This is the first in a series following innovators supported by Tencent’s CarbonX Program—teams tackling some of the world’s toughest climate challenges and turning lab breakthroughs into real-world solutions.

"Doing things in a lab is great, but deploying at scale is the only way the innovation actually matters," says Ryan Anderson, Founder and CEO of Parallel Carbon.

It's a challenge Anderson has been working to solve since long before founding Parallel Carbon. As an analyst covering carbon capture economics, he repeatedly encountered the same problem: carbon removal was treated as a cost, making deployment difficult.

Rethinking carbon removal

His answer was to stop treating carbon removal as a standalone challenge and instead build a system where carbon removal and hydrogen production work together.

Parallel Carbon's system produces hydrogen and removes carbon from the atmosphere at once, using only air, water, and renewable electricity. The electrolyzer that generates hydrogen also enables carbon removal, creating a single, integrated system with two valuable outputs.

The hydrogen produced can support multiple industries, including fertilizer production, lower-carbon shipping fuels, and sustainable aviation fuel.

From lab proof to real-world deployment

The science has been validated. Now comes the harder part.

Beginning in 2027, the team plans to commission and test the system in Kenya, where abundant renewable energy resources could help demonstrate the technology at commercial scale.

CarbonX has provided grant support and helped the team connect with the right partners on the ground ready to make the leap from warehouse pilot to field deployment.

Making sustainable industries possible

If successful, Parallel Carbon could demonstrate that carbon removal can generate value rather than simply incur cost, helping unlock wider deployment across aviation, shipping, agriculture, and heavy industry.