The Clean Growth Fund, the UK venture capital fund, has co-led a GBP1m investment in Carbon Re, a UK climate tech start-up that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to cut CO₂ emissions in the global cement industry and other hard-to-abate industrial processes.
Carbon Re's cloud-based platform, Delta Zero, utilises powerful AI tools to achieve operational efficiencies in energy intensive industries, such as cement production, reducing operational costs and carbon emissions to otherwise unachievable levels. Delta Zero enables immediate reductions in energy consumption, cost and carbon emissions, with no capital expenditure.
Carbon Re is currently running pilot projects at cement plants in the EU, Turkey, India, Thailand and Vietnam, and studies indicate that the Delta Zero platform could save a single cement plant US$2.3–5.9m per annum and a 20 per cent cut in fuel-based CO₂ emissions.
Using AI to analyse a customer's manufacturing data, Carbon Re recommends ways to cut emissions during cement production (or steel making, glass manufacture, etc) by modelling the production environment and dynamically identifying the optimal process for the lowest possible CO₂ output and fuel use.
Sherif Elsayed-Ali, CEO of Carbon Re, said: "Our mission is to reduce global emissions at the gigatonne scale, starting with the cement industry, and to become the leading global AI company to deliver industrial decarbonisation."
Currently the cement industry is Carbon Re's primary area of focus, but the company plans to expand into other energy-intensive industries, including steel and glass, over the next 12-18 months.
International Cement Review will feature Carbon Re in its December 2021 issue.
