Carbonauten: On a mission to zero carbon
Carbonauten from Germany competed against more than 180 startups, making it to the Green Alley Award finals! Reducing CO2 in our atmosphere is an important result of Carbonauten’s innovative material made of wooden residues. Instead of emitting greenhouse gases while rotting, the wood is turned into carbon and combined with different binders. The resulting biomaterials can replace conventional plastics and building materials for various industries. In this way, one tonne of Carbonauten’s biomaterial can store an equivalent of more than 3 tonnes of CO2.
# Your mission is captured in your slogan “minus CO2”. Can we still stop climate catastrophe and if yes, what do we have to do to change track?
Unfortunately, the reports of scientists and the experienced state of the environment make me pessimistic. Ironically, my friend and partner Christoph Hiemer founded carbonauten for this very reason. We still experience the attitude that, with all understanding for the crisis, saving the environment should not cost anything extra or even mean personal renunciation. Yet it is precisely the crisis that offers an enormous opportunity for society and the economy. Politics and business are currently waking up to the fact that the Thünberg generation represents other values that must be taken into account if they want to remain in power. In my opinion, the way to protect the environment and resources, cross-society solidarity and new business models is simply through education and feelings. When humanity reaches a higher general level of education, the sometimes complex interrelationships will also become clear to the broad and crisis-deciding majority. This always results in motives for the urgently needed future-oriented sustainability. By feelings, I mean empathy. When someone develops and shows empathy, he sees himself as part of a team and recognizes that his actions have an impact.
# On your website you admit that pitching your idea to investors did not always go well. What were the main obstacles you had to face in the investor and startup scene?
I am proud to say that Christoph and I were on the begging tour for 3.5 years. A good 50 pitches with only pats on the back as a result must force you to give up! Personally, that's not easy with families behind you. But the moments when the EC card didn't work at the supermarket checkout were not shameful but motivation enough.
We wondered for a long time why we didn't reach investors. Surely they must realize that humanity is hurtling towards the abyss and that they too must take responsibility! And we were not alone, because the Club of Rome warned of the climate crisis as early as 1972. In my view, there are two very simple reasons for this.
First factor and most importantly, as a start-up you need the right idea at the right time and an excellent team behind it. From today's perspective, we were early and have been preparing the market since our founding in 2017. In fact, many companies from back then are contacting us again and asking for support, which the universal pressure from CO2 emissions and costs is suddenly noticeable and sensible solutions are still rare.
Second factor is the observation that our counterparts on the money bags were simply money managers defending existing and start ups may well see them as adversaries, the latter questioning established business models and attitudes per se. But we are adventurers and rebels, we question many things and, because of the extreme future-oriented nature like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, we cannot convey what almost all Central European managers are looking for: security. They do not remember where the origins of their companies were: Long ago, in small workshops, courageous pioneers (today Start Up) like Margarete Steiff, Werner von Siemens, Carl Zeiss, Johann Voith, Franz Haniel, Ferdinand Porsche, Carl Benz laid the foundations for the fortunes to be managed today. Investors forget that.
# Producing a plastic material that reduces CO2 instead of producing more sounds like a dream. How come that you are the first ones to come up with this idea? Are there any competitors?
Yes, this is indeed pure disruption. Because the more carbonauten NET Materials® are used in products, the better it is for the environment! That actually sounds pretty crazy and goes against all due common sense and the idea of recycling. But when you understand that one ton of biocarbon permanently stores up to 3.3 tons of CO2, and that these biocarbons from biomass residues can replace between 10% and 70% of plastics and building materials, the idea gains charm. A coffee to go cup in a ditch is ugly but will eventually decompose leaving the biocarbons as CO2 sinks and the basis for what scientists call the "super fertilizer Terra Preta". So our biocarbons are functional and filler materials that can improve properties of the final products. And the low price of our biocarbons makes carbonauten NET Materials® economically attractive and cheapens many products. In addition, the 24/7 production of our biocarbons generates a lot of excess base-load renewable energy as heat at 850° C, which can also be converted into electricity. This allows us to replace expensive biomass cogeneration and combined heat and power plants. An attractive by-product is bio-oils, which are used, for example, as highly effective crop protection, a basis for acetic acid, a substitute fuel, and a starting product for bioplastics. And we generate large quantities of economically effective CO2 certificates. Through these four products, the carbonaut system brings in the money we need to scale globally. Each decentralized site will also perform social solidarity functions. Regarding CO2, we can do even more. We have a binder and a complementary process that can very easily absorb CO2 from industrial waste gases and store it permanently in carbonauten NET Materials®. That in itself is spectacular. There are no competitors for us in the joint fight against the climate crisis; we are pursuing the Blue Ocean strategy.
If you want to watch Carbonauten pitch their idea to the Green Alley Award jury, register for free for the first digital Green Alley Award on 22 April 5pm CET/4pm GMT.