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