Episode 27: Anca Timofte of Holocene

Host Cortney Piper speaks with Anca Timofte, CEO and co-founder of Holocene, a company focused on direct air capture technology and carbon removal. Anca shares her journey from Romania to becoming an entrepreneur in the climate tech space, highlighting her experiences in chemical engineering and business school. 

The discussion covers the importance of direct air capture in addressing climate change, the significance of partnerships with companies like Google, and the role of government and utilities in supporting carbon removal efforts. Anca also discusses Holocene's future plans, including developing a demonstration facility.

Learn more about TAEBC and Holocene. To learn more about how carbon removal is a game-changer for utilities on the path to net zero, read this Carbon Business Development Council report.

Transcript

Cortney Piper: Welcome to Energizing Tennessee, powered by the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council. We're your number-one podcast for news about Tennessee's advanced energy sector. I'm your host, Cortney Piper.

Direct air capture is becoming more critical in the fight against climate change. And today on the podcast, we're diving right into it. We're thrilled to welcome Anca Timofte, CEO and co-founder of Holocene, a company at the cutting edge of carbon capture technology. And Anca's story is just as inspiring as her company's mission.

Anca grew up in Romania and has an extensive background in chemical engineering. She spent over a decade working on carbon capture technology, including designing, modeling, and commissioning some of the world's first direct air capture plants. Like most startup founders before her, she began her entrepreneurial journey by co-founding the company in her dorm room at Stanford University.

She's gone from being a young chemical engineer to a climate tech leader, securing landmark deals like the recent partnership with Google, a first of its kind in the carbon capture world. Whether you're a climate enthusiast or just curious about the future of clean tech, this is a conversation you'll want to hear.

As always, if you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and leave a rating or review. It helps us spread the word and support the fantastic work in the advanced energy sector.

Today, I'm speaking with Anca Timofte, CEO and co founder of Holocene, a developer of direct air capture technology and carbon removal service. Anca, thanks for coming on the show. 

Anca Timofte: Cortney, a pleasure to be here. I remember two years ago, I came to your launch party for this podcast. So it's an honor to be here and cool to see the podcast going for the last two years. 

Cortney Piper: That's right. That's right. You did. It's full circle now. This is going to be great. Anca, let's talk a little bit about you first. Let's talk about your journey into entrepreneurship. Thinking about a younger Anca, did you ever imagine you would not only be in carbon capture, but also co-founding a leading startup?

Anca Timofte: I can't say I have, although I have to say that my father was an entrepreneur, so I did have some inspiration around me. I grew up in Romania, post-communist Romania, where there weren't a lot of entrepreneurs, but my dad always had this excitement for doing something new and starting things from scratch.

So I probably picked that up from him and yeah I've always been interested in math and chemistry. So I guess the carbon capture piece, the field didn't even exist back then, I think, when I was growing up, but yeah, all those skills brought me to the space. 

Cortney Piper: What have been some of your main career highlights to date?

Anca Timofte: I'll say, probably there's still happening in the last two years being a founder probably been the most exciting, but yeah I got the chance to come first to the U.S. to do my chemical engineering degree at Washington University in St. Louis. And that was a big change for me and a big transformation coming from Romania to the United States and going to such an interesting university. I learned so much there. And then, got to go back to Europe, work at Climeworks, which is a company in the direct air capture space. They got started when the space that we're in was also incipient days. So it was fantastic to see as a young engineer working on direct air capture, in such a new industry working on new technology.

So that was a fantastic time and got to grow with the startup. So I was there for about eight years. Ended up leaving to go to business school at Stanford, which was also maybe a highlight of the last couple of years. That was maybe my second transformation from chemical engineer and to, more of a business person, so to say.

So that was a fantastic experience and ultimately starting Holocene. And then I think, yeah, as I said, I'm still growing. There's still a lot to learn. 

Cortney Piper: What do you find most fulfilling about this work? For me, I see Holocene and the direct air capture as a very critical piece of solving our climate crisis.

And I can only imagine what it might be like for you just being in the middle of that every single day. So what do you find most fulfilling about your work?

Anca Timofte: Yeah. The impact of what we're doing is fantastic, and it's a big driver, through all the challenges of entrepreneurship, starting a new company, looking at new chemistry, new technology.

