“Climate change is the biggest challenge we face, and carbon capture has a chance to contribute toward solving it.”
This issue of the GCI newsletter features Stafford Sheehan, Chief Technology Officer at Air Company. Air Company is a technology, engineering and design company that transforms carbon dioxide into products like vodka and sanitizer. Stafford received his PhD from Yale University in 2016, studying chemical methods for artificial photosynthesis and related systems, and for the last five years has been developing industrial technology for CO2 utilization.
How did the company start?
My co-founder Greg Constantine and I met in 2017 in Israel, where we were both invited to participate in a Forbes under 30 event at their global conference that takes place in Jerusalem. We had both been recently put on their 30 under 30 list for prior accomplishments in our careers. At the time, sustainable products by and large had a perception and reputation among consumers that suggested if you were buying something that’s eco-friendly, you’re compromising on quality. We wanted to turn that narrative around, but it would require both new sustainable technology that produces quantifiably higher quality products, and expertise in storytelling and communication to help businesses and consumers with largely nontechnical backgrounds understand how and why. We started Air Company to do both, and after years of development launched our first product: Air Vodka. Along the way, we got the attention of groups such as NASA and the United Nations, and now we’re working to realize global-scale applications.