Sinopec Capital invests in LanzaTech

In Illinois, Sinopec Capital, as the industrial investment arm of Sinopec Group which is one of the world’s largest integrated energy and chemicals companies, has announced investment in LanzaTech with a focus on promoting direct production of chemicals from waste carbon.

LanzaTech’s platform takes pollution and recycles it, eliminating single-use carbon. Examples of the uses of the technology include taking steel mill emissions in China and unsorted, unrecyclable household waste in Japan and converting these wastes to ethanol which can be further converted to sustainable aviation fuel or polyethylene for consumer goods. Of particular interest to Sinopec is LanzaTech’s synthetic biology capability which enables the production of chemicals directly from waste carbon, rather than via a building block such as ethanol. Over 50 chemicals have already been demonstrated, including continuous production of acetone and isopropyl alcohol at pilot scale.

When products made via this carbon recycling process reach the end of their useful life, they can go unsorted and uncleaned to a LanzaTech facility and be converted back into a gas stream and recycled repeatedly without losing any of the properties of the original material. This locks carbon into a cycle and supports a transition to a circular economy, an area of focus in China’s State Council guidelines released in February to develop a green and low-carbon circular economy, emphasizing energy and resource conservation at all levels.

The transaction aligns with China’s commitments to promoting energy system transformation and reforming its entire economic and social system to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality and the US-China collaboration in the development of climate solutions