It’s in your shopping bags, activewear, and even jet fuel. Yet almost all of it is made from fossil fuels. CERT Systems is working to change that — using captured carbon dioxide, water and clean electricity.
The chemical we can’t live without
Meet ethylene: a simple molecule that is one of the world’s most important industrial building blocks. It is used to make everything from packaging and textiles to water pipes, refrigerants and even jet fuel.
Around 200 million tonnes of ethylene are produced each year, almost all from fossil fuels. The industry accounts for about one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. CERT Systems wants to change that.
When clean energy got cheap, a new question emerged
As a child, Alex Ip, CERT’s co-founder, was fascinated by science fiction’s belief that technology could solve real-world problems. That passion led him into solar research at university.
But as the cost of solar fell, the challenge shifted. The question was no longer how to generate clean electricity, but what to do with it. Could clean electricity be used to make ethylene, rather than simply powering the grid?
Turning air into industry
That question led Alex to co-found CERT Systems with Dr. Christine Gabardo, an expert in electrochemistry.
Their method, Direct CO2 Electrolysis, captures carbon dioxide from industrial emissions or directly from the atmosphere, then feeds it into an electrolyzer with water and clean electricity. In the electrolyzer, the CO2 is split apart and rebuilt atom by atom into ethylene — no expensive green hydrogen or biomass required.
Last year, the team achieved a milestone: converting atmospheric CO2 into ethylene for the first time in their lab. Because CO2 is widely available, unlike fossil fuels concentrated in specific regions, ethylene could eventually be produced closer to where it’s is needed and integrated into existing manufacturing infrastructure.
From the lab to the market
CERT’s next challenge is scaling from the lab to its first commercial demonstration project outside Canada, and then to real-world applications. Through CarbonX, Tencent is helping bridge the gap from lab to the market, providing funding, strategic partnerships and opportunities to demonstrate the technology at scale.
We are making the world's most important chemical building block, but we are making it better. CERT Systems' co-founder
Alex hopes that within five years, the same shopping bags, activewear and jet fuel people use every day could be made from carbon dioxide instead of oil. At scale, the technology has the potential to prevent up to 800 million tonnes of CO₂emissions each year.
