A Team Built for Near-Site CCS
by Luke Geiver (Ethanol Producer Magazine) With carbon capture and sequestration taking ethanol towards net-zero, a rising CCS developer is focused on working with producers that are uniquely positioned to sequester near their plant.
Vault 44.01 is a company named for the industry it serves—more specifically, the greenhouse gas molecule it seeks to capture and lock away. 44.01 represents the molecular mass of carbon dioxide, and it may soon be a number, or at least a name, that’s well known across all carbon-emitting industries. Vault may not be unique in its mission to capture and sequester industrial carbon, but the lane it has chosen is. The company isn’t focused on pipelines or multi-plant CO2 aggregation, but near-site CCS. The ethanol sector is currently its top focus, and after only two years in business, Vault’s unique rise, early backing from by major investors and ability to find enthusiastic partners in ethanol production reveals much about its drive and trajectory. Scott Rennie, co-founder, president and CEO of Vault 44.01, offers valuable perspective on the ongoing connection between ethanol and carbon, the role ethanol producers might play in laying a blueprint for the broader CCS movement and the commitments required to make it all happen.
Building Broad Expertise In-House
Rennie has experience with companies that have helped pioneer large-scale CCS. Prior to forming Vault, he spent time developing major CCS projects in North America with Schlumberger and ConocoPhillips, the former having completed more than 60 CCS projects globally and the latter having captured some 120 million metric tons of C02.
To build Vault, Rennie wanted to combine his CCS experience with a broad team of geoscientists, subsurface reservoir experts, finance specialists, project developers and others. The roster assembled is nothing short of A-list talent, he believes, and the credentials of Vault’s team members prove him right. The company has, in aggregate, over 60 years of direct experience with CCS, including Class VI permitting expertise (Class VI permits are required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ensure safe storage of captured CO2 in a secure geological formation). The team has been rounded out with professionals experienced in land acquisition, investment evaluation, capital formation and, importantly, project implementation.
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From day one of building their business model, the Vault team knew they needed access to capital. “We knew we weren’t going to go into CCS projects as consultants, but rather as equity participants, alongside our partners. We were going to invest in assets and take on certain elements of project risk that make sense for Vault so that our partners don’t have to,” Rennie says, “The need for capital was always there.”
In 2021 the team went to the capital market, including Grey Rock Investment Partners, a private equity firm that has invested over $1.3 billion in energy projects.
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What Vault found across the private equity sector was a large group of firms that wanted to invest in the energy transition, but fewer that had a clear strategy around investing in CCS. READ MORE
