London-based Rivan raises €11.8M to decarbonise heavy industry using synthetic fuels

London-based Rivan, a carbon utilisation company, announced that it has raised £10M (approximately €11.8M) in funding led by Plural.

Based out of Tallinn, Plural is an early-stage investment fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology.

Taavet Hinrikus, Partner at Plural, says, “Harvey embodies the entrepreneur we back at Plural: scar tissue from scaling previous businesses and the drive to positively impact GDP and the world. Rivan is manufacturing vertically integrated machines in Bermondsey and deploying them to solar-powered, off-grid sites to make carbon capture economically viable and achieve optimum costs and performance.”

Other participating investors include 20VC, NFDG (Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross), and prominent angel investors Patrick and John Collison (Stripe).

The UK company will use the funds for R&D on Rivan’s electrolyser, direct-air-capture (DAC), and Sabatier reactor modules, as well as scaling its pilot plant up to 1MW. 

Starting with synthetic natural gas (SNG), Rivan is addressing the 22 per cent of global emissions that stem from heavy industry’s reliance on natural gas for steel, cement, and chemical production.

Rivan: Decarbonising heavy industry

Founded by Harvey Hodd, a serial entrepreneur with two successful tech exits, Rivan designs and manufactures modular synthetic fuel plants to decarbonise heavy industry.

Rivan’s modular plants, powered by off-grid solar and injecting SNG into pipelines across the UK and Europe, aim to provide that solution. Its three key modules — electrolyser, DAC, and Sabatier reactor — are designed and manufactured by Rivan in the UK, accelerating cost-reduction and deployment speed. 

Synthetic fuels are chemically identical, but carbon-neutral, substitutes for fossil fuels; they can flow through today’s power and pipeline networks with no modifications.

The UK company designs and manufactures its systems at a 10,000 sq ft factory in Bermondsey, South London, and has deployed its first 100kW pilot at a decommissioned UK military base.

This system demonstrates cost-effective, grid-specification SNG production with only air and water as inputs.

Rivan is now aiming to scale the site to 1MW, while improving performance, enhancing integration, and reducing manufacturing costs, ahead of larger commercial deployments in 2026.

Harvey Hodd, founder and CEO of Rivan, says, “Capturing the 12 gigatonnes of carbon emitted every year by heavy industry is one of the defining challenges of our time. For hard-to-abate industries like steel, cement, aviation, and chemicals, neither carbon credits nor batteries paired with renewables provide a realistic solution. Until we develop cost-effective synthetic fuels from carbon captured from the air, we can’t expect the industry to decarbonise.” 

“My hope is that our technology, combined with the unbelievably talented and driven team I get to work with every day, can make that future a reality. This is particularly important in the UK and Europe — where low domestic production and limited storage have hurt the industry, and where we hope to lead by example to show that synthetic fuels can be competitive with fossil fuels to deliver long-term energy security,” adds Hodd.