He read a book about Mars. Now he's turning smokestacks into cash.
🏭 The Smokestack Is the Oil Well Now
Most people look at a smokestack and see pollution.
Natan Shahar looks at one and sees inventory.
His company, Standard Carbon, takes the CO2 pouring out of boilers, power plants, and factory chimneys — and turns it back into pipeline-grade natural gas. Then they sell that gas. Then they collect the tax credits. Then they do it again tomorrow.
It sounds like science fiction. It's actually 19th-century chemistry, a shipping container, and one of the smartest business models I've come across on the show.
This week's Invst Guru episode is a wild ride. Here's why you need to hear it.
🚀 The Mars Mission That Started It All
In 2019, New York City passed the most aggressive carbon emissions law on the planet — $268 per ton of CO2. That's three times what the EU charges. Natan's real estate clients were panicking. He told them, bluntly, to sell their buildings.
Then he picked up a book about going to Mars.
The book explained how astronauts could turn the Martian atmosphere (which is mostly CO2) into rocket fuel using a simple chemical reaction. Natan thought: if you can do this on Mars, you can definitely do it in a boiler room in Manhattan.
That single mental leap became Standard Carbon.
⚡ The Part That Made Me Sit Up Straight
Here's the kicker most people miss:
Electricity prices change every 5 minutes. And about 25% of the time, in places like New York City and California, the price is near zero — or even negative. That means utilities will pay you to take the power off their hands at 2 AM.
Standard Carbon's machines watch those prices in real time and only fire up when electricity is dirt cheap. They split water into hydrogen, mix it with the stored CO2, and out comes methane — natural gas — that gets injected straight into the pipeline.
The natural gas pipeline network? Natan calls it "the world's biggest battery." You can store fuel for months. Try doing that with a Tesla Powerwall.
💰 The Revenue Stack Is Stupid Good
This is where it gets really fun. For every unit of gas Standard Carbon produces, they monetize:
→ The fuel itself (sold at market rate) → The 45Z Clean Fuel Tax Credit (survived the OBBB) → The 45Q Carbon Capture Tax Credit (also survived) → State and municipal low-carbon fuel incentives → The environmental attributes as a clean fuel source
Oh, and they often get paid to take the CO2 off an emitter's hands. The emitter then has the option to buy the resulting clean gas back to meet their own decarbonization mandates.
It's a closed loop where everyone wins — and Standard Carbon sits in the middle collecting from all sides.
🗽 The City College Project
Standard Carbon already has a unit running at City College in Harlem. The next phase scales it up to a massive facility at the central steam plant — supplying low-carbon natural gas to buildings across NYC.
Why NYC specifically? Two reasons:
New York is firing up two new infrastructure projects this year that flood the city with cheap wind and hydro power at 2 AM
As Natan put it: "Nobody wants to fly out to see a pilot in Oklahoma. Everybody wants to fly out to see a pilot in New York City."
The marketing value of a Manhattan installation is, in his words, priceless.
📈 They're Raising on DealMaker — Reg CF
Standard Carbon is currently raising capital through a Reg CF offering on DealMaker. The capital is going toward sales, marketing, and project engineers — not the equipment itself, because their Houston-based fabrication partner already handles that.
The next milestone? Selling gas into the pipeline for actual customer revenue — within 18 months. As Natan put it: "That's when the Red Sea parts."
🔗 Review the offering: invest.standardcarbon.com
▶️ Watch the Full Interview
This is one of those rare conversations where the technology, the regulatory tailwinds, and the business model all line up — and the founder can actually explain it in plain English. Natan's a licensed engineer and a Columbia-trained environmental engineer, and he made me understand real-time electricity markets in about four minutes.
Whether you invest or not, this one will change how you look at the next smokestack you drive past.
See you next episode, Jeff "Fuzzy" Wenzel, Host, Invst Guru
Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. All investments in private offerings — including Reg CF campaigns — carry significant risk, including the potential loss of your entire principal. Always review the official offering documents on the platform and consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decision.
