Vycarb lands $2.71M Colorado grant to deploy carbon capture
What's the deal? VycarbDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has secured a grant of up to $2,713,200 from the Colorado Energy OfficeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to deploy its full-stack carbon capture and storage (CCS) system in the state. The funding comes through the Clean Air Program and will cover the design, installation, and operation of a Vycarb CCS system aimed at decarbonising heavy-emitting industries.
Why Vycarb? It is the program's first carbon management awardee focused on capturing and storing industrial emissions. The company says it is the first CCS developer to capture and store low-purity CO₂ without an intermediate purification step — a route it recently demonstrated using seawater.
Why now? The Clean Air Program runs on a $25 million budget spread over six years, and Vycarb was chosen through a competitive review. Awardees had to prove "additionality" and deliver direct, rather than indirect, emissions cuts.
What's the endgame? CEO and founder Garrett Boudinot said Colorado has abundant geologic storage sites, but that these rarely make economic sense because they require capturing and purifying CO₂ first. "The Colorado Energy Office's support will support the first time our proven technology that skips this step will be deployed at an operating industrial site in Colorado to solve the complexity and cost issues of decarbonization," he said.
Governor Jared Polis framed the award as part of a broader push: "We are encouraging the use of new technologies to reduce pollution, like carbon management and methane detection, that will make the air we breathe cleaner and protect our state for generations to come."
The context: Vycarb had already raised a $5 million seed round and drawn strategic backing from Shell, Rio TintoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Idemitsu, moving beyond its Brooklyn East River pilot toward industrial deployments. Its system stores CO₂ as dissolved bicarbonate in water.
The signal: The grant ranks in the top 10% of US grant rounds in its technology category, a notable vote of public confidence in a specific scale-up. Still, it is modest beside the billions flowing to large industrial carbon-management projects, and it does not by itself prove commercial viability.
Read more: carbonherald.com
Image credit: Vycarb
