Chevron leads $318 mln raise for carbon capture tech firm Svante

Samsung E&A Co

15/12/2022 21:30

By Virginia Furness
       Dec 15 (Reuters) - U.S. oil company Chevron  CVX.N  has
led a $318 million fundraising round for Canada-based Svante,
which develops filters to capture industrial carbon emissions
for storage or reuse, the companies said on Thursday.
    Scaling early-stage technologies like carbon capture and
storage is essential to helping the world reach its climate
goals, and many oil majors have made this central to their
net-zero strategies. 
    The deal is the largest North American raise for a carbon
capture tech company to date, JPMorgan told Reuters. The bank
acted as co-placement agent with RBC Capital Markets.
    Other investors to take part in the Series E funding round
include Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek, Samsung
Engineering  028050.KS  and the venture capital arms of United
Airlines  UAL.O  and 3M  MMM.N .
    Chevron said it plans to invest $10 billion in lower-carbon
projects through 2028 and has invested in Svante since 2014.
Chevron's investment this around is about half the total amount,
said a source close to the matter.
    Chris Powers, vice president of Carbon Capture, Utilisation
and Storage with Chevron New Energies, said Svante was "poised
to be a leader in enabling carbon capture solutions."
    "Innovation is key to enabling these types of breakthrough
technologies and lower carbon solutions, and we look forward to
applying our experience and expertise to help drive this effort
forward."
    Michael Johnson, vice chairman investment banking at
JPMorgan told Reuters raising such sums was a crucial step in
scaling carbon capture technology.
    "We need to accelerate the development of these projects to
prove CCS, and specifically direct air capture, can work at a
rate of millions of tonnes per year."
    Current global carbon capture is about 45 million tons per
year, JPMorgan said, but needs to grow around 30-fold to help
the world reach net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century.
    JPMorgan said it had arranged around $1 billion of private
equity capital for carbon capture companies and closed 10
private capital raises for clean tech companies this year to
date.
 (Reporting by Virginia Furness; Editing by Josie Kao)
 ((Virginia.Furness@thomsonreuters.com; +44207 542 5477;))