Media release – Thursday 7 October 2021

SOUTHERN GREEN GAS AND CORPORATE CARBON SIGN MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING TO PROGRESS DIRECT AIR CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY IN AUSTRALIA

Southern Green Gas, a pioneering technology company with innovative technology for Direct Air Capture, and Corporate Carbon, one of Australia’s leading carbon project developers, have today announced that they have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding for the deployment of the technology.

Corporate Carbon was recently awarded $4 million in Federal Government funding to demonstrate Direct Air Capture through to geological storage at a 1 tonne per day scale.  The first component of this project was a global technology review, which was completed at the end of August.

“With global efforts underway to try to limit temperature rise to less than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the IPCC has highlighted that we will need to be removing around 10 gigatonnes per year of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2050 in order to achieve net zero.  Direct Air Capture is therefore a critical technology that we need to develop and deploy at scale”, said Julian Turecek, Executive Director at Corporate Carbon.

“Our global technology review led us to focus on Direct Air Capture powered by renewable energy, and we are delighted to be partnering with an innovative Australian company. We look forward to working with Southern Green Gas, not just on the first demonstration project, but also on the scale up to much larger projects. Commercially, we are already seeing significant inbound interest in offtake agreements for carbon removal as a service”, he added.

Rohan Gillespie, Managing Director at Southern Green Gas, said “Our technology has the potential to be truly disruptive, by leveraging the global expertise of The University of Sydney in the use of specialised molecular adsorbents and by using renewable energy in a land blessed by both solar energy and world-class sequestration sites. We are very pleased that Corporate Carbon has partnered with us to see the technology being deployed at scale and this arrangement complements our recently announced collaboration with Swiss Re”.

The MoU sees the companies working together under exclusive arrangements to prove out the first modules and to form a future Collaboration Agreement that will provide the equipment for a 1 tonne per day project at Moomba, with the potential to scale-up at Moomba or at other sequestration sites.

“We have demonstrated a credible pathway for our technology to come down the cost curve and reach below $100 per tonne for carbon removal when deployed at scale”, said Rohan.

For more information and media enquiries contact:

Julian Turecek, Executive Director, Corporate Carbon

+61 408 256 848 | julian.turecek@corporatecarbon.com.au | www.corporatecarbon.com.au  

Rohan Gillespie, Managing Director, Southern Green Gas

+61 438 722 443 | rohan.gillespie@southerngreengas.com.au  | www.southerngreengas.com.au

BACKGROUND

Corporate Carbon delivers climate solutions from project development to sale of credits, ensuring emissions reductions, carbon sequestration and co-benefits for the environment, individuals and businesses. It has been instrumental in demonstrating the commercial viability of capturing CO2 in agricultural soils. It created the first soil carbon credits under the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) and through its spin-off company (AgriProve) has registered more than 75% of all soil carbon projects under the ERF.

Delivering more than 8.8 million ACCUs to the Clean Energy Regulator and commercial clients, Corporate Carbon has expertise in managing Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) delivery risks, navigating complex policy, legislation and regulatory compliance, and a track record in developing novel processes, methods and supporting technologies to assist in their activities.

Southern Green Gas  commenced its journey in 2018 with a goal to be first to market with a direct air capture (DAC) product that costs less than $100 per tonne of carbon removal. The disruptive technology that makes this achievable is metal organic frameworks adsorbents, which act like nano sponges selectively soaking up CO2 from the air.

This technology is engineered into a modular product that is completely standalone and powered entirely by solar energy. Each module is designed to capture two tonnes of CO2 per year, with world scale projects comprising millions of DAC modules. This modular approach allows Southern Green Gas to access the cost reduction benefits of high volume manufacturing, to be conducted in giga-scale facilities across regional Australia.

And being CO2 from the atmosphere, Southern Green Gas’ DAC product also allows carbon removals to be implemented across a myriad of locations.
​

Direct Air Carbon Capture, Use and Storage Project

Corporate Carbon was awarded a $4 million grant last month as part of the federal government’s $50 million Carbon Capture Use and Storage Development Fund. The intended outcomes of the grant program are to lower the cost of technology adoption, encourage industry investment in deploying CCUS in Australia, and progress the deployment of CCUS projects from R&D towards commercial operation.

The project, Pilot Direct Air Carbon Capture, Use and Storage: off-site abatement & ACCUs will deliver a pilot scale Direct Air Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (DACCUS) facility to operate at 1t CO2/day. The development and delivery of this project will be a stepping stone to place Australia in a unique position to play a leading role in this emerging industry by harnessing Australia’s ideal conditions for solar energy, due to high solar intensity and close proximity to some of the world’s best geological sequestration sites.