Arctic Capture recently launched!
"Addressing the world's largest problem, at its smallest scale."
Artic Capture uses CRISPR, bacteria, and robots to fight climate change at scale!
Founded by Ankit Singhal, Vignesh Karthik, and Connor Lee
tl;dr
They are using CRISPR-cas12a technology on bacteria - along with advanced robotic systems to grow it autonomously - so that they can take in tons (literally) of CO2 and help reverse climate change!
Problem 1: Zero isn’t enough.
We can’t just go to zero emissions—don’t get them wrong, that’s critical. But we need to start taking in CO2 and eventually go net-negative to meet our climate targets and reverse some damage. We need to take in CO2 fast.
Problem 2: Biological carbon sequestration currently isn’t scalable enough to meet global demands.
Reforestation/afforestation projects, waste biomass removal projects, and blue carbon projects, while all necessary, lack the scalability needed to remove Gt/year. Whether they are issues of planetary space, secondary markets, or verifiability/additionality, these are all secondary as a means of taking in CO2 compared to Direct Air Capture.
Problem 3: DAC is too expensive.
Self-explanatory—these solutions cost $800-1300/ton. Ouch. The best solution we have but the economics just don’t work.
Solution: Exponential growth and robots 🤓
Arctic Capture is creating the first direct biological analog of DAC by editing bacteria to do the work for us - the same bacteria that ushered in the Great Oxidation Event about 2bn years ago. They use robots to harvest the bacteria autonomously to provide low-cost credits of the same quality as DAC (they also engage in the entire air → storage pipeline) but much lower in the cost curve and much closer to the $100/ton global goal. At scale, Arctic Capture thinks they can do it at ~$50/ton.
The team is excited to build! If you want to help, they'd love to talk to:
- Robotics people
- Genetic engineers
- Anyone interested in offsetting their carbon emissions.
