Deal brings new resources and engineering to scale up carbon dioxide removal
NEW YORK, May 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Global Thermostat, a pioneer in carbon dioxide removal, has been acquired by Direct Air Capture company Zero Carbon Systems. The combination brings together core technology at Global Thermostat, considered by many to be the best in the world, with Zero Carbon Systems’ highly advanced engineering design.
“We are very excited to bring together Global Thermostat’s world-leading core technology with our best-in-class engineering design,” said David Elenowitz, founder and CEO of Zero Carbon Systems, who has operated the company in “stealth mode” since 2020.
Mr. Elenowitz is co-inventor of Zero Carbon Systems’ innovative engineering design, which leverages core technology developed by Global Thermostat over a 10-year period. He had previously invested in Global Thermostat through Zero Carbon Partners, an investment firm he founded in 2019 to scale companies in the low-carbon space, funded with $100 million of his personal capital.
Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Chairman of Global Thermostat, said, “We chose to be acquired because we recognized that Zero Carbon Systems’ advanced, large-scale design, strong and proven management team, and substantial financial resources, when combined with our highly developed core technology, would clearly position us to be a market leader within the Direct Air Capture industry.”
Zero Carbon Systems intends to own and operate a 2,500-ton per year demonstration plant in 2025-2026, a 50,000-ton commercial plant two years later, and a million-ton scale plant by around 2030.
“This acquisition brings us a giant step closer to having all the pieces in place to achieve highly scalable, low cost, and low energy carbon dioxide removal at megaton-plus scale – which is critically required to help address climate change,” added Mr. Elenowitz.
Previously, Mr. Elenowitz ran Mercury Capital, a private equity firm, where he led the acquisition of and ran a number of companies with total revenues in excess of $1 billion – including Empire Today, a flooring company he grew (as CEO) from $40 million to $700 million in revenues, and successfully exited in 2016. He began his career at global strategy consulting firm Bain & Company.
About Zero Carbon Systems
Zero Carbon Systems is a direct air capture company focused on delivering highly scalable, low cost, and low energy solutions for carbon dioxide removal. The ZCS design offers a continuous process, the ability to run 100% on renewable electricity, and very large-scale, high-throughput units to optimize economics at the megaton scale and beyond. Zero Carbon Systems is funded by Zero Carbon Partners, an investment and strategic operating firm focused on emerging companies in the low carbon sector with the potential to remove at least 0.5 gigatons (500 million tons) of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere by 2050.
About Global Thermostat
Global Thermostat has been a pioneer in the carbon dioxide removal space, with over 10 years’ experience developing technologies and an extensive patent portfolio related to optimizing the performance of Direct Air Capture systems. Global Thermostat’s Direct Air Capture technology uses a proprietary solid sorbent embedded on a monolith, coupled with a low temperature vacuum adsorption process, to cost-effectively capture CO2 from air at climate scale. A pilot unit with a nominal capacity of 1 kiloton per year has operated successfully since December 2022 at its headquarters in the Denver, Colorado area.
SOURCE Global Thermostat, PBC
