ecoLocked
Bigger Picture
Removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in a durable and useful way is difficult. Captured carbon can either be injected into the geosphere or stored in long-lived products. The IPCC includes carbon capture and utilisation as an essential strategy for meeting net-zero in the industrial sector. However as it stands there are limited avenues capable of using carbon at gigaton scale and at palatable costs.
The Problem
At ~36Kt CO₂ removed to date, biochar is the most scaled of durable CDR solutions. However, there are limited markets for its use. It can cost upward of $400/ton to produce biochar, and revenues from carbon removal credits at ~$150 tCO₂ are often insufficient to make the economics go round. Luckily biochar has unique material properties that increase its value in a variety of applications. Incorporation into building materials is a market with enormous potential, as gigatonnes of cement and concrete are produced each year and the current process is highly carbon-intensive. Cement, the primary ingredient of concrete, contributes 8% of global emissions, which is 4x that of the aviation industry. And construction is not slowing down: an equivalent of a new NYC will be built from concrete every month for the next 40 years. The biggest players in the built environment are committing to decarbonisation, which includes eliminating embodied carbon emissions by 2050. However, they need scalable and affordable solutions to do so.
Why ecoLocked?
Carbon-negative concrete. By incorporating biochar into concrete, ecoLocked is bringing together carbon removal and sustainable building materials to decarbonise one of the world's most carbon-intensive industries.
Proprietary recipes turning our buildings into carbon sinks ecoLocked have discovered a way to integrate biochar from low-cost residual feedstock into new concrete recipes. These recipes will be customised and certified for different uses and reduce the need for high carbon cement, with the potential to make entirely CO₂ free concrete.
Innovative business model for biochar ecoLocked’s solution creates an economically viable biochar market such that producers can remove carbon at scale, supply sustainable building materials, and produce green energy from exothermic pyrolysis.
Future-proofed construction material A lower carbon footprint is not enough to break into a well-established building materials market. ecoLocked’s biocarbon-based concrete recipes lead to improvements in core material properties, such as compressive strength, insulation, and fire resistance. All at a lower weight and with no drastic changes to the existing manufacturing process.
