Carbon Removal Deep Dive: Mission Zero

Profiling an exciting new carbon removal start-up using the MOBILE Framework

With COP26 around the corner, I expect we will see a slew of new and renewed net-zero commitments from companies and governments in the coming months. Unfortunately, many of these commitments are likely to rely on low-cost carbon offsets and mass tree planting campaigns. The challenge is that with the “race to the bottom” for cheap offsets, resources flow to offset projects with little or no impact while emitters continue to pollute.

Instead, I believe companies and institutions should focus on aggressively reducing emissions, while making targeted, strategic investments in the nascent but necessary technologies that will be needed to remove billions of tons of greenhouse gases in the coming decades. Fundamentally, this requires a rethink of carbon offsetting altogether - no greenwashing, no questionable carbon accounting, no bullshit.

The challenge is finding impactful companies and projects to put your support behind. That’s why I developed MOBILE - a framework that helps identify high-quality, innovative, and equitable carbon removal projects. This framework can be used to identify and evaluate companies and carbon offset projects to ensure that your investments do more than just offer a way to negate your carbon footprint, but also catalyze technologies critical to advancing the carbon removal field and deploy these technologies in an equitable manner.

Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to profile Heirloom Carbon, a promising carbon removal company, using the MOBILE Framework. Today, I’m excited to profile another cutting edge carbon removal company that also recently received funding from Stripe - UK-based Mission Zero. 

Enter Mission Zero

Mission Zero is developing a low-cost, heat-free, decentralized direct air capture (DAC) solution. Right off the bat, three things excite me about Mission Zero. First, their project is coupling DAC with a unique carbon storage and utilization solution. They plan to situate their first DAC unit alongside a plant run by O.C.O. that produces manufactured limestone using waste fly ash and captured CO2. The manufactured limestone is produced by mineralizing the input CO2, storing it permanently. Second, they claim their technology can be powered entirely on renewables, which is not the case for most of today’s commercially available DAC technology. One of conventional DAC’s drawbacks is its dependence on thermal energy, which can potentially increase its carbon intensity and hold back its scale potential. And finally - its cost. Mission Zero’s deal with Stripe is probably the lowest cost per ton DAC I’ve seen at $319 per ton¹.

So let’s get to know Mission Zero using the three-step, six-question MOBILE Framework:

Step 1: Understand the fundamentals of what you’re buying

1. Mechanism: What is the project’s underlying carbon mitigation approach?

   Mission Zero’s project is removing CO2 from the atmosphere using DAC and permanently sequestering the CO2 by using it as an input in the production of manufactured limestone.

2. Outcome: Is the outcome of your project additional and permanent?
   
   Mission Zero makes a pretty credible case for additionality and permanence. According to the team, the levelised operating cost per ton of CO2 is significantly higher than the price that companies like O.C.O would pay in CO2 markets (typically up to $100/ton). Thus, the support that Mission Zero receives from companies like Stripe serves to bridge that cost gap. The project would struggle to go ahead at this stage let alone progress to a larger scale plant without the support from Stripe and others. Without this project going ahead, O.C.O would not be using atmospheric CO2 to sequester through their process, and thus the carbon removal would not have taken place. On the permanence side, the sequestered CO2 mineralizes in the manufactured limestone permanently, and would need to be heated up to 900 degrees Celsius to be released, an unlikely scenario.

Step 2:Get to know the particulars of the underlying project

3. Benefits: What are the non-climate benefits (or co-benefits) of the project? What are some of the risks?

   The production of synthetic building materials has a meaningful positive impact on reducing the carbon footprint of new buildings. But aside from that it also tackles two major sources of waste (CO2 and fly ash). O.C.O’s process recycles external waste material produced from energy from waste (EfW) processes that would otherwise end up in landfills, thereby supporting positive environmental value beyond carbon sequestration. Further, by situating their DAC technology on site, Mission Zero reduces potential sources of pollution associated with transportation and storage of CO2. The project will need to consider ecological risks associated with DAC contactor fans and local wildlife, noise concerns, and the proper management of solvents.

4. Impact: What is the quantifiable carbon impact this project will have?
   
   Mission Zero’s technology has the potential to demonstrate impressive impact across a number of factors:

   • Measurability: Very easy to accurately measure CO2 removed.
     Mission Zero can monitor the CO2 concentration and overall flow rates of the air inlet and outlet streams of the DAC process.

   • Negativity: Excellent negativity (98%)
     For its first pilot project it is estimated that the carbon intensity will be approximately 0.02 tCO2e/tCO2. Their 365 ton/year DAC plant will result in approximately 358 tons of net removal (98% negativity). This is purely for the DAC process alone, and is based on Mission Zero’s internal LCA as well as using published assessment methodologies by other CDR technology providers such as Climeworks.

   • Land Use: Low-to-moderate land use, but still unclear at large scale
     At Megaton scale, Mission Zero estimates a scale of 3-4 soccer fields for a single DAC plant. Note that this doesn’t include the land footprint of the energy sources to power the DAC plant, which can be substantial.

   • Permanence: Highly permanent, low risk of reversal
     CO2 is stored for over 1,000 years as it is chemically sequestered in the manufactured limestone. The only mechanism for reversing this is high heat (900 C) and this is very unlikely to occur.

