Novo Holdings invests 72 M$ in LanzaTech to accelerate the commercialization of Carbon Smart™ products

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Type of post: NEWS.

Major boost for one of the companies which is called to head the low-carbon circular economy revolution. Novo Holdings A/S (Novo Holdings) and LanzaTech have announce that they have formed a partnership to grow LanzaTech’s revolutionary sustainable fuels and chemicals platform. Novo Holdings is making a 72 M$ investment in the clean tech company and Senior Director Anders Bendsen Spohr will join LanzaTech’s Board of Directors.
See press release: “Novo Holdings invests $72 million in sustainable products leader LanzaTech”, 6/8/2019.

Novo Holdings is a private limited liability company wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. It is the holding company of the Novo Group, comprising Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S, and is responsible for managing the Foundation’s assets. As part of its mandate, Novo Holdings provides seed and venture capital to development-stage companies. The transaction underlines Novo Holdings’ increasing focus on investing in market-leading bio-industrial companies with the ability to have a long-term sustainable impact on society through innovative technologies.

Figure 1. LanzaTech Carbon Smart concept

Novo Holdings’ investment will expand LanzaTech’s carbon recycling platform and enable the company to accelerate the commercialization of Carbon Smart™ products allowing consumers to choose where the carbon in their products comes from (recycled carbon or fossil carbon). Examples of the uses of the technology include taking steel mill emissions in China and unsorted, unrecyclable household waste in Japan to convert them to ethanol, sustainable aviation fuel or polyethylene (“LanzaTech and Shougang Group announce the start-up of the world’s first commercial waste gas to ethanol plant”, “ANA and LanzaTech sign agreement for the purchase of sustainable aviation fuel”). When a product has reached the end of its useful life, it can go unsorted and uncleaned to a LanzaTech facility and be recycled repeatedly without losing any of the properties of the original material. This locks carbon into a cycle and supports a transition to a circular economy.

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