Who is Who in Direct Air Capture

Julius Wesche (PhD)
3 min readSep 17, 2022

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Here comes a list of key actors and experts in the global Direct Air Capture ecosystem. Check it out and drop names in the comments or send me an email to julius.wesche@ntnu.no, if you know people who have not made it onto the list yet.

The list will be continuously updated, based on suggestions and comments.

Climeworks planned Mammoth DAC facility, Iceland

Context: I am prepping a study on how to accelerate the global deployment of Direct Air Capture. It will be based on 30 interviews with #DAC experts from a variety of backgrounds. More context on the study: https://lnkd.in/dyrPMgGQ

Direct air capture (DAC) technologies extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere. The CO2 can be permanently stored in deep geological formations (thereby achieving negative emissions or carbon removal) or it can be used, for example in food processing or combined with hydrogen to produce synthetic fuels. The main idea of it is to reverse climate change.

Startups & Project Development

Carbon Engineering (Amy Ruddock, Geoffrey Holmes, Lori Guetre Anna Stukas)
Climeworks (Christoph Gebald, Jan Wurzbacher, Carlos Haertel, Christoph Beuttler)
Heirloom (Shashank Samala, Noah McQueen)
Carbon Capture Inc. (Adrian Corless)
Global Thermostat (Nicholas More Eisenberger)
Carbyon (Hans De Neve)
Verdox (Brian Baynes)
Parallel Carbon (Aranzazu Carmona Orbezo, Ryan Anderson)
Mission Zero Technologies (Nicholas Chadwick, Duncan Preston)
RePair Carbon Capture (Amir Shiner, Ben Achrai)
Soletair Power (Petri Laakso, Cyril Bajamundi)
Carpe Carbon (Giuliano Antoniciello)
Removr (Einar Tyssen, Jesper Børs-Lind)
Sustaera (Mary Haas, Raghubir Gupta)
MCi Carbon (Marcus Dawe)
NOYA (Josh Santos, Daniel Cavero)

Subsystem Suppliers

Carbfix (Edda Sif Pind Aradottir)
44.01 (Talal Hasan, Karan Khimji)

Demand

Microsoft (Lucas Joppa)
Frontier/Stripe (Nan Ransohoff, Zeke Housefather)
Shopify (Stacy Kauk)
South Pole (Renat Heuberger)

Policy & Government

European Commission (Christian Holzleitner, Fabien Ramos)
US Department of Energy (Dr. Jennifer Wilcox, Noah Deich)
UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (Laura Hurley)
Invest NL (Ruud Zandvliet, Elwin van Rooijen, Guus Dubbink)

Research & Education

Arizona State University (Klaus Lackner)
Georgia Tech (Christopher Jones)
Harvard University (David Keith)
ETH Zurich (Marco Mazzotti)
University of Sheffield (Jon Gibbins)
German Institute for International and Security Affairs — SWP (Oliver Geden, Felix Schenuit)
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research — PIK (Jessica Strefler)
University of Waterloo (Neil Craik)
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Wilfried Rickels)
Heriott-Watt University
(Susana Garcia)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT (Howard Herzog)
Imperial College London (
Camille Petit, Ronny Pini)
CSIRO Energy (Paul Feron)
Natural Resources Canada (Eddy Chui)

NGOs

Bellona (Mark Preston Aragonès)
Transport & Environment (Matteo Mirolo)
Carbon Market Watch (Wijnand Stoefs)
Carbon Gap (Eli Mitchell-Larson)
Clearpath (Spencer Nelson)
Clean Air Task Force (Eadbhard Pernot)
Carbon180 (Erin Burns, Giana Amador)
Rocky Mountain Institute — RMI (Daniel Pike, Habiba Ahut Daggash, Silvan Aeschlimann)

Philanthropy & Foundations

XPRIZE Foundation (Marcius Extravour, Nikki Batchelor)
Climateworks Foundation (Jan Mazurek)
Linden Trust
(Roger Ullmann)
The Grantham Foundation (Zachary Taylor)

Investment Funds & Venture Capital

Lowercarbon Capital (Clea Kolster, PhD)
Breakthrough Energy (Jack Andreasen, Maria Leis)
Prelude (Gabriel Kra)
Carbon Removal Partners (Benjamin Schulz, Max Zeller, Karen Strassel)
Counteract (Matt Isaacs, Andrew Shebbeare)

Think Tanks & other knowledge creators

International Energy Agency (Sara Budinis, Luca Lo Re)
Bipartisan Policy Center (Sasha Mackler, Xan Fishman, and Danny Broberg)
Rhodium Group (John Larsen)

Consultancy Businesses

Carbon Direct (Julio Friedmann)
South Pole (Renat Heuberger)
Climate Principles (Eve Tamme)
Marginal Carbon (Robert Höglund)
Caron Curve (Na’im Merchant)
Boston Consulting Group (Anders Porsborg-Smith)

Branch or Network organizations

Direct Air Capture Coalition (Jason Hochman)
Negative Emissions Platform (Anna Dubowik)
The OpenAir Collective (Christopher Neidl)
AirMiners (Tito Jankowski)
Carbon Business Council (Ben Rubin)

MRV, Carbon Ratings, Market places,

BeZero Carbon (Ted Christie-Miller, Sebastien Cross)
Carbonfuture (Hannes Junginger)
Puro Earth (Antti Vihavainen, Joseph Kochanski)
Patch (Brennan Spellacy)

Banks

Standard Chartered (Kerry Constabile)
JP Morgan Chase (Allison Saegh-Fleming)
Citi (Keith Tuffley)

Media

The Carbon Removal Show (Tom Previte, Emily Swaddle)

Do you know of someone who should be on the list but has not made it yet? Please drop their names in the comments or send me an email (julius.wesche@ntnu.no).

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Julius Wesche (PhD)
Julius Wesche (PhD)

Written by Julius Wesche (PhD)

Climate Innovation Researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.