Sustaera has announced a breakthrough in direct air capture (DAC) technology, reporting significantly higher carbon capture efficiency and lower costs compared with conventional thermal DAC systems.
The North Carolina-based company said its proprietary electro-thermal approach can capture carbon dioxide from the air at three to five times lower capital costs than alternative thermal technologies. The company also reported operational efficiencies three to four times higher than prevailing systems, enabled by its nano-structured sorbent technology and integrated electric heating.
“Thermal technologies max out at around 40% efficiency,” said Cory Sanderson, CTO of Sustaera. “We’ve recently achieved 90%+ efficiency, using far less capital than traditional thermal approaches, and we’re still innovating.”
The company said the improvement could put it on a path to carbon removal costs below $100 per tonne, a threshold widely considered critical for scaling the global carbon removal market and enabling DAC to compete with other removal approaches such as biochar.
Direct air capture technologies have faced criticism in recent years due to high costs and limited delivery of carbon removal credits. Early-generation systems struggled with high energy requirements, while later technologies still required large, stable power supplies.
Sustaera said its system offers a simpler and more scalable design that could support both carbon sequestration and utilisation.
“Developers can now capture carbon cost-effectively, whether for sequestration or utilization,” said Sustaera CEO Ben Gardner. “The technology is beautifully simple. It delivers measurable results and is easy to scale—potentially even without a grid connection.”
The company has previously partnered with carbon removal buyers including Stripe and Shopify and said it is currently in discussions with carbon removal developers to expand deployment through a technology licensing model.
Sustaera is backed by the U.S. Department of Energy, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the XPRIZE for Carbon Removal, the Grantham Trust’s Neglected Climate Opportunities initiative and RMI’s Third Derivative accelerator. The company said its technology also uses no water and produces pure water as a byproduct, making it suitable for deployment in water-constrained regions.
