OUR POWER-LIST

We’ve picked ten companies that for various reasons have caught our eye, and that we recommend aviation sustainability heads and C-Suite executives take a look at.

Our criteria for picking them wasn’t as simple as market value or level of funding.

Rather we looked at the technology each company is using, where they are in the development cycle, the strength of the management team, the market potential and the vision.

Crucially, as we are ourselves part of the aviation industry, we also looked at it through an industry lens.

As a result, there are many carbon capture companies we didn’t include even though they are doing great things. The reason was that there were others that we could see as being a better specific industry fit.

Finally, we’ve looked beyond just DAC, and instead at carbon removal in its broadest sense.

Air Company CarbonCure

CarbonEngineering

ClimeWorks

Heirloom

LanzaTech

Noya

Prometheus

Synhelion

Twelve

Consumer products out of air AIR COMPANY

Based in - NYC, New York Website - https://aircompany.com/

CEO - Gregory Constantine, formerly at drinks giant Diageo, and a Forbes ‘30 under 30.’ Constantine founded Air Company with Dr Stafford Sheehan, who is the company’s CTO.

In 2020, Air Company featured in Time Magazine’s best inventions of the year for “vodka, out of thin air.”

That vodka is made by taking carbon out of the air and turning it into ethanol.

Talking to Fast Company, CTO and Co-Founder Stafford Sheehan said, “We ended up targeting premium spirits because the ethanol that we were making was really, really high purity, and the place where you can recognize the benefits of that really high purity is in a really premium vodka.”

As well as vodka, Air Company has also developed CO2 based perfume and hand sanitizer. However, the next phase of Air Company’s development has more relevance for aviation. That’s because the company, which has NASA as a partner, is looking at turning air into sustainable fuel.

Though the company’s stated target market is space travel, you’d imagine that SAF for aviation would be possible if there was a buyer.

Investors have been impressed and gave the company a vote of confidence earlier this year, when Air Company raised $30 million from climate fund Carbon Direct Capital Management.