On the rooftop of a power-generating waste incineration plant near Zurich, Switzerland, a row of large machines pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some of that CO2 then goes to a production facility in Chicago, where a startup called Aether is turning it into something new: the world’s first carbon-negative diamonds.
CEO Ryan Shearman started thinking about the concept while reading Drawdown, a book about the most effective solutions to climate change, and talking with Dan Wojno, who became his cofounder. Both had backgrounds in the jewelry industry. “We had a bit of an epiphany,” he says. “You’re carbon-based, I’m carbon-based, we live in a carbon-based world. Carbon in our atmosphere is really bad, but carbon itself inherently is not bad. And a diamond is just crystalline carbon.”
The startup is incorporating the diamonds into a new line of fine jewelry that it wants to appeal to consumers based on design, not solely the environmental message. “We want to make sure that this is something that you’d buy on its face, just because of the way it looks, because of the way it makes you feel,” Shearman says. “The environmental element to this is really kind of the icing on the cake. Because at the end of the day, most Americans—most people in general—don’t know their carbon footprint.” (The average carbon footprint in the U.S. is around 16 tons; a two-carat Aether diamond can offset roughly two and a half years’ worth of one American’s emissions.)
For companies such as Climeworks that are pioneering new carbon-capture technology, diamonds also offer a financially attractive market. Direct air capture is still an expensive way to capture carbon, especially compared to something like planting trees. “If I can go and buy carbon offsets for anywhere from, say, $1 to $15 through regenerative farming or reforestation, that’s much more attractive than direct air capture, which is hundreds of dollars per tonne,” he says. “So without subsidies, direct air capture at its current stage and its current level of maturity is really kind of looking for these viable paths to market.”
Aether is beginning with limited production but says that the process can scale. The company will launch first with a waitlist and plans to begin to sell products in early 2021.