There's definitely challenges to be overcome. And I think the impact of what we're doing is a reminder that it's all worth it. All the hard days, all the sleepless nights worrying about an experiment or a business deal. I think that the impact makes it all worth it.

And I think when I look at others around me, who are concerned about climate change or the energy transition I think we're really lucky at Holocene that we get to work on this and feel like we're contributing and doing something. I feel like for others, not being able to be part of it or trying to find ways to help.

That's always something we think about, but I would say the impact is massive. And I would lie if I didn't say also the intellectual challenge of what we're doing is exciting to me and motivates me. So removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is, it's just tough technically because, Carbon dioxide is relatively dilute from a chemical engineering definition. How to get a lot of air process through our materials and our machine, it's a hard technical problem to solve. And I think looking at new chemistry, new equipment, new ways of developing a market for a product, like these are exciting things that I enjoy engaging with and trying to solve every day.

Cortney Piper: Now, I want to ask you about your journey to East Tennessee, but before I do that, talk to me about direct air capture. What is it? Why is it important? Why is it an important part of helping reduce carbon emissions? 

Anca Timofte: Yes. So direct air capture is the effort of removing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.

So I think some of us are familiar with point source carbon capture or carbon capture in general. That's the more kind of the brother field or industry of what we're working on. So we're specifically looking at the carbon dioxide concentrations in the air. Air can be from anywhere. And removing the CO2 from that air.

 The reason that's important to do is simply we've emitted too much carbon dioxide so far as a civilization worldwide. So it's about removing these legacy emissions, CO2 that's already in the atmosphere, as well as having a plan in place for all those carbon dioxide emissions that we are not able to reduce.

We talk a lot about how we can transition our energy systems, et cetera, and how to reduce emissions. And that's a really important effort. That being said, not everything can be decarbonized and there's a timeline for decarbonization. So everything that doesn't get picked up by those solutions. Those are the carbon dioxide emissions that we are trying to address. We're looking at billions of tons of CO2 that have to be removed and this industry is only growing. So we're trying to scale up that capacity so that by 2050, we're able to remove billions of tons of CO2 that either have already been emitted or will continue to be emitted by that time.

Cortney Piper: Okay. Now let's talk about your journey to Knoxville, to East Tennessee. Tell us about your journey to Knoxville and coming into the Innovation Crossroads program that's at Oak Ridge National Lab. Just take us from the beginning to the end. 

Anca Timofte: How much time do you have? I'm sorry. 

Cortney Piper: We've got time. We've got time.

Anca Timofte: Good. Yeah, so it started with actually with the chemistry that we're using for Holocene. So I was in business school at Stanford, the heart of Silicon Valley, looking at different technologies and different chemistries for direct air capture. I came across this very fascinating and very novel technology, or I should say, chemistry from Oak Ridge National Lab.

And I had reached out to the inventor to discuss the publications that he had out on this topic. And it was just from the beginning, a really good relationship. He was very eager to share his research and learnings with me. And by that point, I had been in the direct air capture space working on different chemistries for about eight years.

So we had a lot to talk about. And I ended up reaching out to the Technology Commercialization Office at Oak Ridge National Lab to get the license for this chemistry to try to commercialize it. And that's exactly what happened. I had to submit a business plan and tell them about my hopes and dreams for this chemistry and how I will deploy it at scale.

And I think I was able to convince them and they helped me set that plan forth. And moved to Knoxville essentially to learn from the scientists directly at Oak Ridge, and the Innovation Crossroads program, a big part of that was essentially a way to formalize the relationship. As well as get mentorship as a first time founder, as a new entrepreneur. I needed all the programming sessions, all the support and all the dimensions that the company building journey has. Examples legal, you need a lot of kind of legal infrastructure to start a company. You need to understand how to hire people, how to talk to investors, all of that. So Innovation Crossroads is a really big part. And I think what also helped at the same time was since what we're doing is it's hardware based, chemistry based, it's getting lab space at SPARK, at the University of Tennessee Research Park.

So they saw that I moved from Palo Alto and I had all these boxes of equipment and things, and they were like you can apply to this program and participate also, in that specific program as well as have access to a lot of University of Tennessee research equipment, instruments, resources. So those two things, brought me to Knoxville as well as kept us here and helped build a company here. 

