Limenet, the start-up that stores CO2 in the sea, sells its first thousand tonnes

One thousand tonnes of CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere and stored in marine waters, combating global warming and the acidification of the sea, thanks to an agreement signed by the Italian company Limenet, a start-up that has developed a technology that captures CO2 from the air and transforms it into calcium bicarbonates to be stored in the sea, and KlimaDao, a platform active in the voluntary carbon credits market. The latter has in fact purchased an advance on the processing of 1,000 tonnes of CO2 that Limenet will make by mid-2025, generating carbon credits (negative emission credits) that KlimaDao undertakes to resell on the Carbonmark platform.

For Limenet, this operation - which it has concluded thanks also to the support of Aither, a company active in the sustainability market and an investor in the company - represents an opportunity to consolidate its technology on the market, after having carried out a pilot project in La Spezia in which 150 kg of negative CO2 emissions had already been produced by the beginning of 2023. Today, Limenet will scale up its technology by building a plant in Augusta (Sicily) capable of removing around 4 thousand tonnes of CO2 annually. Subsequently, through the standardisation of a 100 thousand tonne plant, the company intends to raise capital to build a series of sites 'capable of absorbing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide per year'.

"After years of research and experiments, we have achieved very satisfactory results with the validation of our technology through a pilot plant. We are now starting to play our part in the big game of decarbonisation, developing a technology on a large scale that allows us to remove and store large quantities of carbon dioxide and giving companies the opportunity to offset, through the marketing of carbon credits, emissions that cannot be reduced. This agreement is proof that the market also believes in our technological solutions. We will start work on storing the first tonnes of CO2 as early as this spring in Augusta, Sicily,' commented Stefano Cappello, CEO & Founder of Limenet.

"I am very pleased that our company may have created an important opportunity for Limenet at an early stage of their development. This agreement marks a significant step in the development of carbon capture technologies and reinforces KlimaDao's commitment to bringing liquidity to sustainable solutions in this market. By facilitating the first direct tokenization of carbon capture from the air, we promote the development of a liquid market for carbon credits and improve the alkalinity of the seas. Blockchain technology will track the origin of these credits, setting a new standard for environmental assets on a global scale," added Scott Michael Kilduff JR., Head of Policy at KlimaDao.

Limenet was born as a scientific community: it became a company in 2023 and was one of the eight start-ups in the second edition of Faros, the first Italian accelerator in the blue economy of the CDP National Network. To date, the company has already raised EUR 2 million from investors, including Aither, Core Angels Climate, Moonstone, Forest Valley Catalyst, Faros itself and Leone La Ferla.