Published by Todd Bush on March 11, 2025
Today’s carbon capture technologies typically target 90% of the CO2 emitted from large industrial plants. To make a significant impact on climate change, however, they need to develop further and capture a bigger proportion of CO2.
Amine capture, which uses a solvent to capture CO2 from the flue gas, is the longest-established capture technology. A key barrier to success is that the solvents traditionally used in the process require too much energy and create unacceptably high emissions to be effective.
ION Clean Energy is among the companies racing to meet this challenge. The business has been innovating post-combustion source capture technologies since its founding in Boulder, Colorado in 2008.
ION’s founder, Dr. Buz Brown, devised an amine-based solution that would not break down over time. This is the foundation of the process technologies now being commercialized by the company, explains CEO Tim Vail.
“We’re now into our third generation of that solvent, and that’s what really unlocks what we do,” he says. “It allows us to build a plant for less cost, capture larger amounts of the CO2 more efficiently, and to do that without creating the emissions associated with most amine capture systems.”
>> In Other News: Context Labs Unveils Open Decarbonization Project with Major Ecosystem Leaders
ION completed a first financing round in March 2024. It raised $45 million from Chevron New Energies and Carbon Direct Capital. Since then, natural gas infrastructure provider Williams has also invested through its corporate venture capital program to commercialize new technologies.
ION is now working towards a second funding round in 2026. Meanwhile, the company is seeking independent verification of its product’s performance, which Vail sees as achievable along the lines of Williams’ upstream natural gas verification program.
“We’d like to use the same tools,” he says. “We need to have independently verifiable carbon intensities, and fortunately, that’s now happening in the marketplace.”
“But at the end of the day, we've got to make it bankable, and we've got to get a customer to be able to finance and build on these projects.”
ION is “a small fry playing with giants right now,” says Vail. The company is establishing partnerships to provide the firepower that will enable it to realize projects on the scale required.
In 2022, ION joined forces with Koch Engineered Solutions. The partnership aims to optimize plant design in a variety of industries by coupling ION's technology with subject matter experts in Koch companies.
“We are not only doing carbon abatement; we’re also doing carbon removal.”
ION is also working alongside Calpine on California’s first carbon capture demonstration project at Los Medanos Energy Center. This is proving the solid performance of ION’s solvent, Vail says.
“That pilot runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on a real natural gas pilot power plant and with real natural flue gas,” he says. “We are capturing towards 99.5% at that facility.”
“The gas exiting our absorber column actually has less CO2 in it than pre-industrial society. So we are not only doing carbon abatement; we’re also doing carbon removal.”
Compared to other climate technology solutions, Vail believes the cost of the process is highly competitive at $20 to $25 per megawatt hour.
To date, ION has focused chiefly on retrofit of existing plants, such as a plan to decarbonize a 1GW facility run by Tampa Electric in Florida.
Vail’s task is to carry ION beyond pilots and retrofits and into viable new-build projects. A former securities lawyer and clean tech entrepreneur, he took over leadership of ION in 2023.
“Our primary pathway to our customers is through the large-scale engineering firms,” he says. “But what we also want to do is get flipped to the other side of the equation and get customer pull from the end users of power.”
One route to new opportunities may emerge through one of ION’s investors, Chevron New Energies. Chevron recently announced a partnership with Engine No. 1 and GE Vernova to deliver up to 4GW of power solutions for U.S.-based data centers.
“We hope to be part of that, building some greenfield facilities that have our technology integrated,” says Vail.
He expects solid progress over the next year: “I think you’ll see some license agreements with these new partners, and perhaps in early ’26 you’ll see an FID on one of these large facilities.”
Follow the money flow of climate, technology, and energy investments to uncover new opportunities and jobs.
Inside This Issue 🍁 Inside Canada’s Quiet Takeover of the Carbon Capture Industry ✈️ Phillips 66 to Supply SAF to British Airways in Calif 💧 HyVera Distributed Energy Launches Green Hydrogen-On-De...
Inside This Issue 🌍 1PointFive Announces 50,000 Metric Ton Carbon Removal Agreement with JPMorganChase 📊 Carbon Direct Unveils First Empirical Baseline on Carbon Dioxide Removal and Environmental ...
Inside This Issue 🧪 $400M Bet on Blue Ammonia: Industry Giants Push Carbon Capture in Louisiana 🏭 Linde Signs Long-Term Agreement to Supply Industrial Gases to World-Scale Low-Carbon Ammonia Facil...
Aemetis Biogas Receives CARB Approval for Seven RNG Pathways
Dairy Based Renewable Natural Gas from Seven Digesters Averages Negative 384 Carbon Intensity Aemetis Receives CARB Approval for Seven Dairy Digesters Under LCFS CUPERTINO, Calif., June 27, 2025 ...
Ohmium and Toyota Kirloskar Motor Sign MoU to Advance Hydrogen-Based Solutions in India NEWARK, Calif. & BANGALORE, India -- Ohmium International, a leading provider of Proton Exchange Membran...
TOPOLOBAMPO, Mexico -- The Sembrando Vida Program and Pacifico Mexinol (Mexinol), a subsidiary of Transition Industries, have signed the first partnership agreement between the Sembrando Vida progr...
Milkywire Announces 15 New Carbon Removal Purchases and 3 Grants After Extensive Selection Process
Thanks to our corporate supporters, Milkywire has financed climate solutions through its Climate Transformation Fund (CTF) since 2021 to help reach global net zero. Catalyzing the nascent carbon re...
Follow the money flow of climate, technology, and energy investments to uncover new opportunities and jobs.