CarbonCure Technologies, a Halifax-based company specializing in trapping carbon in concrete, has raised over $100 million in a funding round led by Blue Earth Capital to support its growth.

The company’s solution injects captured carbon dioxide into new concrete, which not only reduces carbon in the atmosphere but also reduces the amount of concrete needed per mix. Once injected, the carbon dioxide reacts with cement in water and mineralizes, strengthening the concrete and permanently storing the carbon dioxide.

This ends up reducing the carbon footprint of resulting material by an average of 15 kilograms per cubic metre.

Removing carbon generates traceable carbon credits. Shopify, Stripe, Invert and Ripple are some of the companies that have purchased carbon credits from CarbonCure.

In a release, CarbonCure’s chair and CEO Robert Niven said, “The financial backing of this special syndicate of investors is an exciting endorsement of CarbonCure as a go-to solution for low embodied carbon concrete, a leader in carbon removal technologies and a provider of the highest quality carbon credits in the voluntary carbon market.”

Blue Earth Capital is a Zug, Switzerland-based investment firm that focuses on impact and responsible investing.

Why Blue Earth funded CarbonCure

Blue Earth Capital’s head of private equity Kayode Akinola said in the release CarbonCure’s technologies are a promising solution to enable the redesign or supplement of major industrial processes “by using lower carbon-intensive materials and/or enabling raw materials to be reused.

“CarbonCure’s technologies achieve both, on the one hand enabling concrete production with less carbon-intensive cement and on the other creating less solid waste and using less fresh water. Solutions like these are urgently needed to help meet global climate goals.”

In an email exchange with SustainableBiz, CarbonCure CEO Robert Niven said the investment will “accelerate our product roadmap and global expansion in order to meet our mission to reduce and remove 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year."

Among the other investors joining Blue Earth Capital were Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Taronga Ventures, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund and 2150. New strategic investors were BH3 Growth Equity and Samsung Ventures.

In a statement provided to SustainableBiz by CarbonCure, Hojin Jung, the executive vice-president and head of procurement at Samsung C&T, said, “In addition to financing, Samsung C&T is eager to strengthen its decarbonization portfolio and contribute to CarbonCure's market expansion by using CarbonCure's technologies to supply greener concrete to domestic and global construction sites."

Niven declined to disclose CarbonCure’s total fundraising to date, nor potential plans to pursue more funding.

CarbonCure's other initiatives

Niven said his company’s other concrete decarbonization efforts include precast concrete, reclaimed water, recycled concrete aggregate and digital tools.

In a previous interview with SustainableBiz, CarbonCure detailed its Carbon XPRIZE-winning technology, which recycles cement materials and water from truck washouts at concrete plants. This can be reused by concrete producers, reducing waste and carbon dioxide emissions.

CarbonCure said its technologies have been used to produce almost five million truckloads of lower-carbon concrete, saving approximately 290,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Its 750 systems have been sold in over 30 countries, primarily in the U.S. with interest coming from Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East, according to Niven. 

CarbonCure's technology was utilized in the development of Amazon’s HQ2 in Virginia and the 725 Ponce office tower in Atlanta.

Editor's note: A sentence citing Crunchbase's estimate of CarbonCure's funding was removed.