Brineworks' EIC Accelerator Pulls CO2 From Air With Saltwater

Aviation and shipping cannot realistically be electrified, so they need synthetic fuels that are chemically identical to the fossil ones. Those fuels need two cheap feedstocks, CO2 and hydrogen, and both are currently too expensive. Brineworks, based at Amsterdam Science Park, runs a hybrid electrolysis system on saltwater that captures CO2 from the air and produces green hydrogen as a co-product, which the CORDIS summary of its EIC project says cuts overall process costs by up to 50%.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project at its October 2024 cut-off for blended finance, and CORDIS records a grant of €1,827,831.29 from February 2025 to January 2027, one of the smaller awards in the cut-off. The project claims a levelised cost of CO2 extraction as low as €68 per tonne against €500 to €600 for incumbent direct air capture. In June 2026 the company opened a demonstration plant, and in September it sold its first carbon removal.

From ocean capture to air capture

The company's framing has shifted. When Pale Blue Dot led a round of about €2 million in September 2024, Brineworks described its approach as direct ocean capture: seawater electrolysis extracting CO2 and hydrogen from the ocean, with CEO Gudfinnur Sveinsson calling it "sustainable, scalable, and cost-effective", as Carbon Herald reported. Today the website leads with "ultra low-cost Direct Air Capture", and the CORDIS summary describes capturing CO2 from air using saltwater. The company's description of what it does has changed from ocean capture to air capture.

In September 2025 a second round of €6.8 million was led by SeaX Ventures with Pale Blue Dot, First Momentum, AiiM Partners, Energie360° and Katapult, bringing disclosed equity to about €8.8 million alongside the EIC grant.

The demonstration plant and the first sale

In June 2026 Brineworks opened its demonstration plant at Amsterdam Science Park, designed to capture up to 100 tonnes of CO2 a year while co-producing green hydrogen, powered by renewable electricity. The company said early data supported its target of capturing CO2 below €100 per tonne at scale, and described the plant as validating system performance ahead of a first commercial plant. It did not publish the data.

In September 2026 it secured a pre-purchase of 500 tonnes of durable carbon removal through Milkywire, backed by Salesforce, as one of eight suppliers in that purchasing round, part of Salesforce's commitment to contract $100 million of durable carbon removal by 2030. That is a real customer, though the amount paid was not disclosed.

1. Working electrolyser at demonstration scaleBuiltAmsterdam plant opened June 2026.
2. First paying carbon removal buyerSigned500 tonnes via Milkywire, September 2026.
3. Cost below €100 per tonneClaimedCompany says early data supports it; data not published.
4. Commercial plant and e-fuel customersIn discussionCompany says it is talking to e-fuel and carbon removal partners.

A small grant for a hardware company

At €1.83 million, the EIC grant is below the €2.5 million most beneficiaries in this cut-off received, and it is smaller than either of the company's private rounds. The award was blended finance and no EIC Fund equity has been announced. The business model the project describes is broad for a company this size: selling CO2 and hydrogen from the demonstration plant, licensing the plant design, selling electrolysers, spare parts and maintenance, and taking royalties on customers' output.

Cheap CO2 is the bottleneck in European e-fuel rules

The EU is requiring aviation fuel to contain a rising share of synthetic fuel, and those fuels need CO2 that does not come from fossil sources. That is the policy logic behind the grant: if capture costs stay at several hundred euros a tonne, e-SAF stays unaffordable. Brineworks' claim to matter is not the capture alone but the pairing, hydrogen and CO2 from one machine at one site, which would let fuel plants be built near renewable power rather than near a CO2 source.