Watt It Takes: The Founder-Engineer Turning CO2 Into Fuels and Materials

In this edition of our founder interview series, we profile a bohemian founder who’s tackling CO2 recycling.

Photo Credit: Powerhouse

This week on Watt It Takes: Emily Kirsch sits down with Etosha Cave, the co-founder and chief science officer of Opus 12.

Opus 12 is a team of engineers, electrochemists and materials scientists working on a technology that converts carbon dioxide into usable products. They are developing a metal catalyst that can turn CO2 into synthetic gas for fuels and ethylene for plastics.

If the tech works at commercial scale, it would be a vital solution for slashing CO2 from industrial sources. The company has brought in about $20 million in funding. 

In this interview, Etosha talks about the inspiration for the technology, which came from her love of space and desire to go to Mars.

She talks about being a founder who’s also a black woman and how that’s influenced her relationships with other people in energy.

And she talks about where Opus 12’s tech development stands. 

To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to Powerhouse.fund and click on the events tab. Listen to all of the episodes of Watt It Takes here.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

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