Carbon reimagined: Strengthening America’s industrial base

It’s 4:30 a.m. at a bottling plant, and one final truck is working late. It’s not carrying syrup or cans — it’s delivering carbon dioxide (CO₂), the fuel that makes each drink sparkle. When the truck misses its window, manufacturing slows, carbonation drops, and schedules begin to slip.

We normally consider carbon dioxide as a greenhouse fuel. However in on a regular basis {industry}, it retains meals chilly as dry ice, places the fizz in drinks, helps clear and stabilize water, and helps metalwork in manufacturing. It even performs a job in hospitals and labs. When provide runs brief, manufacturing slows, prices rise, and high quality can undergo.

The weak hyperlink is provide. For many years, U.S. CO₂ has come primarily from just a few byproduct and natural-well sources — seasonal, geographically concentrated, and susceptible to upkeep cycles and vitality markets. That fragility can negatively impression companies: bottling strains pause, cold-chain prices soar, and regional distributors scramble.

To construct a extra resilient and aggressive industrial base, we’d like a home, round CO₂ spine. The answer is inside attain: seize CO₂ from renewable, distributed waste streams, refine it to meals and beverage-grade high quality, and ship it domestically. The outcome could be shorter routes, steadier costs, fewer single factors of failure, and a decrease environmental footprint.

How can we notice this imaginative and prescient? First by securing provide of captured, home CO₂, then by embedding CO₂ into supplies that make markets extra round, and eventually by enabling lower-carbon fuels that may assist future-proof aviation, maritime transport, and logistics.

The Cisco Basis helps advance breakthroughs on this house by its Regenerative Future Fund, its early-stage funding automobile for early-stage vitality, local weather, and resilience ventures, backing innovators that flip CO₂ from a constraint right into a catalyst for financial resilience.

Turning “natural waste” into dependable industrial feedstock

A brand new technology of innovators is reworking how industries supply carbon. They’re capturing CO₂ from renewable, distributed streams and refining it right into a reliable, high-purity provide.

AlchemyCO₂ recovers CO₂ from renewable pure fuel (RNG) amenities — the place biogenic CO₂ is launched throughout upgrading — and purifies it to be used throughout meals, beverage, and manufacturing. With 500+ operational RNG websites in North America (and roughly 150 extra on the best way), this co-located method brings CO₂ nearer to clients, reducing transport miles and publicity to fragile provide chains.

For renewable fuel producers, it turns what was as soon as wasted CO₂ into a brand new, regular income. For patrons, it means high-quality CO₂ that may be extra inexpensive and reliably sourced close by.

AlchemyCO₂ has secured long-term entry to greater than a hundred-thousand metric tonnes of renewable CO₂ annually and financing to scale modular vegetation for regional clusters. Its first amenities are anticipated to come back on-line in 2026. Backed by a rising patent portfolio and a course of that recovers about 20% extra CO₂ than standard techniques, AlchemyCO₂ is striving to construct a nationwide community of about 50 amenities by 2030, making a extra resilient, round provide chain for considered one of {industry}’s important gases.

Supplies that make markets extra round

One of the crucial sensible methods to strengthen industrial resilience is to make the supplies we depend on extra environment friendly and sustainable by the upcycling of waste — lowering reliance on virgin supplies and advancing a extra round economic system.

CarbonBuilt is demonstrating how this may be achieved at scale. Its Reversa Binder, a proprietary mix of commercial byproducts wealthy in the identical chemical parts as cement, replaces as much as 50% of the cement in concrete. Alongside cement substitute, CarbonBuilt implements course of enhancements at manufacturing vegetation that considerably scale back waste and improve operational effectivity. The result’s a purposeful equal to traditional concrete that may be produced at a decrease price and with greater than 50% decrease embodied carbon content material.

Up to now, CarbonBuilt shared their expertise has been used to fabricate over 50,000 tons of concrete, lowering greater than 2,000 metric tonnes of CO₂ emissions within the course of. The expertise allows larger industrial effectivity, lowers manufacturing prices, and produces a constructing materials with substantially-reduced embodied carbon.

CarbonBuilt is demonstrating that financial competitiveness and environmental efficiency can go hand in hand.

Fuels that future-proof aviation and logistics

Captured CO₂ can also be a crucial molecule for next-generation fuels. Artificial aviation fuels (SAF), together with power-to-liquids e-SAF, mix captured CO₂ with renewable hydrogen to provide a drop-in jet gas that makes use of present plane and fueling infrastructure.

IATA tasks SAF manufacturing to double to ~2 million metric tonnes in 2025, which stays ~0.7% of complete airline gas use. Provide is scaling however nonetheless trails demand — one other case the place sturdy purchaser alerts and cross-industry partnerships might unlock quantity and scale back prices.

Cisco stepped in early: in January 2023, Cisco joined United Airways’ Eco-Skies Alliance, serving to spur real-world SAF use whereas we proceed exploring methods to assist vitality and aviation companions. The through-line is sensible: seeding dependable markets for numerous gas sources strengthens U.S. vitality safety and competitiveness in hard-to-abate sectors.

Backing sensible builders of a stronger carbon worth chain

We’re proud to again innovators making the U.S. carbon worth chain extra dependable, native, and with diminished lifecycle emissions, together with AlchemyCO₂ and CarbonBuilt. Collectively, they stabilize crucial inputs for manufacturing and building whereas laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s fuels — creating provide assurance, value stability, and industrial vitality.

What industrial leaders can do subsequent

Map CO₂ dependencies. Determine the place operations depend on CO₂ (cooling, carbonation, welding, water remedy, supplies) and assess focus threat by supply and area.
Pilot round CO₂ merchandise. Begin with low-friction substitutions, like CO₂-mineralized blocks and mixes, the place specs are confirmed and prices are aggressive.
Safe resilient provide. Discover native, renewable CO₂ sources or multi-supplier methods to scale back single factors of failure and shorten routes.
Sign demand for lower-carbon fuels. Contemplate becoming a member of purchaser alliances, signal offtakes, or trial SAF certificates to assist unlock quantity and decrease prices over time.

Reimagining carbon as a useful resource — not solely a waste stream and an emission — is how we are able to construct a extra self-reliant industrial spine. By scaling dependable, round CO₂ provide and the supplies and fuels that use it, Cisco and the Cisco Basis are serving to flip a recognized constraint and pollutant into sturdy aggressive benefit for American {industry}.