Tidal Metals a Winner of the World Economic Forum's Prestigious Sustainable Mining Challenge

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Oct 02, 2024, 08:34 ET

HAMILTON, N.J., Oct. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The World Economic Forum (WEF) – at the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings 2024 (SDIM24), its marquee Climate Week event in NYC – announced that Tidal Metals is a winner of its highly competitive Sustainable Mining Challenge. The Sustainable Mining Challenge evaluated companies from all over the world to find those breakthrough innovators who can dramatically reduce the energy consumption and environmental impact of the mining and metals lifecycle.

Tidal Metals is a deep-tech company based in New Jersey that has developed a breakthrough suite of innovations for producing magnesium from seawater and brines - no waste, no carbon emissions, and no harm to the environment. Magnesium metal produced from just seawater and electricity will create an economically competitive and unlimited amount of this critical metal needed for transportation, national security, hydrogen storage, and manufacturing other metals.

The Sustainable Mining Challenge is sponsored by the World Economic Forum's innovation platform, Uplink, with a mission to enable an innovation ecosystem to drive positive systemic change for people and planet. None of the industrial sectors responsible for more than 30% of global GHG emissions are on track to reach Net Zero by 2050. According to the IEA, 50% of the emissions reductions needed for heavy industry must come from emerging technologies, such as those being advanced by Tidal Metals.

Uplink is WEF's innovation platform with a mission to enable an innovation ecosystem to drive positive systemic change for people and the planet. Head of Growth, Partnerships and Innovation at WEF-Uplink, Sadaf Hosseini, announced the winners of Uplink’s Sustainable MiningChallenge, sponsored by Prospect Innovation, during a session focused on industrial decarbonization. Hosseini emphasized the urgency and importance of innovation by stating that none of the industrial sectors, responsible for more than 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, are on track to hit their net zero targets by 2050. According to the International Energy Agency, 50% of the emissions reductions needed for heavy industry must come from emerging technologies.

"The team at Uplink is an incredible enabler of sustainable innovation," said Earl Jones, Tidal Metals' Board Chair and DCVC Operating Partner. "Programs like the Sustainable Mining Challenge shine a light on those companies that truly have the potential to transform industries with historically harmful environmental practices through sustainable and economical innovations." DCVC led Tidal Metals' recently announced $8.5 million investment round.

The European Union, as well as the United States Departments of Energy and Defense, have all identified magnesium as one of the critical materials needed to drive the energy transition. Today, magnesium mining and refining are energy intensive and environmentally destructive and give magnesium the largest carbon intensity of all structural metals, including steel, aluminum, titanium and magnesium.

Tidal Metals' sustainable mining process eliminates the need for terrestrial mining of magnesium ore. Instead, Tidal Metals extracts magnesium from seawater, where every 100 gallons of seawater contains over a pound of magnesium. The oceans collectively represent a nearly inexhaustible magnesium supply. Tidal Metals' patented technology replaces chemical processes with more efficient and economic physical processes including filtration, crystallization, dehydration, and electrolysis. Seawater and electricity are the only inputs needed to produce metal. Nothing is added to the water, and no waste is generated. When powered by renewable electricity, Tidal Metals' magnesium will be fully decarbonized, sustainable, and virtually unlimited.

Dr. Howard Yuh, CEO of Tidal Metals, said: "We are honored to have been selected as a winner in the Sustainable Mining Challenge. We believe our technology fundamentally changes the magnesium supply-chain going forward, improving its economics while making it sustainable and decarbonized. Lightweighting is a crucial element in our global decarbonization effort, and we need to scale the production of this lightest structural metal fast enough to move the needle. We look forward to collaborating with Uplink as a Sustainable Mining Top Innovator."

About Tidal Metals
Tidal Metals, founded by three PhD scientists from MIT, Princeton, and Wisconsin, is a VC funded deep-tech company based in New Jersey that has developed a breakthrough suite of innovations for producing critical minerals and metals from seawater and brines – with no waste, no carbon emissions, and no harm to the environment. Tidal Metals' first application is producing magnesium metal from seawater using only electricity to unlock an economically competitive and unlimited supply of this critical, structural metal needed for transportation, national security, hydrogen storage, and manufacturing other metals. Visit us at www.tidalmetals.com. See our newest developments. Watch our intro video at https://youtu.be/XKdRfaBst6k.

About DCVC

DCVC is deep tech venture capital. Over more than a dozen years, the firm has backed brilliant entrepreneurs using computational approaches to solve trillion-dollar problems in the real world across a broad set of industries, especially those that haven't seen material progress in decades. With billions of dollars of assets under management, DCVC builds long-term relationships with the founders it backs. The firm has been with many of its companies from their very start — and through to their recognition by the public markets as category-defining businesses. For more information, please visit www.dcvc.com, or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter @DCVC.

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SOURCE Tidal Metals