NEG8 Carbon Wins WCCUS Breakthrough Technology Award for Electrostatic Direct Air Capture
22 September 2026
NEG8 Carbon has been awarded the WCCUS Breakthrough Technology Award at the World CCUS Conference in Edinburgh which recognises the company’s work in advancing affordable and scalable Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology.
The award highlights innovations that advance carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology through scientific and technical excellence. The winning technology must also demonstrate the potential for global deployment.
The WCCUS award was presented to Dr John Breen, Chief Technology Officer, who represented the NEG8 Carbon technical team, which also includes Prof. Don MacElroy, Dr Cristina López Olmos, Seyed Mahdi Akbarimoosavi, Erik Malan and Alfred Jovin Rajan.
NEG8 Carbon received the award for its Electrostatic Direct Air Capture technology. Direct Air Capture systems remove CO₂ directly from ambient air. NEG8’s DAC approach combines low-temperature sorbent regeneration with industrial waste heat reuse. This allows heat that may otherwise be rejected by industrial facilities to be used as an energy input for the carbon removal process. The result is affordable decarbonisation and feedstock production. This creates opportunities to integrate DAC with sectors such as data centres, industrial facilities and hydrogen electrolysers. An added benefit is pure water production as a by-product: 2 litres of water for every 1 tonne of CO2 captured.
Furthermore, the captured CO₂ provides a revenue generating avenue as it can be stored and sold as carbon credits, or alternatively, it can be used in applications such as eFuels manufacturing.
NEG8 Carbon’s DAC technology has progressed to a technical readiness level that positions it for scale-up to commercial carbon dioxide removal.
About the WCCUS Awards
The WCCUS Awards recognise innovation and leadership that supports the development and deployment of carbon capture, utilisation and storage technologies that show progress towards large-scale carbon management and removal. Alongside NEG8 Carbon’s Breakthrough Technology Award, the conference also recognised Saravanan Janakiram (Aqualung Carbon Capture) and Nihal Mounir Darraj (Imperial College London) with the WCCUS Rising Leader Award.
For NEG8 Carbon, the award provides independent recognition of the progress made in developing its Electrostatic Direct Air Capture platform towards large scale deployment. As demand grows for permanent carbon removal operating at scale, the company continues to focus on reusing waste heat, reducing energy consumption and lowering the cost of capture.
About the World CCUS Conference
The World CCUS Conference (WCCUS) brings together stakeholders involved in carbon capture, utilisation and storage to discuss technical development, commercial deployment, policy and international collaboration with delegates hailing from over 50 countries.
About NEG8 Carbon
NEG8 Carbon, headquartered in Waterford, Ireland, develops economically viable and scalable Electrostatic Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology for capturing CO₂ from the atmosphere to help industries to decarbonise. The captured CO2 is used for synthetic fuel production, industrial applications and permanent storage for carbon credits. NEG8 Carbon’s approach supports both negative carbon emissions and circular carbon usage. The company was founded in 2014 as a spin out from carbon capture research conducted at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. In 2021, NEG8 Carbon developed a demonstration DAC unit and is now scaling the technology to full size.