   • Leakage Risk: Very low risk

   • Verifiability: TBD
     Mission Zero’s DAC plant is still at the engineering design stage and so third-party technical evaluation will come in due course. O.C.O’s sequestration process has had third-party auditing carried out confirming the carbon sequestration capabilities of their technology.

   • Transaction Costs: None.

Step 3: Try to catalyze broader change, rather than just negate your carbon ledger

5. Learning: How does the project improve technologies and catalyze new markets?

   Mission Zero’s technology is quite nascent. The company estimates its DAC process is at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 and will aim to get to TRL 6 through its pilot project. Key processes in their technology (air contacting and the electrochemical separation process) are already established in other applications at TRL 9.
   
   From a technological standpoint, the outcome of this project can catalyze research into new capture solvents and electrochemical CO2 regeneration technologies that do not rely on heat sources. From a commercial standpoint, it would help validate a business case for new carbon utilization markets that involve small- and medium-sized players like O.C.O. that have not had access to CO2 from DAC at reasonable prices for their usage scales. I recently wrote about the importance of modularity in helping DAC come down the cost curve. The modular nature of Mission Zero’s DAC technology allows for more frequent iterations of the technology than industrial scale projects, enabling the company to more rapidly address cost drivers due to design complexity and materials usage.

   Finally, it is important that the technological and commercial lessons learned from this project actually benefit the broader carbon removal field. The company is committed to transparency, and expects to publish cost data and share operational outcomes from the pilot project.

6. Equity: How does the project advance social equity?

   Mission Zero is already engaging with parties in the vicinity of the proposed site, as well as the local council, keeping them informed of environmental, safety, health, and noise considerations of the pilot project. The company is beginning to incorporate these considerations into their operational plans and, should concerns from local communities arise, are able to pause operations to identify and implement solutions.

   In the longer-term, after third-party validation, Mission Zero thinks the manufactured limestone produced through its pilot project could be used in repairs and new projects in the local community, which could create new, local employment opportunities when larger scale plants are developed.

   Unlike more industrial-scale deployments of DAC, Mission Zero’s low-cost, decentralized DAC technology makes it possible to deploy DAC at a smaller scale with lower capital investments and less financial risk. The company believes its technology makes CO2 use and storage projects feasible in a larger variety of locations, and makes owning, deploying, and participating in these businesses accessible to a larger cross-section of society. This “democratization” of DAC is another area where modular carbon removal technologies have an advantage over large, industrial deployments. While the burdens associated with carbon removal should not be shouldered by poor communities or emerging economies, the benefits and opportunities that can be derived from this burgeoning industry should not exclusively flow to wealthy companies and countries that can finance a few, concentrated “megaprojects” either. 

Closing Thoughts

Mission Zero’s unique approach has the potential to leave many of the key challenges DAC faces in the rearview mirror. It does not require thermal input, its process is continuous which minimizes equipment downtime, and its modular technology’s economics appear favorable relative to other DAC providers. The company believes its economics are attractive enough to eventually compete with existing commodity CO2 market prices without regulatory aid or government subsidies. That’s a big claim and only time will tell how that assertion will unfold. Mission Zero’s pilot project with O.C.O. is particularly intriguing because it tests out a use case coupling DAC with the production of building materials. If done successfully, this pilot project could prove to be a big commercialization breakthrough for DAC. Architecture 2030 expects global building floor area to double by 2060 (that’s roughly the equivalent of adding an entire New York City to the world, every month, for 40 years). Imagine the impact from producing all those building materials using millions of tons of atmospheric CO2 in the process. 

There’s a lot to get excited about with Mission Zero. Going back to the MOBILE Framework, Mission Zero checks a lot of important boxes:

• Mechanism: Mission Zero’s process removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

• Outcome: Their pilot project will lead to additional CO2 removed and stored permanently in manufactured limestone.

• Benefits (Non-Climate): The production of manufactured limestone not only uses CO2, but also fly ash and other materials that would have ended up in landfills, reducing waste in the production of manufactured limestone.

• Impact: The proposed solution performs well in terms of measurability, negativity, and other factors, but they will need to consider land use implications of the renewable energy required to power their DAC facilities at larger scale.

• Learning and Innovation: Supporting Mission Zero bodes well for further technological innovation as well as new commercialization opportunities in the carbon removal field.

• Equity: Mission Zero intends to actively engage the local community in its first pilot project, and has a vision for how its modular technology can help diversify and democratize ownership and participation in CO2 use and storage industries over the long-term.

The two companies I have profiled using the MOBILE Framework so far - Heirloom and Mission Zero - are both in the early stages of development but present a promising future for DAC. It was both fun and educational to go through this process with them. We need more entrepreneurs looking to disrupt the carbon removal landscape (if you’re one of them, I’d love to connect with you!) As for the MOBILE Framework, please keep your feedback coming! My plan is to translate MOBILE from a framework into a scorecard, making it even easier for corporates and other carbon removal buyers and supporters to identify and invest in high potential companies. Please reach out to me if you’d like to be involved in shaping this. 

The views expressed in this post are mine alone and no compensation was received for publishing it. To receive regular ideas and analyses on carbon removal and the new carbon economy, please subscribe below. If you enjoyed this post, please share it with friends. And if you’d like to get in touch, you can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

1. Note that is a bridge cost, the net of total cost and the sale of CO2 to the end user.