Novo Holdings puts $72m in Lanzatech

Novo Holdings A/S (Novo Holdings) invests $72m in LanzaTech to support development of the companys sustainable fuels and chemicals platform

The Series E financing was Novo Holdings fourth investment within the growth equity area this year. Growth equity investments enable Novo Holdings to support companies at the forefront of transformative technologies, fueling transitions that will take companies to the next level of development.

Simply said, LanzaTechs platform takes pollution and recycles it, eliminating single-use carbon. More specifically, LanzaTech captures carbon monoxide from waste gas streams of industrial factories, i.e. steel mills, and add proprietary ethanol-resistant bacterium Clostridium autoethanogenum to produce ethanol or chemicals. Other examples of technology applications include gasification and conversion of biomass from unsorted household waste, more sustainable aviation fuel (alcohol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosen) or conversion to polyethylene consumer goods. The company is also working on producing 2,3-butanediol or isopropanol through gaseous fermentation carried out be acetogenic bacteria.

When a product has reached the end of its useful life, it can go unsorted and uncleaned to a LanzaTech facility and be recycled repeatedly without losing any of the properties of the original material, Novo Holdings said in a press release. This would lock carbon into a cycle and would support a transition to a circular economy.

Novo Holdings investment will expand LanzaTechs carbon recycling platform and enable LanzaTech to accelerate the commercialization of Carbon Smart products creating consumer demand for products made from recycled carbon.

LanzaTech views carbon as a feedstock opportunity with the potential to displace 30% of crude oil use today and reduce global CO₂ emissions by 10%. By recycling carbon from industrial off-gases; syngas generated from any biomass resource (e.g. municipal solid waste (MSW), organic industrial waste, agricultural waste); and reformed biogas, LanzaTech supports reduction of emissions and production for a circular carbon economy. LanzaTechs carbon recycling technology is like retrofitting a brewery onto an emission source like a steel mill or a landfill site, but instead of using sugars and yeast to make beer, pollution is converted by bacteria to fuels and chemicals.

Lanzatech’s CEO Dr. Jennifer Holmgren will attend EFIB 2019 in Brussels.