Meet Alexander Todhunter, Investor Director at Kanadevia Inova Capital, and one of The Carbon Removers’ key partners.
Biogas: less time in the office, more time in fields with farmers
I actually started out in financial advisory before moving into renewables about ten years ago. I joined Iona Capital, now rebranded as Kanadevia Inova Capital, and spent the last decade in biogas. That meant a big shift: less time in offices, more time in fields with farmers. Today I look after two large biomethane assets in the group, including Crofthead Biogas in Scotland.
Crofthead Biogas Plant in Dumfries, Scotland
One single process for a triple impact: clean energy, captured carbon, and sustainable fertilizer
For me, biomethane is one of the best ways to decarbonize heat that’s available right now. It doesn’t require electrification, and it works directly in the existing gas grid. Biomethane is a one-for-one substitute for natural gas. On top of that, you generate biogenic CO₂ — which means you can actually produce carbon-negative energy. And you also produce a sustainable fertilizer, digestate, that substitutes synthetic fertilizer.
You end up with three valuable products at once: green gas, captured carbon, and fertilizer. It’s a perfect fit for the circular economy.
We are mindful of community perceptions of biogas in the UK. All our plants are built into the local agricultural economy. We use waste feedstocks, agricultural residues, and then return digestate back to the land. That means we’re not only displacing fossil fuels but also cutting fugitive emissions and replacing ammonia-based fertilizers. Of course, location is key. You need to size the plant and the traffic movements correctly for the locality.
Done well, the benefits are obvious to the farming community
Kanadevia Inova Capital is part of Kanadevia Inova, a global cleantech company in Switzerland, with a Japanese parent listed on the Nikkei. We’ve invested several hundred million into biogas projects, mainly in the UK but now expanding internationally. We’ve got a team of 20 investment professionals in London and about 50 people operating our plants across the UK.
We’ve invested several hundred millions into biogas projects, mainly in the UK but now expanding internationally.
Our partnership with The Carbon Removers actually started during COVID with a video call. Ed and Richard (Ed and Richard Nimmons, cofounders of The Carbon Removers) said: “We want to build a dry ice factory across the road from your biogas plant and take all your biogenic CO₂.” They were already building it before we’d even finished the call! That got our attention. Since then, they’ve been taking CO₂ directly from Crofthead Biogas in Scotland. We liked what we saw, and one of our funds took a minority stake in The Carbon Removers.
Today we have a framework agreement to do multiple projects together, starting with the Invergordon Distillery in Scotland, where we plan to capture 12,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year. I also now sit on the board of The Carbon Removers, and we’re working on joint projects in the UK and in Denmark.
The vision we share with The Carbon Removers is to build a full platform for carbon removal: capture, transport, storage, and CDR credits at scale. The Carbon Removers have the expertise and the technology; we bring the infrastructure capital. With the right investment, we can make a real difference, fast. Together, we can accelerate projects across Europe.
In our view, harnessing biogenic CO₂ from biomethane and distillery fermentation produces the lowest-cost high quality CDR credits possible. That makes this one of the most competitive, high-impact ways to lock carbon away from the atmosphere permanently.