What a difference a year makes. In cement and other energy-intensive manufacturing, the global energy crisis accelerated efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and the search for decarbonisation solutions. We’ve seen the direct effect of this with a huge increase in interest and demand for Carbon Re’s technology and products.
In machine learning, 2022 was a watershed moment. DeepMind and the European Bioinformatics Institute released the predicted structures of nearly all known proteins (200 million of them). Generative AI, the likes of Dall-E and Stable Diffusion disrupted the world of visual design and arts, and Chat GPT is rapidly reshaping written media. Whilst these new products demonstrate the transformative power of AI and are already radically changing some industries, they are not addressing humanity’s greatest challenge, and the biggest economic opportunity of the coming decades: climate change.
Machine learning and AI can make a massive difference to our climate trajectory if we apply them to enable and accelerate decarbonisation solutions, but there has been too little done in this regard. We are changing this. Our ambition is to build Carbon Re into the world’s top product and research company applying AI for materials. Today, we are applying machine learning and AI to enable cement producers to optimise their production processes in ways that were never before possible, reducing their fuel costs and emissions simultaneously.
This is not enough. We believe that to achieve a climate-stable future, we need to reimagine and reengineer how we make foundational materials like cement, steel and glass. We believe that applying machine learning and AI to understanding the physics and chemistry underlying the transformation of materials is key to achieving this. That’s why we have some of the best machine learning and engineering talent in the world working on AI – an intelligence layer – that will power the future production and design of the zero carbon materials the world needs.
We, the world, don’t have much time. We must move faster and be bolder to decarbonise human activity. The challenge is only outweighed by the future we can achieve – clean industries, sustainable cities and a climate-stable world – along the way there is also the biggest economic opportunity since the industrial revolution. Let’s do this!
With this in mind, we wanted to share a few Carbon Re highlights from the last three months. From fundraising and an office move to a whole host of product updates and a busy events calendar, it’s been a whirlwind. This round-up comes with our very best wishes for the festive season.
From Sherif
CEO & Co-founder
Company Milestones
£4.2 MILLION TO ACCELERATE PRODUCT ROLLOUT
November saw a £4.2m seed funding round to boost the rollout of our Delta Zero decarbonization product into the global cement market, as well as other energy-intensive industries such as steel and glass. The investment was led by Planet A Ventures, one of Europe’s leading climate tech VCs, with follow-on participation from Clean Growth Fund, UCL Technology Fund and Cambridge Enterprise. In just two years our innovative software is being used cut fuel use and CO2 emissions by up to 10% in pilot projects at cement plants in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
NEW HERO FEATURES FOR DELTA ZERO
Delta Zero has had a makeover this quarter as part of a move to a new, more flexible code base. It enabled us to add new features, including a heat balance page that shows users the energy that is entering their system and how much of it is being consumed at each stage of their process. There is also a new timeline page to highlight changes in key metrics over time. And at the heart of the dashboard is a revamped ‘today’ page that displays a plant’s current sensor data, along with recommendations and predictions.
AROUND THE WORLD, IN 3 MONTHS
Conferences and events have taken us from Memphis and New Orleans in the US to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam – with visits to various European cities along the way. CemTech Europe, the Materials Research Exchange, Responsible Steel and NeurIPS – the world’s largest machine learning conference – were among the events on our itinerary. We were also part of the UK’s smart cities trade mission to Vietnam. And we joined forces with more than 100 entrepreneurs to take part in the Climate-tech Policy Coalition events and report – designed to highlight how the UK government can support climate tech innovation.
NEW OFFICE FOR A GROWING TEAM
Our rapidly expanding team outgrew our small office this year. So we’ve now moved to spacious premises in the Bankside area of London, with room for our ongoing expansion over the next 18 months. In the past three months, we have grown to welcome our Chief Commercial Officer, David Boyd and VP Projects & Business Development, Kelly Cailes, who both moved from being consultants to permanent employees. Our engineering team also expanded with the appointments of Machine Learning Engineers Theo Wolf and Michael Craig, Senior Software Engineer Rory Devane and Head of Engineering Bob Gregory. Bob brings over 20 years of software engineering experience, having led and scaled teams at Cazoo, MADE and Huddle and he is a world leader in serverless architectures. Most recently we were joined by Paul Anderson, a cement process engineer with five years of experience at Hanson UK. Our Chief Happiness Officer (office puppy) Luca also joins us every Tuesday.
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS HELPED IN OUR DEVELOPMENT THIS YEAR AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO A POSITIVE, CARBON-REDUCING, COST-SAVING 2023.
Co-founder
