Our Investment in a Profitable Solution for Carbon Emissions – Twelve, Secures $57 Million in Series A

By Brent MacDonald – Principal at Rising Tide

Twelve, formerly Opus 12, headquartered in Berkeley, California, has developed a device that recycles carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ into cost-competitive chemicals and fuels. The company's technology bolts onto any source of CO₂ emissions, and with only water and electricity as inputs, transforms that CO₂ into some of the world's most critical chemical and energy products. Compared to existing solutions, the approach has up to 10x lower cost and lower greenhouse gas emissions – and also the potential to offset over 1.5 billion tons of CO₂ emissions annually. The company video ‘The Element of Change is in the Air’ is found here.

**Southern California Gas Co.**, **Pacific Gas and Electric** **Company**, and **Twelve** announced they have demonstrated further advancement of a new electrochemical technology that converts the carbon dioxide content in raw biogas to pipeline-quality renewable natural gas, a key improvement in the science of upgrading waste emissions to renewable gas. The single-step process is designed to use renewable electricity, and thus also provides a way for long-term storage of excess wind and solar power.

Twelve currently has four major product lines in development: carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide; carbon dioxide to ethylene; carbon dioxide to methane; and carbon dioxide to synthetic gas. Twelve’s first product line, which converts carbon dioxide to carbon, serves a $2B market. The company is partnering with automotive, household, apparel industry and other brands, including Mercedes-Benz, Procter & Gamble, and NASA to leverage Twelve’s carbon technology, and is now taking pre-orders for its industrial-scale carbon transformation module.

Why We Are Excited:

Nearly all products and systems we rely on daily use carbon as a resource: from what we wear, to how we live and how we move. Twelve is addressing climate change by using carbon emissions to create products traditionally derived from fossil fuels by sourcing carbon from waste CO₂, rather than from fossil fuels. With this vision the world can reverse emissions while making useful products that drive the global economy.

Twelve’s tested electrochemical process has achieved consistent performance outputs in key metrics when matched to the historical performance by others in the field.

At scale, Twelve’s technology has the same C02-reducing power as 120 billion-trees.