Carbonscape and The Snowball Effect


It’s hard to imagine a world without steel. Steel has built some of the world’s most iconic skylines and fuelled industrial growth. The Empire State Building, Auckland’s Sky Tower, the Trans-Siberian Express…all made possible by steel.

But there is an environmental cost. Carbon is a key ingredient and coking coal the go to source. It’s used to fuel the furnaces and added to iron to give steel its great strength. When the world started making steel half a millennia ago, the nascent technology produced a thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide for every tonne of steel that rolled out of the forge. Today, thanks to developments in technology, emissions have fallen but remain high. Around 1.6 billion tonnes of steel is produced globally, releasing just over 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the world’s atmosphere. A major stumbling block to getting these emissions down is the cost of replacing fossil fuels.

Carbonscape is crowd sourcing funds to produce green coke with Snowball Effect
Six years ago I helped set up a green tech company called Carbonscape, based in Marlborough, New Zealand. With a wonderfully talented team we are using microwaves to turn plant matter into a host of green, renewable products. Rather than digging carbon out of the ground, we’re fixing the carbon directly from the air. By the application of microwaves to forestry waste and the judicious recycling of gases and heat, green coke has become a major focus. As a result, Carbonscape’s technology is estimated to halve carbon dioxide emissions to one tonne for each tonne of steel produced. International recognition for Carbonscape’s technology has followed and last year New Zealand Steel – owned by Bluescope Steel – signed a supply agreement with us for the production of green coke. 

Today is an exciting day for Carbonscape. We’re working with Snowball Effect and making a public call to crowd source the funds we need to build the plant and supply our first consignment of green coke to New Zealand Steel. 


The future of business is here: making money by doing good.

We hope you can join us.

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