LanzaTech CEO Dr. Jennifer Holmgren Recognized in TIME’s Inaugural TIME100 Climate List

(LanzaTech) Dr. Holmgren joins businesses and leaders lauded for their influence in driving climate action for her leadership in scaling carbon biorecycling and catalyzing a circular economy

Today (November 16, 2023), TIME named Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, Chief Executive Officer of LanzaTech (NASDAQ: LNZA) to the inaugural TIME100 Climate list, recognizing the 100 most innovative leaders driving business climate action.

Under Dr. Holmgren's leadership, LanzaTech became the first carbon capture and utilization technology company to go public and demonstrated that its commercial-scale biorecycling approach can play a pivotal role in keeping our planet livable for the long term. To date, LanzaTech has prevented more than 330,000 tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere across six commercial plants. With the recent start-up of two new plants using LanzaTech’s process, its biorecycling technology now has the capacity to abate 500,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.

“In creating their inaugural Climate 100 list, TIME is prioritizing a key issue of our generation. I’m honored to be recognized among a diverse group of contributors, demonstrating that a basket of solutions is needed to effect gigaton-scale change for our climate,” said Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, Chief Executive Officer of LanzaTech. “We need carbon to live, but we can live with carbon differently. I hope more industrial emitters, brands, governments, and consumers join us in accelerating the shift toward a circular carbon economy.”

Prior to joining LanzaTech, Dr. Holmgren was the founding VP and General Manager of the Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit at UOP LLC, a Honeywell Company, where she was one of the key drivers of UOP’s leadership in aviation biofuels. Dr. Holmgren is the author or co-author of 50 US patents and more than 30 scientific publications.

She currently serves in a number of advisory roles, including the Board of Directors of the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), the Advisory Council for the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, and the Advisory Council for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Dr. Holmgren holds a B.Sc. degree from Harvey Mudd College, a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from the University of Chicago and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

To assemble the list, TIME's editors and reporters fielded nominations and recommendations from industry leaders and partner organizations like Global Optimism and The B Team, as well as TIMECO2’s Advisory Council, then worked to assess the candidates on a variety of factors, including recency of action, measurable results, and influence.

The full list is now live on Time.com and will appear in the December 5, 2023, issue, available on newsstands on Friday, November 24th, and now at time.com/time100-climate. Follow @TIME for updates about the list.

LanzaTech Global, Inc. (NASDAQ: LNZA) is the carbon recycling company transforming waste carbon into sustainable raw materials for everyday products. Using its biorecycling technology, LanzaTech captures carbon generated by energy-intensive industries at the source, preventing it from being emitted into the air. LanzaTech then gives that captured carbon a new life as a clean replacement for virgin fossil carbon in everything from household cleaners and clothing fibers to packaging and fuels. By partnering with companies across the global supply chain like ArcelorMittal, Zara, H&M Move, Coty, and On, LanzaTech is paving the way for a circular carbon economy. For more information about LanzaTech, visit https://lanzatech.com. READ MORE

Excerpt from Time MAgazine: We need businesses to deploy local, distributed decarbonization technologies, and governments to help fund them so that developing nations—in addition to wealthier countries—have the means to lower their carbon footprint. We can only make a gigatonne impact on climate change when we expand beyond the old paradigm of “scaling up” and focus on “numbering up,” which means local execution on a global scale. For example, distributed systems employing new biorecycling and carbon utilization technologies can be applied to any geography, including the Global South, transforming waste carbon that would otherwise pollute our communities and our homes into sustainable raw materials.

Many people have heard of carbon capture and sequestration (or “CCS,” which stores waste carbon), but carbon capture and utilization (or “CCU,” which reuses waste carbon) has gotten considerably less attention, including in global policy frameworks. CCU reimagines the extractive, linear carbon economy that makes the majority of products in our daily lives. While power can be carbon-free, we need a source of sustainable carbon for things like textiles, packaging, and consumer goods. Instead of pulling virgin fossil carbon out of the ground, we can reuse waste carbon that would otherwise pollute our communities and use it to make more sustainable products.

I want people to start questioning the source of carbon in the things they use. Just like you might wonder if something is Fair Trade or organic, I hope the general public will begin seeing recycled carbon choices in the consumer goods available in stores. I’d also like people to acknowledge that it isn’t a “green premium” for sustainable products. Rather we are enjoying a “fossil discount” for the current status quo. Thanks to long-standing subsidies and well-established economies of scale, it is tough for new technologies to compete, and so it distorts how people perceive sustainable goods today. READ MORE