Building Without Breaking the Planet
The aerospace engineer who spent eight years reinventing construction materials, and why stone might be the climate solution hiding in plain sight.
The aerospace engineer who spent eight years reinventing construction materials, and why stone might be the climate solution hiding in plain sight.
Steel, cement and aluminium. Three materials that built the modern world, and together account for roughly 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Despite decades of climate progress in energy and transport, the materials powering our infrastructure have remained stubbornly hard to decarbonise.
A French deep-tech company thinks it has found a way around the problem entirely.
The Question That Started Everything
Stephan Savarese is an aerospace engineer. When he turned his attention to the climate challenge in construction, he didn't ask how to make steel or cement greener. He asked a different question altogether.
If we needed to replace them, what would the ideal material actually look like?
The answer, lighter, lower in carbon, resistant to corrosion, manufacturable with low-carbon electricity, didn't exist. So Technocarbon spent eight years building it.
The result is a structural material combining stone with carbon fibre reinforcement. It's three times lighter than steel, up to 20 times lower in carbon footprint than aluminium, and fully stable in seawater. The kind of material, in other words, that coastal infrastructure has always needed but never had.
Starting Where the Problem Is Most Visible
Technocarbon's first commercial focus is a revealing choice: solar infrastructure near coastlines.
Solar panels cut emissions, but the steel structures supporting them don't. In corrosive coastal environments, installations guaranteed for 25 years have been failing in three. It's a quiet, expensive problem that nobody talks about.
Technocarbon's ultra-light structural beams solve it directly. Late last year, the team completed a large demonstrator project in the South of France, an eight-metre beam supporting solar panels with a strikingly thin architectural profile. It was connected to the grid in December. Within weeks, the first purchase orders arrived.
From Scepticism to Purchase Orders
The path here wasn't easy. Deep-tech ventures rarely are.
At one early testing session, engineers put the material on a smaller testing machine, certain it would break. The machine gave out first. Moments like that don't just validate the science, they change the conversation.
Technocarbon has now passed €100,000 in sales and is targeting €1 million in revenue this year, with 10x annual growth as adoption scales. The applications stretch well beyond solar, ports, bridges, airports, coastal buildings. With half of humanity living within 30km of the sea, the addressable market is hard to overstate.
A €2 Million Round to Accelerate What's Already Working
Having raised approximately €4 million to date, through early investors, Sowefund, BPI France and regional grants, Technocarbon is now raising a €2 million pre-Series A through the Blue Earth Ventures ecosystem.
The capital will fund expanded manufacturing, key certifications and European sales growth, laying the groundwork for a €20 million industrial production facility and a stated ambition of €200 million in annual revenue by 2030.
As Stephan sees it, the real competitive advantage isn't patents. It's being first.
Blue Earth is proud to welcome Technocarbon as a Ventures member. If you're an investor or corporate partner interested in supporting the next generation of low-carbon infrastructure, get in touch with the Blue Earth team to learn more.
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