Cortney Piper: There's a couple of things that I want to ask you more about. First, you said you found research from Oak Ridge National Lab. How did you find this research?

Were you just Googling direct air capture research? Is there a publication that you were reading? How did you find this research? 

Anca Timofte: Yeah, so I think at that point specifically, I had a Google alert set for direct air capture research. There's different ways here to follow a field, but it was definitely trying to keep a pulse on research in general in the U.S. in direct air capture and looking at the publications. That's how I came across the name of the inventor. And he also happens to have a Romanian background like I do. So I think maybe that drew even more attention to his work for me. So yeah, there's, that's a way to keep in touch with the space. I think Google Alerts I can highly recommend. 

Cortney Piper: I would agree with that too. You'd be surprised how many. How many entrepreneurs that I've met that either found opportunity either through a Google search or a Google alert, or they had an investor come to them just completely unsolicited because the investor was searching on Google.

So I think it really speaks to the importance of using the tools that you have that are extraordinarily low cost to keep up to date on every single opportunity that might come up your way. Okay. Now, you're in Oak Ridge National Lab, you're in the Innovation Crossroads program.

Did you look at any other Innovation Crossroads like programs where a lot of other national labs courting you and courting Holocene? 

Anca Timofte: Yeah, I would say, definitely looked at as many opportunities as I could find. I think that's an important part of entrepreneurship is you can never count your chickens before they hatch.

I don't know what the expression is, but definitely look at. Yeah, keep tabs on everything. I had applied to other similar programs, the Innovation Crossroads was a great fit for me because of the licensing and the technology connection as well. And I was lucky at the same time to get to participate in Breakthrough Energy Fellows. This is through Bill Gates' efforts in climate change. So I was simultaneously part of other programs as well, which I think helped. So again, as an entrepreneur you got all the help you can get especially at the beginning you need it. 

Cortney Piper: Anca, let's talk about your big announcement this year.

And that is Holocene recently signed a first of its kind direct air capture deal with Google. Google. Talk to me about how that happened and what it means for Holocene. 

Anca Timofte: Yes. We're obviously extremely excited about this sale for us. So I'll start by saying that, the market that we operate in and the product that we have is something new.

So what we sell is essentially the environmental benefit of having removed the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And that environmental benefit is helpful for the world, but it's paid for by corporations and sometimes governments that have net zero goals. They look at their own emissions and their own activities, and they make promises to their customers around what they're going to do about some of these emissions.

And, Google, as well as other big companies like that, especially in software, where their balance sheets are a little bit maybe rosier or, there's more capital for, efforts in climate has this such a goal. So it has a carbon neutrality goal and carbon removal or direct air capture.

What we're doing is part of how they can achieve that goal. Google was part of an organization of buyers called Frontier, several software companies, as well as consultancies. McKinsey's a famous one there, are part of this organization of buyers. And the reason for that is they know they have to create the man for such a new product.

And they try to help on purpose startups and companies like us get off the ground by promoting demand for our products. So I would say, from Google's perspective, this is twofold. One is looking at how they can meet their carbon neutrality goals, but also making sure that they're helping build a supplier base for these goals.

So they know that if they don't support startups, like us, there won't be anyone to buy from in the future so I think they're a very patient customer for us. We essentially sold capacity from a plant we plan to have running by early 2030s. So that might be unusual for other spaces, for us it takes that many years to scale up this technology in general, in our industry. And I would say in terms of how it came to be, there is for now, a relatively small community of carbon removal enthusiasts. and we see more and more organizations like Google hiring people who are very interested in carbon removal, who are very educated in our space and with whom we meet at conferences, we get to meet through many different events.

So there's these carbon removal enthusiasts, as I call them are active at different organizations. They do as I did keep track of research and direct air capture what's going on a university level, national lab level, but also what happens in the startup space, which organizations are up and coming.

So this is how we found each other. Yeah, I'll, maybe I'll end it there in terms of impact. I think it's clear for a startup like us. It's very important to have customers early on demonstrates demand and we get to learn a lot about what our customers want. And it helps us shape our commercialization and go to market strategy.

Cortney Piper: The Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council is proud to count Google as a member. And when we founded this organization, one of the reasons why we founded it is because we saw Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies being very aggressive about climate goals, sustainability and reducing carbon emissions.

