Sojitz Corporation (“Sojitz”) has established Carbon Xtract Corporation (“Carbon Xtract”) as a new company to accelerate social implementation of separation membrane-based Direct Air Capture technology (“m-DAC^TM”)*¹by the late 2020s.

Sojitz first signed a memorandum with Kyushu University in February 2022 to pursue research for the practical implementation of m-DAC^TM technology by 2030, but Sojitz will now accelerate this timeline through the establishment of Carbon Xtract.

As a measure to address global warming, countries across the world are working to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), restrictions on consumption of fossil fuels can reduce just over 90% of today’s current emission volumes. However, in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, DAC technology must be used to directly recapture close to 70 million tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere by 2030.*² In order to advance these efforts, Japan enacted the Green Transformation (GX) Promotion Act on May 12, 2023. This new act builds a market environment with systems that support up-front investment for the social implementation of revolutionary technology related to decarbonization such as DAC.

Sojitz aims to achieve early product commercialization and social implementation of m-DAC^TM. Based on the essential need for collaboration with latent consumers from the R&D stage, Sojitz has partnered with materials venture, NanoMembrane Technologies, Inc.,*³ to establish Carbon Xtract. Moving forward, Sojitz will promote product commercialization and utilization of m-DAC^TM through co-creation with its customer networks to become a leading company in the small-scale and distributed DAC market.