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One thousand tons of CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere and stored in marine waters, combating global warming and sea acidification, thanks to the agreement signed by the Italian Limenet, a start-up that has developed a technology that captures CO2 from air and transforms it into calcium bicarbonates to be stored in the sea, and KlimaDao, a US platform active in the voluntary carbon credit market. The latter has in fact purchased an advance on the processing of a thousand tons of CO2 that Limenet will produce by mid-2025, generating carbon credits (negative emissions credits) that KlimaDao undertakes to resell on the Carbonmark platform.
New plant in Sicily
For Limenet this operation – which it concluded thanks also to the support of Aither, a company active in the sustainability market and investor of the company – represents the opportunity to consolidate its technology on the market, after having created a pilot project in La Spezia in which 150 kg of negative CO2 emissions were already produced at the beginning of 2023. Today Limenet will scale its technology by building a plant in Augusta (Sicily) capable of removing approximately 4 thousand tons of CO2 annually. Subsequently, by standardizing a 100,000-ton plant, the company intends to raise capital to build a series of sites “capable of absorbing hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide per year.”
Large-scale development
«After years of research and experiments we have obtained truly satisfactory results with the validation of our technology through a pilot plant. We are now starting to do our part in the great game of decarbonisation, developing on a large scale a technology that allows us to remove and store large quantities of carbon dioxide and giving companies the opportunity to compensate, through the marketing of carbon credits, the emissions that do not can be reduced. This agreement is proof that the market also believes in our technological solutions. We will begin work on the storage of the first tons of CO2 as early as this spring in Augusta in Sicily.” commented Stefano Cappello, CEO & Founder of Limenet.
The tokenization of carbon
«I am very happy that our company could have created an important opportunity for Limenet at an early stage of their development. This agreement marks a significant step in the development of carbon capture technologies and reinforces KlimaDao’s commitment to bringing liquidity to sustainable solutions in this market. By facilitating the first direct tokenization of carbon capture from the air, we foster the development of a liquid market for carbon credits and improve the alkalinity of the seas. Blockchain technology will track the provenance of these credits, setting a new standard for environmental assets on a global scale,” added Scott Michael Kilduff JR., Head of Policy at KlimaDao.
Investors
Limenet was born as a scientific community: it became a business in 2023 and was among the eight startups of the second edition of Faros, the first Italian accelerator in the blue economy sector of the CDP National Network. To date, the company has already raised 2 million euros from investors, including Aither, Core Angels Climate, Moonstone, Forest Valley Catalyst, Faros itself and Leone La Ferla.