“We want to be sought after as the preeminent blue decarbonization partner”: Tim Matthews of Cozairo

“We offer a comprehensive, ready-to-execute decarbonization solution and the skills needed to deploy it.”

Cozairo has been designed to enable industrials to decarbonize their existing operations or to build low-carbon facilities for the future sustainably. There are significant challenges industrials are facing to achieve this goal such as challenged economics, technology readiness, high complexity, access to capital, and lack of familiarity (decarbonization is not a core competency most have or wish to develop in-house). In its commitment to be an enabling partner, Cozairo has structured its offering to address each of these pain points.

Sustainability has three distinguishing characteristics that Cozairo recognize: 1) it must result in a material reduction in the emissions profile of the business or facility, 2) the reduction must be permanent, and 3) it must make sense for businesses to invest in. Put simply, the company strives to provide a truly sustainable decarbonization solution to the industrial sector, in every sense of the word.

The Silicon Review reached out to Tim Matthews, CEO of Cozairo, and here's what he had to say.

"We offer a comprehensive, ready-to-execute decarbonization solution and the skills needed to deploy it. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is at the core of our business model. We are CCS specialists; our team of engineers and scientists has grown up in the Upstream Oil & Gas sector, where we have developed expertise across the CCS value chain. We bring full-service CCS project development capabilities – design, permitting, financing, execution and operations – to our partners, most of whom do not have access to these capabilities in-house, nor have any plans to develop them."

“Earlier in my career, I led the sequestration design, permitting, execution, monitoring and early operations for the first and largest CCS project in the U.S. (at ExxonMobil’s Shute Creek, WY gas processing facility) – one of only two operating CCS projects in the U.S. today. This unique expertise underpins Cozairo’s business model and advantaged offering.”

Cozairo: Service Offerings

Cozairo’s offerings bring significant advantages to its partners. Most significantly, the company sequesters CO2 either directly onsite or in very close proximity to the site. In the U.S. approximately 60% of the country enjoys access to storage capacity; this equates to well over 80% of U.S. point source emissions. The company's unique capabilities in geologic sequestration enable it to design projects onsite for industrial sites across the U.S. By avoiding the need to transport CO2 by high-pressure pipeline, Cozairo can reduce typical project costs by up to 20%. 

Further, CO2 purity specifications are significantly lower for sequestration than they are for transportation; in some cases, this reduction in CO2 specs can reduce capital requirements for capture equipment by an additional 10+%. When the additional benefits of avoiding pipeline right-of-way, permitting and commercial complexities (a pipeline typically requires multiple industrial customers to commit their CO2 before it can be financed; when sequestration is done onsite, the decision to proceed with the project is squarely in the hands of the host facility, no longer dependent on pipeline project financing) are also considered, Cozairo’s onsite sequestration model can deliver significant advantages to clients over blue and green decarbonization alternatives.

Testimonials: Clients Speak

Cozairo is active in the ammonia, methanol, hydrogen, renewable diesel, power generation, LNG, cement, refining, glass and steel production sectors. Two recent examples of Cozairo enabling CCS projects where they otherwise were not being considered are:

In the Power Sector – Previous studies had ruled out onsite CCS at one power generation facility, forcing the facility owner to consider building a 100-mile pipeline or abandoning decarbonization plans at the site altogether.

“Our technical team applied their deep expertise in the technical evaluation and management of subsurface injection projects to the available dataset, and promptly identified four prospective zones that were missed by the previous evaluation team, each with adequate storage and injectivity to support onsite CCS. By removing a $100M CO2 pipeline from the CCS project scope, we have revived the opportunity. We are now partnering with the facility owner to complete the preliminary design of an onsite sequestration project for this facility.”

In the Petrochemical Sector – A Gulf Coast industrial facility located in close proximity to a residential area commenced evaluation of CO2 capture technologies without having yet identified a viable CO2 disposition solution. Pipeline offtake was assumed to be their only alternative.

“We introduced the concept of onsite CCS, highlighted the potential of their site, and have now completed pre-FEED studies for a sequestration project on their site sufficient to dispose of current and potential future CO2 volumes. By designing a sequestration project that takes maximum advantage of site geology, our technical team was able to remove pipeline costs, significantly reducing the pore space acquisition requirements for the project while simultaneously controlling plume migration via injection well design optimizations. We also developed a pore space acquisition plan that we are now preparing to execute in partnership with the facility owner.”

Roadmap

Cozairo has been at the forefront of serving conscientious companies committed to leading the energy transition. Currently, the company is partnering with multiple solution providers to expand its service offerings.

“We are very excited to be partnering with CO2 capture and hydrogen production technology providers to develop integrated blue decarbonization project offerings specifically tailored to serve the cement and steel industries; the solutions we’re developing can deliver 20+% capex reduction for CCS projects in these sectors, which is a true game-changer. We look forward to sharing more about these strategic relationships in the future.”

“We want to be sought after as the preeminent blue decarbonization partner; we aim to achieve that by not only delivering an excellent, truly advantaged solution, but also by being the sort of people that other people want to work with because we genuinely care about what we’re doing, and who we’re doing it for.”

Tim Matthews | CEO

Tim Matthews brings over 20 years of leadership, management and experience covering the full life cycle of exploration and production of oil & gas assets, with deep expertise in reservoir engineering, field development, CO2-EOR, injection and storage management, and carbon capture and underground storage (CCUS). Tim has unique CCUS expertise, having served as the sequestration lead for the first commercial-scale CCUS operation in the United States (ExxonMobil’s LaBarge Acid Gas Injection Project in Shute Creek, WY). In this role, Tim led the design, well permitting, execution, monitoring and early operation of sequestration activities for this successful project, and published subsequent technical papers. He has also worked in portfolio analysis and strategy development, leading strategic analysis, planning & development, opportunity identification & evaluation, and asset valuation. He is committed to delivering to the highest performance standards in high-pressure and challenging environments and has a strong track record of managing large multifunctional teams through complex technical, business and regulatory challenges.

“Earlier in my career, I led the sequestration design, permitting, execution, monitoring and early operations for the first and largest CCS project in the U.S. (at ExxonMobil’s Shute Creek, WY gas processing facility) – one of only two operating CCS projects in the U.S. today. This unique expertise underpins Cozairo’s business model and advantaged offering.”