UBC spin-off companies tackle climate change and drive economic growth

On Earth’s surface, some rocks naturally pull carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into solid minerals. The process is called carbon mineralization. Once the carbon becomes rock, it stays locked away for good.

The problem is time. This reaction unfolds over millennia—far too slowly for today’s climate crisis. But here’s the twist: many of the rocks that naturally lock away carbon are the same ones we mine. When they’re crushed to extract metals and minerals, they become even more reactive.

What if that natural process could be sped up? As the world shifts to a clean-energy economy that depends on critical minerals, could mining byproducts be transformed into part of our climate solutions?  

These questions have driven Dr. Greg Dipple’s career. As Professor Emeritus of Geological Sciences at UBC, Dipple has spent more than two decades tracing how carbon moves from air into rock. He realized that, to make mineralization work fast enough to help keep global warming below the critical limit, it needed to leave the lab and enter the places where reactive rock is already being crushed.

His research set the stage for Arca Climate Technologies, a UBC spin-off co-founded by Dipple. Based in Vancouver, Arca works in partnership with dozens of mining companies from Canada, Australia, and around the world. Canada’s and Australia’s large mining industries, along with their abundant ultramafic rock deposits, make them ideal places for Arca to scale its technology.

Alongside the climate benefits, the economic potential of carbon mineralization is immense. Analysis by Carbon Removal Canada suggests that if Canada built the capacity to remove about 312 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) each year—roughly half of its current annual emissions—it could create 332,000 jobs and add $143 billion in gross domestic product by 2050.

Although Arca only officially launched in 2022, the company’s trajectory has been rapid. In 2021, the founding team won a $1-million XPRIZE from the Musk Foundation for early breakthroughs in carbon mineralization. The following year, Arca secured $1 million in carbon removal purchases from Shopify and Frontier. In 2025, Arca received more than $1.25 million from the BC Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy, and this year earned a $1.8-million grant from Natural Resources Canada to accelerate scale-up and deployment.

Earlier this year, Arca signed an agreement with Microsoft to deliver nearly 300,000 tonnes of durable carbon removal over 10 years—one of the largest commitments of its kind. The company, which now has more than 25 employees, also completed its first full-scale mineralization demonstration project at an active mine site.

And it all started in a UBC lab.

The sabbatical that set a company in motion

Dipple first arrived at UBC in the early 1990s as an academic geologist, focused on the fundamental science of how certain mineral deposits form. UBC’s ties to the mining industry, especially through the Mineral Deposit Research Unit, quickly pulled him into applied research alongside his academic work.

In 2000, a turning point came when he spent a sabbatical at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. There, Dipple saw physicists and chemists beginning to explore carbon mineralization as a way to reduce carbon emissions. Seeing potential for earth sciences, Dipple returned to UBC and used NSERC Discovery Grant funding to launch a research program in this area.

As the science matured, Dipple decided to try creating a carbon removal startup. Together with two researchers from his lab—postdoctoral fellow Peter Scheuermann, who helped develop one of the key UBC-patented ideas now licensed to Arca, and Bethany Ladd, who brought expertise in monitoring and verification, as well as lab management—they applied to Innovation UBC, which offers entrepreneurial support for researchers looking to transform their research into successful spin-off companies.

The three moved through Innovation UBC’s venture-building process. During that time, Paul Needham (BCom’92) served as their Entrepreneur-in-Residence advisor and Sean Lowrie served as mentor. Both were so impressed by the company’s technology and values that they later joined—Needham as CEO and Lowrie as head of external affairs. The three original co-founders remain on the leadership team: Dipple as head of science, Scheuermann as head of technology, and Ladd as head of operations.

Making carbon mineralization work for people and the planet

Arca’s mission is to make carbon mineralization happen fast enough—and reliably enough—to matter for the climate and communities. Working in partnership with Indigenous groups, the company’s work is grounded in the belief that climate solutions must benefit both the planet and people, including the stewards of the lands where mining takes place.

Mines create the ideal conditions for this work. When rock is crushed to extract metals and critical minerals, a sizeable proportion—sometimes more than 99 per cent—becomes tailings, a finely ground material far more reactive than solid rock. One example is serpentinite, an ultramafic rock rich in magnesium that is often mined for nickel. Once crushed, its minerals are primed to bind with CO₂.

What Arca adds is precision. The company’s monitoring system measures CO₂ directly above tailings and matches those readings to mineral changes in the waste, creating a real-time picture of where carbon is being locked into rock and where the process needs help.

That data guides Arca’s “smart churning” technology—a way of adjusting roughness, water, and surface chemistry to boost mineralization rates by six- to ten-fold.

Arca is also developing “mineral activation” technology. Using industrial-scale microwaves—“you can crawl into them,” Dipple said—Arca can heat certain minerals so rapidly that their reactivity increases by 100 to 200 times.

Dipple described it as the “real game changer,” as this step could speed up carbon removal from thousands to millions of tonnes each year.

“As a society, we have to make CO₂ removal work at scale,” he said. “If we’re going to avoid warming way beyond the acceptable limits that we think we want to stay below—and we’re already past where we want to be—we can’t rely on one company or one technology. We need all-hands-on-deck, and we need to try everything.”

A growing ecosystem of UBC innovators tackling the climate crisis

Arca isn’t alone in looking for ways to tackle climate change and support a sustainable transition to a clean-energy future. Across UBC’s campuses, researchers and entrepreneurs are also working on solutions.

Below are some recent companies and emerging ventures from Innovation UBC: 

• Mangrove Lithium: Formed by UBC Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Dr. David Wilkinson (BASc’78) and members of his research group, including current CEO Dr. Saad Dara (BASc’10, MASc’12, PhD’20), Mangrove Lithium is scaling up technology that enables cleaner, more efficient lithium extraction and refining, and is helping strengthen Canada’s position in the critical minerals sector and the global battery supply chain. The company has raised more than $60 million and grown to 50–100 employees, with a major new commercial facility underway to demonstrate the technology at scale.
• CURA: Co-founded by recent UBC PhD grad Dr. Sabrina Scott (PhD’24) from technology developed in the lab of UBC Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering Professor Dr. Curtis Berlinguette, CURA has created an electrochemical system that splits limestone before it enters the kiln, producing usable lime and a pure stream of CO₂. This process eliminates most emissions from traditional cement production, allowing producers to cut up to 85 per cent of their carbon output using existing materials and equipment.
• Carbonyx: Co-founded by UBC graduates Dr. Douglas Pimlott (PhD’25), Dr. Mia Stankovic (PhD’25), and Adrien Noble (BASc’19), Carbonyx is developing reactor systems that convert industrial waste and atmospheric CO₂ into valuable industrial materials. The process permanently mineralizes carbon while producing high-purity outputs for industry—making carbon removal both durable and economically viable. The underlying technology originates from the Berlinguette research group at UBC.
• VulcanX: Spun out of the lab of UBC Engineering Professor Dr. Walter Merida, VulcanX is developing technology to produce cleaner “turquoise” hydrogen from natural gas. The process is cost-effective, dramatically reduces CO₂ emissions, requires virtually no water, and generates valuable solid carbon as a byproduct—offering a more sustainable alternative to conventional “grey” hydrogen production.

Learn more about how UBC people and partnerships are pushing our economy forward.