Oxylus Energy closed its $4.5 million series seed investment co-led by Toyota Ventures and Azolla Ventures with participation from Earth Foundry and Connecticut Innovations.
“We are thrilled to support the team at Oxylus Energy as they work to scale this cost-effective process for e-fuel production,” said Lisa Coca, climate fund partner, Toyota Ventures. “Eliminating the need for hydrogen as an input is a significant innovation in the green energy space that has the potential to dramatically reduce production costs and unlock numerous decarbonisation pathways.”
Azolla Ventures general partner Amy Duffuor commented: "Oxylus Energy's technical progress combined with the novel catalyst, complementary team and ability to target multiple market applications, makes it an optimal investment for Azolla."
Oxylus is a developer of carbon utilisation technology for the production of e-fuels. Its solution is a low-temperature and low-pressure conversion of carbon dioxide to green methanol, a liquid fuel. The company said the solution is the first of its kind.
"This is enabled by commercialising the first-ever catalyst developed at Yale University by Professor Hailiang Wang for direct electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide to methanol," the company said. The methanol developed by Oxylus can be used as a drop-in fuel replacement or upgraded to jet fuel and other green petrochemicals.
"This is why Oxylus' technology is critical—it can meet the growing market demand for methanol in the net-zero transition at a price that actually works for industry," said the company's cofounder and CEO Perry Bakas.
The World Economic Forum stated that green methanol can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by almost 95%. It further argued that green methanol can be blended with gasoline or diesel fuel, which facilitates for a smoother transition to methanol.