At Paebbl, we re-store captured CO2 by converting it into industrial raw materials.
Why we are building Paebbl
To tackle the climate crisis, we need to develop durable and scalable solutions at an unprecedented speed. There is broad agreement in the scientific community that one of these solutions must be removing CO2 from the atmosphere (Direct Air Capture) and capturing it from industrial emissions — together referred to as Carbon Capture — and then keeping the captured CO2 permanently locked away from our air.
A central question for scaling up carbon capture is what to do with the massive quantities of CO2 once captured. At Paebbl, we believe this challenge is a chance to switch to second gear on a new industrial economy; a circular one, in which a waste stream of one process becomes the raw material of another.
What does Paebbl do, exactly?
We are scaling up a technology to turn captured CO2 into industrial raw materials on-site. These raw materials can replace currently heavily emitting ones in industries like construction, paper products and polymers. Our technology expands where carbon capture can be feasibly done and how profitable it can be.
How do we do it?
Every year, exposed rock surfaces around the globe permanently remove 1,1 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere (IPCC / Ciais et al). This natural process, known as rock weathering, or CO2 mineralisation, proceeds very slowly in normal circumstances. Building on 20 years of academic and applied research, we have found a way to speed up this process by a factor of a million.
Our proprietary technology takes captured CO2, water and ground-up, abundant silicate rocks as its input and puts them in a high-pressure reactor where the CO2 is swiftly turned into another kind of rock — with limestone-like properties. This synthetic limestone powder and its byproduct, silica powder, can serve as replacements for their fossil alternatives, which are consumed in the billions of tonnes every year.
What about the required energy input, a core concern in today’s world? The beauty of CO2 mineralisation is that instead of requiring energy for the conversion to happen, it releases energy. This means that every Joule of energy input can be used to accelerate the process instead of just getting it going. At Paebbl, we care deeply about transparency and always look at the complete energy and CO2 equations of our process (scope 1, 2, and 3), and will be publishing more about this in the near future.
Who is behind Paebbl?
Paebbl was started by Pol, Marta, Andreas and Jane. Together with a team of engineers, inventors and academics from around Europe and North America, we are working on making accelerated CO2 mineralisation a globally scalable and profitable technology.
Pol Knops (CTO) has authored over 20 papers within CO2 mineralisation and advised several companies within the emerging field of rock weathering. Marta Sjögren (Co-CEO) has 12 years of early-stage investment experience, last as partner at Northzone. Andreas Saari (Co-CEO) is a deeptech entrepreneur and former CEO of Slush. Jane Walerud (Chair) is a serial entrepreneur and investor in companies like Graphmatech and Klarna.
Paebbl is backed by the leading mission-aligned investors in climate technology: 2050, The Grantham Foundation, Pale Blue Dot and the founders of Supercell, Unity, ClimateView, Kahoot, Small Giant Games, Asket as well as the former heads of Nokia and Atlas Copco, and a number of other angel investors.
Over the coming months, we will be releasing more information about our technology and progress. Follow our journey, or be part of shaping it!
