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Turning CO2 into high-value chemicals with CERT Systems
Dr. Christine Gabardo from CERT Systems on sustainable chemicals, turning CO2 into value, and lessons learned from the Carbon XPRIZE
Justin Reist
February 13, 2025
Hey there. Chemicals aren’t something we think about a lot, but they’re a building block of every day life.
Ethylene is one of those building block chemicals - it’s in everything from plastic, to textiles to building materials - and is one of the top three produced in the world.
Today, most ethylene is made from natural gas and emits between 1-2 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of ethylene that’s produced.
CERT Systems is on a mission to tackle this problem by producing essential chemicals like ethylene without fossil fuels. Spun out of the University of Toronto, CERT Systems is converting CO2 from industrial carbon capture systems into sustainable ethylene using just water and electricity.
I sat down with Dr. Christine Gabardo, co-founder and CTO of CERT Systems to talk about what they’re building, why sustainable chemicals are an underestimated market, and how we can deliver products that are good for the planet without sacrificing quality.
My top three takeaways 👇️
1) Converting CO2 into useful chemicals has the potential to lock up a lot of carbon:
“In our process, because we're using CO2 as a feedstock, we're actually consuming three tons of CO2 for every ton of ethylene that we produce. And so there's a net difference there of up to five tons of CO2 avoided with our product.”
2) Quality matters for their customers. By creating a high-quality version of ethylene, they’re able to compete on quality and help chemical producers meet regulations.
“What [chemical companies] are really excited about is the ability to reduce the carbon intensity of their operations while still being able to maintain the same quality of product that they are currently making … people want sustainable alternatives, but they're not willing to sacrifice the quality of the product that they already have.
3) Understanding risk and customer needs are key to scaling up effectively.
“The way that we scaled up through the XPRIZE was going from a one square centimeter cell and increasing that cell size to an 800 square centimeter cell. And then from there, we stack those cells. In terms of the risks with scaling, you see the largest differences when you increase that cell area.
With these conventional chemical producers, they're giving us insight into what's the most important for them and what parameters they believe are most important for implementing our technology on their sites … and that's helping to shape our technology as well.”
It was a fun conversation with Christine, and we cover a lot more, including their experience in the XPRIZE competition, what Canadian universities can be doing to unlock more commercialization, and how they’ve been able to raise more than $6 million in non-dilutive funding so far.
Check out the full episode below!
Justin
LISTEN
Turning CO2 into Valuable Chemicals with CERT Systems
Dr. Christine Gabardo is the co-founder and CTO of CERT Systems, a climate tech startup on a mission to produce essential chemicals without fossil fuels.
CERT Systems started from a question: “In a world where we have abundant renewable electricity, how can we use that to continue to decarbonize the world?”
The result is an electrolysis system that uses water and electricity to turn CO2 into sustainable, high value chemicals.
The CERT Systems team brings decades of experience in electrochemistry, materials science and engineering, and was the first in the world to demonstrate the conversion of industrial emissions into ethylene as a finalist in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE.
In our conversation, we unpack CERT Systems’ technology, the keys to effective customer partnerships, scaling 10,000x, and why people underestimate the market for sustainable chemicals.
▶️ Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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