Decarbonizing heavy industry

Decarbonization at the scale necessary to meet global warming mitigation targets will require a radical rethinking of global infrastructure. Heavy industry is a large and often overlooked piece of the puzzle.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has researched the issue extensively. In his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” Gates wrote that the process of making things like cement, steel and plastic is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. That’s largely because the high-temperature heat needed for industrial processes typically comes from natural gas.

Gates, through investing arm Breakthrough Energy Ventures, is now backing a start-up that’s at the very early stages of addressing the problem through technology.

Founded in 2018, Antora Energy takes zero emissions energy from renewable energy sources, like wind and solar farms, and converts that to heat, which it stores in solid carbon blocks that are insulated in a kind of thermal battery. From there, the stored energy is used as heat in industrial processes needed to make materials like cement and steel, or it’s converted into electricity.

In its efforts to reach its ambitious goals, Antora said Wednesday that it raised $50 million in a financing round led by Breakthrough and Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital. Energy giant Shell’s venture arm also contributed to the deal.

The Antora thermal battery is meant to replace a natural gas boiler and will be similar in size to a small house or a large truck trailer. If Antora is successful, it will be selling to large industrial companies, providing a zero-emissions alternative at a lower price.

“Antora makes heat and electricity from solar at prices cheaper than burning gas,” Sacca wrote in an email. “The oil and gas industry can deny climate change all they want, but buyers will always choose the lower price option, and that means lights out for fossil fuels.”