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Aaron Fitzgerald is Reversing Humanity’s Industrial Waste Carbon Footprint

Sequestering CO2 into everyday products

October 17, 2023

Hi, climate leaders 👋 

Welcome back to another issue of The Climate Scout!

Today at a glance:

  • Introducing Mars Materials

  • Detailing their business model, tech, traction and team

  • Why do we need this now?

  • What is the climate impact?

  • How you can support them!

-  Angelica 💜

Featured Startup: Mars Materials

Today's climate startup is Mars Materials. Mars Materials aims to store CO2 in common products. They are currently using a process technology developed by NREL to create acrylonitrile (AN) using CO2 and biomass. Mars' AN is a carbon-negative alternative that can be used in carbon fiber and acrylamide markets, including wastewater treatment chemicals.

Mars Materials Fast Facts

Headquarters

Houston, Texas

Technology

Mars is trying to make products that store carbon cheaper than products that emit carbon. Right now, they are working on making their core process technology, called nitrilation, commercially available. They plan to increase their production capacity of acrylonitrile by making small improvements over time. In the future, Mars wants to develop other ways to produce materials that remove carbon from the environment using our innovation framework.

Business Model

  • Mars will develop and operate plants to produce drop-in replacement acrylonitrile (“AN”) and sell that AN directly to acrylamide (“AMD”) and carbon fiber (“CF”) manufacturers via offtake agreements.

  • Mars is pre-revenue and has a four-phased stage-gated technology development and commercialization roadmap that includes efforts such as product validation, securing offtake, and meeting production performance metrics.

Market Opportunity

Acrylonitrile (AN) is the sole raw material for both AMD and PAN (Polyacrylonitrile)-based carbon fiber production, forming a $14B market growing at 5% CAGR. Today, almost all AN is produced using petrochemicals in the SOHIO acrylonitrile production process. Mars is working closely with AMD and CF manufacturers to continuously validate its material as a drop-in replacement. Key risks to Mars’ success relate to technology development and continued government subsidies to fossil fuels.

Traction

Investors:

Key Partners:

Accelerators:

Grantors:

Major Announcements:

Founders

Aaron Fitzgerald: Co-founder & CEO

  • Carbon Removal Entrepreneur

  • Three-time founder and Breakthrough Energy Fellow

  • Past fellowships with Prime Coalition and Carbon 180 and a stint in politics working in the United States Senate

  • Motivated by the company's mission to remove and sequester greenhouse gasses into the industrial supply chain

  • Focused on product development, business development, team growth, management and consensus building, as well as technical operations

  • Past experiences: Prime Coalition, Carbon180, Kairos Aerospace, Ncrease (co-founder), Turms (co-founder), US Senate

Kristian Gubsch: Co-founder & VP of Feedstock Development

  • B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an

  • MSc in Energy and Environmental Engineering from the University of Sheffield and an MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management from Imperial College London as a Marshall Scholar

  • At the University of Sheffield, he worked under Peyman Moghadam, PhD in the field of CO2 capture

  • Leads the development and procurement of feedstocks for Mars’ nitrilation process and transportation of materials on and off site

  • Past experiences include: Washington State University (researcher), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (researcher) and University of Sheffield (researcher)

Why Now?

Mars will make and sell a replacement chemical called acrylonitrile ("AN") to companies that make acrylamide ("AMD") and carbon fiber ("CF"). AMD is used in cleaning wastewater and CF is used in many things like vehicles and power lines. The companies that make AMD and CF want to grow, reduce emissions, and avoid price changes with AN. They are looking for new suppliers, and Mars can meet their needs while also reducing emissions and price changes.

Climate Impact

Mars believes that by 2050, their products will have removed over 34 million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. This will also help reduce indirect emissions by 2-4 billion metric tons through the use of this material in carbon fiber.

Support Mars Materials

  • Investors - Mars Materials is currently raising a $2M Seed Round

  • Fractional Talent - Mars Materials is looking for a Fractional HR Mid-level individual contributor to execute on compliance work such as state payroll registrations

  • Interns - Mars Materials is looking for commercialization ops interns to help support customer discovery efforts

     

Cool Tools

*This section is a mix of paid sponsorships and cool things we use, discovered or built for you.

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Made with 💜 by Angelica @ The Climate Scout

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