Q&A with Marco Scabia of SmartAirTech

THE TECHNOLOGY APPROACH: WE THINK GLOBALLY AND SOLVE LOCALLY
There are several aspects of the company, its current tech and the potential of the second stage of its deployment, that make it very unique.

1. Currently there are no decentralized solutions that are all in one and abate all air pollutants and also remove and transform CO2.
2. It’s a data driven, small and easily scalable solution that can be manufactured everywhere (also allowing the company to license its IP in order to grow faster)
3. Biomsair is a decentralized PIMBY (please in my backyard) solution that can be installed ""WHERE PEOPLE LIVE"" (WPL), increasing air quality and bringing immediate and measurable health benefits to local communities while generating carbon credits.
4. The equipment doesn’t use membranes or filters, which allows the installation in highly polluted places with low maintenance costs.
5. Installing a production plant is supported by financial incentives in most countries where the company intends to distribute its equipment. In addition to that, the company is able to tackle the huge availability of grants for air pollution and CO2, either federal, at state level or municipal.
6. Most DAC (direct air capture) facilities need to be built in remote and unpolluted places. Other DACs use solvents and store the CO2 underground using extremely elevated pressure. This processes are expensive, reduce the net amount of CO2 actually captured and present risks to the communities. In our case, the waste is non-toxic and there are no risks in the overall operation.
7. Biomsair is biomimetic, doesn’t use solvents since its tech mimics natural processes and has no toxic waste. In fact the CO2 is transformed into a byproduct that can be used in several industries.
8. Low capex for the massive production of equipment while competitors face huge investments to increase their CO2 capture capacity.
9. The fact that its tech is compact and affordable, puts the company in the unique position to offer to large corporations and governments very profitable and desired business models such as lease or even a CAAS (carbon credit as a service).
10. The air pollution abatement and the carbon credit generation can be measured thanks to an unequivocable MRV process. As a result, companies and governments can rely on a real solution that allows them to share the results with the market, the media and the population.

For the reasons above, it's likely that Smartairtech will be one of the few companies to reach the threshold of USD 100-150 per ton of CO2 captured.

Current DAC solutions face many scalability issues. Most of them need to be in an unpolluted environment (due to the large use of membranes and filters that would be too costly in urban or industrial areas) and are implemented through large facilities, For these reasons, the existing DACs in the market need to:
1. Find large amounts of land in unpolluted places. Since most of them need to store CO2 underground, a specific soil is also required
2. Many permits need to be granted for a new facility
3. Large sums of money need to be deployed to increase CO2 removal capacity (extremely high CAPEX)
4. Some questions have been raised about storing CO2 underground at high pressures and possible long term consequences
5. These solutions don't tackle the air quality problem since they only abate CO2 in unpolluted and distante areas
6. Measuring the amount of CO2 removed is not as precise

SmartAirTech has a compact solution that allows the decentralization of the CO2 removal in Urban and Industrial areas. Its deployment is risk free and the process is biomimetic (mimics natural processes) which avoids the use of solvents, membranes and filters and doesn't create toxic waste in the process.

This allows the company to implement smaller and disseminated projects in areas where people live and work and to offer clients more modern AS A SERVICE business models (and not only carbon credit commercialization).

In addition to that, the high implementation costs of other DAC, shows that these companies are extremely distant from a healthy USD 100-150 per ton of CO2. This threshold is considered a very important milestone for DAC solutions because it's the price point that larga consultancy companies believe that will boost huge scalability. At SmartAirTech, due to our recent evolution, we believe that we're going to reach this threshold before 2030.

The Air Quality market is currently USD 30 million and expected to grow steadily in the upcoming years. The carbon credit market is expected to reach USD 1.5 Trillion by 2030 and McKinsey expects to see an 11 trillion dollars investment (globally) for the globe to reach 50 billion tons of CO2 removed by 2050.