Google-backed Frontier Climate doubles down on German carbon capture startup with €29m agreement

Phlair’s solution uses on-site solar panels to power a hydrogen-looping electrolyzer that uses electrochemistry to capture and release CO2, driving the cost compared to many other direct air capture (DAC) methods. The company raised €14.5m in a seed round as recently as September last year.

Now the agreement with Frontier will help support the company’s first commercial-scale DAC facility that is set to open later this year in Alberta, Canada.

“This offtake unlocks and drives down the cost of our supply chain, accelerating Phlair's scale-up by several years,” Phlair co-founder and CEO Malte Feucht.

Shopify and H&M among customers

Some of the companies who have agreed to buy carbon removal through Frontier include Google, Shopify, H&M Group and Salesforce.

“Direct air capture’s energy intensity doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker for DAC to scale to gigaton-level,” says Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier. “Phlair’s combination of swapping heat for electrochemistry as well as its flexible energy management process shows one path to building energy-efficient DAC systems.”