And we have seen just in the last three years, very large companies be more aggressive with that, take more of a responsibility to support new and emerging technologies because they see the totality of the climate crisis and they know it's going to take a large combination of technologies to get us where we need to be.

And I want to commend Google. I want to commend you, Anca. For this partnership and for working together, because I think what you have just described this path that you have described, this relationship with Google is the new normal. It's going to be the new way that cleantech entrepreneurs do business where you are going to have these large private sector companies saying, Hey, that looks interesting. We're going to need them to help meet our goals. How can we partner with them? So yeah. I think it's just a fantastic story, and thank you so much for sharing that with us. Is there anything else that you want to share with us about your deal with Google? 

Anca Timofte: Yes, what I'll say is, and I totally agree with what you said.

I think what I'll add is the government also has a really big role to play there, but while they're very influential in our space and other spaces in decarbonization. It's interesting to see the roles that corporations can also play. So specifically for us, the Department of Energy specifically, has tried to support our space and has supported our space for the last couple of years with grants, and grants for technology development, for R&D, but also actually for procurement of carbon dioxide removal credits.

 We've seen specifically a kind of a piloting of a purchase program of carbon dioxide removal from the U.S. Government from the Department of Energy and these kinds of efforts from the government brought also to the table, other corporations and Google also, they saw the piloting of this purchase program from the government, they also wanted to participate and committed to also buying more carbon dioxide removal. So it's really interesting to see how government corporations as well as startups can play a role in decarbonizing and reducing emissions as well as removing emissions like we do.

Cortney Piper: Speaking of, let's talk about the nation's largest public power provider, which is the Tennessee Valley Authority headquartered in East Tennessee. TVA is currently going through an Integrated Resource Plan process where they are going to decide, make some decisions, make some guideposts about their energy generation assets over the next decade or longer.

We know in some of those strategies that TVA is considering that carbon capture is a hundred percent in there up for discussion, evaluation, add into the decision matrix. Anca, what do you want the nation's largest public power provider to know about direct air capture? 

Anca Timofte: Utilities and direct air capture are two industries that will have a long relationship together.

And that's because direct air capture does need power as well as other technologies in our space. But there's a natural partnership there. There's also, ability to co locate carbon capture points or carbon capture what others do, what our brother industry does, as well as what we do with potential sites that the Tennessee Valley Authority has And in general, I think looking at taking some decommissioning assets that they have, there are all these legacy spaces or sites that they would have available for new technologies to be deployed at. So I think there's many potential ways. I only named two so far in which our industry and the utilities can work together.

So we're very hopeful that these relationships will only grow from here. We will get to work together in several ways in the future. And I will add that the TVA is a current supporter and partner, and they're funding some of the research we're doing with Oak Ridge National Lab.

So I think they're with us in the trenches learning about our space, learning about what we're doing and yeah, hopeful for even more partnership opportunities in the future. 

Cortney Piper: What's next for Holocene? 

Anca Timofte: Yeah, so we just finished commissioning and running for the first couple of months our automated and integrated pilot in Knoxville, Tennessee.

This was an exciting milestone for us. It was the first time we left the lab. And started working with real atmospheric air as well as with, suppliers we built a team that could deliver this whole pilot. So for us, many milestones in one and next we're already thinking about our demonstration facility.

That's a plant that's 200 to 500 times bigger. So a big step ahead. And for that facility, we're looking at fundraising. So we need to fund the facility as well as the engineering. So we're working with technology partners, interacting with potential suppliers, looking at hosts for this facility. So everything that we do essentially is now all about this new demonstration facility that will showcase our technology and its full splendor and from which we've already sold tons of carbon dioxide removed. So excited also for more customers to buy those removal credits from that facility.

Yeah, and the team will grow alongside it. And we're excited to be here in Knoxville, Tennessee and building this next facility.

Cortney Piper: Anca Timofte, CEO and co founder of Holocene. Thank you for coming on the show. I really enjoyed our conversation. Tell our listeners where they can learn more about Holocene.

Anca Timofte: Yes. You'll find us at www.theholocene.co or on LinkedIn. If you put Holocene and climate usually very easy to find and yeah, excited to engage with more people from the community. Anyone interested in direct air capture, please reach out. Thank you for having me. 

Cortney Piper: Thank you.

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