OCOchem, a clean tech startup turning carbon dioxide into industrial chemicals, has raised $2.15 million and continues signing new partnerships — despite a cooling regulatory environment for sustainability and a decline in climate tech investing.
The Richland, Wash., company’s technology takes water and captured industrial carbon dioxide and runs it through proprietary electrolyzer cells to produce formic acid and formate compounds. This family of chemicals can be converted into clean-burning hydrogen fuel, serve as ingredients for other valuable chemicals, or be used as a relatively safe acid in critical mineral recovery.
The startup is making progress thanks to the abundance of its feedstock and the versatility of formate, said CEO and co-founder Todd Brix. As OCOchem scales up operations, “we’re opening up new vistas” as customers discover the company’s sustainable, affordable solutions for producing chemicals and clean fuels.
With the new funding, the company has now raised $11.2 million from investors and $8.3 million in government grants.
Initiatives underway include:
- An agreement announced in December with the German company b.fab, which feeds formate to microorganisms such as bacteria that biosynthesize proteins, amino acids and other commercially useful compounds.
- A partnership with ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland) to build a commercial pilot plant at the chemical giant’s Illinois facility, where ADM operates the world’s largest bioethanol refinery. The refinery produces carbon dioxide as a bioproduct of the fermentation process, which will be turned into formate and used in other product lines.
- Fine-tuning processes at its 40,000-square-foot facility in Richland that was commissioned in May. The plant produced and shipped a metric ton of a formate compound for use as a deicing agent by a New York-based customer.
While the Trump administration has rolled back many climate and environmental policies, one recent change helped level the playing field for carbon reuse efforts like OCOchem’s.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act retained the tax credit for carbon capture and increased the credit for processes that reuse carbon in industrial applications, raising it from $60 per ton to $85 — matching the credit provided when carbon is permanently sequestered.
Brix launched OCOchem in 2017 after a nearly two-decade career at Microsoft. The 17-person team includes Chief Technologist Arun Agarwal, who previously spent 12 years in R&D focused on renewable chemicals, energy, oil and gas.
The company faces competition in turning carbon dioxide into formate — particularly in the European Union, which is publicly investing in the technology, as well as at labs operated by Toyota.
But Brix said he’s ready to face his rivals. His company has “built the largest CO2 electrolyzer, worked fast to do that, and is operating at the highest performance today,” Brix said. “And so it’s a little bit of a race, but it’s a good race.”
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