Phil De Luna, former Deep Sky chief science and commercial officer, has teamed up with University of British Columbia (UBC) researcher Sabrina Scott and Aurora Hydrogen co-founder and ex-CTO Erin Bobicki to help decarbonize cement with Cura.
“We believe that we can get under the cost to produce conventional cement, whereas most … other technologies require a green premium.”
Erin Bobicki, Cura
Spun out of UBC research that Scott (Cura’s COO) helped with earlier this year, Cura is developing electrochemical technology aimed at taking the CO₂ out of limestone using electricity rather than fossil fuels. “We like to think of ourselves as pre-calcination carbon capture,” Bobicki told BetaKit in an interview.
The Vancouver- and Calgary-based cleantech startup, which recently emerged from stealth, aims to reduce CO₂ emissions while also helping industry players cut costs.
Concrete is responsible for eight percent of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Cement is the glue that typically holds concrete together, and it is derived from limestone (calcium carbonate), which is heated at high temperatures to extract the calcium oxide during a process that emits large amounts of CO₂.
Bobicki, Cura’s CEO, notes that some companies are working to displace the amount of cement in concrete—not addressing CO₂ from producing cement directly—while others are making cement out of alternative feedstock using calcium silicate, an approach that she said will “take a very long time to scale.”
“The only thing that’s really ready to go is point-source carbon capture and storage, and the challenge there is it tends to be very expensive,” Bobicki said.
Cura uses an electrolyzer to split limestone into the lime used to make cement and pure CO₂ that can be stored or used for other purposes. The company has scaled up its technology in the lab to a first prototype, and claims its solution is capable of cost-effectively reducing the CO₂ emissions from cement production by up to 85 percent.
“We believe that we can get under the cost to produce conventional cement, whereas most of these other technologies require a green premium,” Bobicki added.
Cura has so far been bootstrapped but is fundraising to build a 100-tonne per year pilot facility that it hopes to deploy within the next 12 to 16 months in British Columbia or Alberta. The startup is also aiming to launch a 10,000-tonne per year demonstration over the next three years and deploy its tech at a large-scale cement plant within the next half-decade.
Cura has inked partnerships with an international infrastructure developer to test and potentially deploy its cement at large-scale projects, and is speaking with cement makers to pilot its tech as it works towards its vision of having its tech installed directly with cement producers to power their manufacturing.
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De Luna, Cura’s CTO, told BetaKit that he decided to leave Montréal-based carbon-capture startup Deep Sky this summer because he wanted to build a company of his own. He said his departure had nothing to do with his belief in Deep Sky or direct air capture (DAC) tech more broadly, reiterating his belief that Canada is the place to scale carbon removals.
“I was the third hire, and [Deep Sky] taught me a lot about what it means to build a high-growth company and build in the real world,” De Luna said. “I’d always viewed it as a stepping stone. I knew that I wanted to be a founder. I was waiting for the right problem, the right technology, and the right team, and I found them all here in Cura.”
De Luna also noted that the DAC market is facing some challenges, a topic he wrote about last month. At the moment, the only revenue-generating model for DAC is carbon credits, which De Luna acknowledged are a “tough sell” in today’s environment. While many companies are still buying them, he said they are talking less about this publicly, adding that “greenhushing” in the age of Trump is “definitely real.”
De Luna indicated that the market has also become crowded. “The reality is there are over 150 DAC startups right now, and the market can’t sustain all of them,” he said. Despite these headwinds, De Luna expressed confidence that Deep Sky “will be able to weather this storm.”
De Luna argued that DAC is needed to help Canada achieve its net-zero by 2050 goals, and that Cura’s approach could be “just as necessary of a lever” in tackling climate change.
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“I’ve always said that we need to both reduce emissions and remove them,” De Luna said. “I’m excited about Cura because the idea of decarbonizing a material that is the literal foundation of infrastructure—especially in this political moment of nation-building projects—is incredibly compelling.”
De Luna added that Canada’s appetite to build large energy and transportation infrastructure is particularly high at the moment. He cited Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plans to fast-track approval for such initiatives as a means of spurring the country’s economy via its new Major Projects Office. De Luna emphasized that all of these projects will require cement.
“Canada actually has an opportunity to lead by example and fill a gap that the US has unfortunately left,” De Luna said. “Just because the US wants to ignore climate doesn’t make the physics change [and] doesn’t mean the world isn’t getting hotter. We need these solutions, and that’s why we’re building them.”
Feature image courtesy Cura.