PROMETHEUS FUELS Wants to deploy half a million modular units to turn CO2 into fuel

Based in Santa Cruz, California Website - https://www.prometheusfuels.com/

CEO and founder Rob McGinnis was one of 50 innovators at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year. Before starting Prometheus in 2018, McGinnis founded nanotechnology company Mattershift as well as renewable energy company Oasys Water.

The goal of Prometheus is to make fuel from air. But it wants to do so using only renewable electricity in its processes, and for that fuel to be cheaper than the kerosene based fuels used in aviation today.

Prometheus certainly does a much better job of explaining its vision than most other companies in this space. via a visually striking and accessible brand language.

It has its own storyteller with chief creative officer Amanda R Martinez having a background as an author, journalist and playwright.

And that vision includes big ambitions. Rather than giant refineries, Prometheus’ model is to create and deploy modular “Titan Forge” units, each of which will capture 4450 tons of CO2 a year, and to deploy half a million of these around the world by 2030.

Prometheus says that the result will be the cheapest DAC cost in the world - $36 per carbon ton, as opposed to the $200+, which is the case right now.

Last year, following a funding round it said that it was valued at $1.5 billion, with investors including shipping giant Maersk and BMW.

Prometheus was also name checked by the White House last year in a SAF fact-sheet, along with a few other SAF providers, thanks to an agreement signed with American Airlines for the supply of ten million gallons of e-fuels

The other significant partnership Prometheus has in aviation is with Boom Supersonic, which wants its Overture aircraft to be 100% powered by SAF when it takes flight at the end of this decade.

As a visible company that operates in an unconventional way and with a large valuation, Prometheus has its detractors.

Earlier this year a piece in MIT Technology Review cast doubts on the company’s ambitions, claiming it was behind schedule with some experts questioning whether the technology will work.

Prometheus responded by directing us to two pieces on their website. One is an essay by CEO Rob McGinnis titled “Dude, where’s my fuel?”

McGinnis points out that solar also used to be hugely expensive and now is very cheap, and says that unlike standard DAC methods, the company doesn’t need pure CO2 as it captures CO2 from water.

Another piece on the website from this Summer talks about the report, “Making NetZero Aviation Possible,” co-authored by the Mission Possible Partnership, the World Economic Forum, the Energy Transitions Commission, and McKinsey & Company.

In it, McGinnis again differentiates between the Fischer-Tropsch method to make most synthetic fuels (which is almost 100 years old), and the Prometheus pathway.