheapest solution possible, make it the most affordable way to capture CO2. And an important note that we are not the only one to use electrochemistry. But if you look at the competitors and use like, take a sneak peek on what's their promises on prices and do the investors believe them? Those that have electrochemistry have the in my opinion, the biggest, the biggest perspective.
Ryan Grant Little:Got it. You've been noticed by the EU, by a number of accelerators out there, and most recently received a 1.5 million euro grant from the European Innovation Council. Congratulations, that's huge. I know it's a very competitive funding program. A lot of the listeners of this podcast are climate tech founders themselves, always in this continuous search for early, non-dilutive funding like this. I wonder if you have some advice for them, since you've done this so well, about how to successfully look for and secure public funding. What improves the odds of success?
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, sure, first of all, I wanted to take a step back and tell you about EC accelerator. Traditional success rates are an average from the short submission to the awarding stage is around 7%. You cannot say it's super competitive. It's competitive but the success rate is kind of okay. There are good chances to get to the funding. Each year, I think around 3,000 startups and SMEs apply for funding from the EC accelerator. You sort of get the numbers. See that there are some great chances. In our batch we were one of the 47 companies that received this funding.
Viktoria Oseyko:I would say the whole process is divided. There are first short application stage, where you need to quickly submit your pitch tags, some main data, your idea for the project, maybe run the numbers quickly and then outline it as a whole story and submit. And then there is a long application, the second stage, which comes when you are validated and your idea and your story adds up and experts think that it might work. And then you need to outline the business process, the business plan for the project, for the whole project for a couple of years. And yeah, you need to say, okay, we will use this funding for that, we will use this amount of resources for that we will hire this and that profiles. So it's sort of like a real business plan, a project gun chart, a lot of work and a lot of effort.
Viktoria Oseyko:And then the third stage is the interview, where you need to give all the information about this business plan, this project that you are aiming to receive funding for. And then there is the award stage. So basically, from our perspective, it was super hard. It took, I think, up to eight months for the whole process. We engaged with the consultancy company to help us to shape the narrative, to understand just only to understand the process. You need already someone to assist you because it's quite complex. But I guess 7% is a great success rate. In our case it was 7.25. So even a bit more.
Ryan Grant Little:OK, and would you recommend to founders to also use a consultant or someone to guide them through a process like that? Was that helpful?
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, sure, definitely, you can reach out to me. I can recommend already three great consultancy agencies. We worked only with one, so, ok, we worked with two, but I won't recommend the first one because we didn't win back then. The three that I wanted to recommend, I recommended to every and each and every founder that comes to me. Those are the ones that have proven so I know the companies that they have led to the final stage, to the upward stage. Yeah, I definitely recommend because it's a non-deluty funding.
Viktoria Oseyko:It's a great way to go. It helps you shape the narrative, even for yourself, and understand like. It forces you to think of the next steps, to think of what's next and how you are going to achieve those next steps and those KPIs and goals and so on. And it's also this huge work. It proves to VCs, to investors, that actually you are capable of that mind work. You are capable to think for one, two, three years in the future. And you already trusted, so someone trusted you. This big entity as a fund, as a accelerator, has trusted you. They have validated you. They have, like, made a due diligence of you. So maybe you are not that bad after all. You know, we should take a look at you.
Ryan Grant Little:Yeah, as an angel investor, I love when a startup has non-delutive funding early on as well. You're from Kyiv. You moved the company to Poland after the full scale invasion. I was in Kyiv last week, which was the second time I've been there in the past few months, and I'm always very impressed with the quality of the startups there and also in the diaspora, which is growing, of course, and especially given the circumstances, I'm curious to hear from you. What do you think? You know, what is your vision for the climate tech and maybe food tech ecosystem in Ukraine after the victory?
Viktoria Oseyko:So first of all, thank you very much for pointing that out. We are Ukrainian company, we love being Ukrainian company. We will forever be Ukrainian company. And also thank you for coming to Kyiv. You know that you're not afraid and you are like proving to the world that it's. It's bad, that's what's going on. It's awful, but businesses still work there Like people still live there. People go for their morning coffee. Life goes on, at least in Kyiv and Western parts of the Ukraine.
Ryan Grant Little:The hard part for me is leaving. Like you know, I could stay there forever. It's a. It's a fantastic city and of course, there are some it's it's different now than it was a couple of years ago and there are some things to get used to while you're there, but it's a fantastic city and I mean it's basically where I'm taking, where I'm going on vacation at the moment as well. So, yeah, I think maybe not a lot of people are doing that, but I can still highly recommend it and great, I'm a. I, like you, know vegan food and restaurants and hipster cafes, and it's a. It's a world capital for those two things.
Viktoria Oseyko:Yeah, totally, totally. You know, even though I moved already two years ago like soon it will be the anniversary, like exactly two years, but it is I'm still like very hard broke in the Kraskiyiv is my favorite city and I never, ever wanted to leave somewhere else, even though I was in a lot of places all over Europe, usa and so on. So back to your question Climate attack in Ukraine. I think it's still like in very early stages. You know, it's like a sort of you can make analogy. It's like a child that's just, you know, starting out, making its first steps, like a toddler, a three year old, and you are sort of well, three year old. It's too late, like I see it as a three year old, but it's still learning. You know what is what and how the business works.
Viktoria Oseyko:I see a huge problem, and it's not only for climate attack but for generally for startup world in Ukraine. I believe that founders very often come from business background and from scientific background, but they like startup background. So, as the industry is only starting out, like we are, I think we are like 10 years, maybe 15. But we are just only only learning to how does it work, and this is our learning and startups are learning and, yeah, I think it slows things down sort of in a way. But for the climate tech, I see great perspectives. I know many climate tech startups. I'm super connected in this sphere. I enjoy speaking to NGOs in Ukraine, for instance GreenKu Butter. They have done immense work to make sure that just ideas you know, just even not startups, yes, but just ideas are grown into some sort of businesses that they heard. You know that they have received some needed boosts and validation To make sure that they outgrow to become something more.
Ryan Grant Little:So yeah, Well, please consider sending those startups my way. As both an angel and as a podcast host. I'd be very happy to talk to them. What's the best place for people to find you online if they want to get in touch, especially if they want to hear about those two or three consultants that you recommend for finding the non-dilutive funding?
Viktoria Oseyko:Totally linked in. I'm also on Facebook, but I know that European audience is not doing business on Facebook, but in Ukraine it's a typical situation that founder can have a Facebook page and a Facebook company page but not have linked in company page. So, yeah, I am on Facebook. On LinkedIn, my Instagram is just for friends and family, so, like, the best way is on LinkedIn. But you can also reach out to company email to like to our website, because I'm also on that side of all those incoming and I can take the question there as well.
Ryan Grant Little:I'll put all of those links in the show notes then. Victoria. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure getting to know you.
Viktoria Oseyko:Thank you, Ryan, likewise.
Ryan Grant Little:Thanks for listening to another Climate Tech podcast. It would mean a lot if you would subscribe, rate and share this podcast. Get in touch anytime with tips and guest recommendations at hello at climatetechpodcom. Find me, ryan Grant Little, on LinkedIn. I'll be back with another episode next week. Bye for now.
