As the world pivots toward sustainable energy solutions, the demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is skyrocketing, driven by the global electrification of mobility and energy storage. Graphite, a vital component of these batteries, has come under intense scrutiny due to the lack of robust life cycle analysis (LCA) data regarding its production processes.

Onshoring production would unlock local value chains for industry. The clean energy transition cannot happen without critical minerals. The United States needs to address three key supply chain challenges to meet its ambitions for industry, citizens, and the economy as a whole.

Sustainable battery manufacturing is one of the main challenges of an industry that puts a major strain on the planet's resources, especially since these products are important in the automotive and energy industries, among others. CarbonScape is the startup that helps us make batteries with a minimal impact on the environment.

Cars powered by woodchips: Biographite makes EV batteries sustainable.

The material will soon be manufactured in the EU and US, reducing dependence on Chinese supplies of graphite. A company in New Zealand is turning discarded woodchips into synthetic graphite that can be used in EV batteries.

CarbonScape makes ‘biographite’ by heating byproducts from the forestry industry using a process called thermo-catalytic graphitisation.

The Next Chips to Transform EVs Could Be Made From Wood

A New Zealand startup is turning forestry scraps into graphite for use in lithium-ion batteries

Callaghan Innovation is Aotearoa New Zealand’s innovation agency. Their Ārohia Innovation Trailblazer Grant is designed to empower groundbreaking technologies by supporting businesses that are actively enhancing the innovation ecosystem.  

As CarbonScape's proprietary biographite technology gains commercial momentum and global relevance, we are pleased to announce Callaghan Innovation have confirmed CarbonScape as an Ārohia Innovation Trailblazer Grant recipient.

Ivan Williams, CEO of CarbonScape, discusses the scale of the challenge involved in scaling up graphite supply chains to meet exploding demand and why the lithium-ion battery industry needs to diversify its supply chains.

In the midst of a battery industry boom seeking immediate inroads to alleviating climate-change dangers worldwide, certain facts need confronting: To work, batteries need minerals; and the amount, location, chemical performance, scalability, and supply-chain control (price) of these raw materials is a constantly changing picture of concern.

New Zealand-based startup CarbonScape is developing what it says is the first-to-market biographite—a carbon-negative alternative to the critical material used in lithium-ion batteries. As the company sees it, biographite will provide a much-needed alternative for EV and grid-scale battery supply chains by sustainably creating a critical raw material that currently depends on costly and high-emission production processes.

A breakthrough technology that can make graphite out of wood chips, undermining China’s chokehold on a material crucial for lithium-ion batteries, has received $18m in backing from a group of investors.

Kiwi company Carbonscape has won $18 million to commercialise its graphite-made-from-wood technology in Europe and the US, in the hopes it will catch the eye of a sustainability-minded battery maker.

CarbonScape, which began developing its clean graphite alternative, biographite, in 2016, recently banked $18 million in an investment round led by Europe’s largest supplier of wooden construction material, Store Enso, to commercialise its materials throughout Europe and the US.

Carbon-negative biographite addresses raw material scarcity for EV and grid-scale batteries.

Commercialisation of biographite planned in Europe and the US as CarbonScape announces USD 18M investment.