Spiritus, a direct-air-capture (DAC) firm, has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Aramco, and has additionally received an equity investment in the company from Aramco Ventures, made in November 2023, according to a news release.
“Aramco has stated its ambition to achieve net zero Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions across its wholly-owned operated assets by 2050, and sees opportunities to build potential lower-carbon new energy business,” said Ali Al-Meshari, Sr. Vice President of Technology, Oversight & Coordination, Aramco. “Innovative technologies deployed at scale can help reduce the costs of reducing carbon emissions, and we are investing in developing these through our R&D, venture capital, and technology deployment programs. We believe direct air capture has the potential to play an important role in reducing carbon emissions from hard-to-abate sectors of the economy, and we see Spiritus’ approach to have the potential to scale globally, and specifically in the Middle East.”
The companies entered into the MoU to explore further collaboration including: to further enhance Spiritus’ technology; potential piloting and scale deployment of Spiritus’ technology; and localization of Spiritus’ supply chain in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The signing ceremony, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, highlighted the innovation collaboration between the two countries to work towards their respective net-zero goals and ambitions.
Spiritus’ approach to direct air capture addresses the major cost challenges of current direct air capture approaches and includes reducing energy needs, passive air collection, and a proprietary sorbent material to remove carbon from the atmosphere at a tenfold increase in adsorption efficiency compared to existing methods.
