The Yale Spinout Turning Captured CO₂ Into the Fuel That Powers Global Shipping
Company: Oxylus Energy Headquartered in: New Haven, Connecticut Founded: 2023
Sector:
The Science That Started in a Yale Lab
Most climate startups talk about reducing emissions. Oxylus Energy is doing something harder: turning emissions into something valuable.
Founded in 2023 in New Haven, Connecticut, Oxylus’s founding team came to Yale from the Mountain West, where the idea — and the breakthrough technology — behind Oxylus first took shape. oxylusenergy The company’s name comes from Greek mythology: Oxylus, the demigod of the mountains and the forests, a symbol of resilience and natural balance. oxylusenergy
The science behind the company is the kind that typically sits on a shelf. In his doctoral work at Yale, co-founder and CTO Dr. Conor Rooney developed the most efficient CO₂ electrolysis to methanol, publishing more than 15 scientific articles in leading journals and authoring a patent on the topic — work that forms the foundation of Oxylus Energy’s technology. His dissertation earned the Richard Wolfgang prize for most distinguished in the Yale chemistry department. oxylusenergy
His co-founder, CEO Perry Bakas, brought the commercial side. Perry is a mechanical engineer who spent years at AES Clean Energy, where he acquired and built hundreds of megawatts of solar and battery energy storage projects, after earlier work as an investor at two climate venture capital firms. He holds an MBA from Yale School of Management and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt. oxylusenergy
The pair — a world-class electrochemist and a seasoned energy project developer — represent the exact pairing policymakers say they want to see more of: American university science being commercialized by American entrepreneurs into American companies.
The Impact: Why Methanol Matters
Oxylus builds electrolyzers that convert captured CO₂ into clean, low-carbon methanol using only renewable electricity. That sentence sounds technical. The implication isn’t.
Methanol is one of the most-produced chemicals in the world. It’s a feedstock for plastics, paints, adhesives, and countless consumer products. It’s increasingly being adopted as a marine fuel — major shipping lines are already ordering methanol-powered vessels. And it can be upgraded into sustainable aviation fuels using established conversion methods, offering a scalable pathway to aviation decarbonization. oxylusenergy
Today, virtually all of that methanol is made from fossil fuels. Oxylus’s technology offers a drop-in replacement made from captured carbon and renewable power.
What’s already on the record:
- Clean methanol offers a drop-in solution for decarbonizing shipping without retrofits or costly infrastructure overhauls oxylusenergy
- Oxylus’s technology is modular and scalable — designed for on-site industrial decarbonization rather than large centralized plants oxylusenergy
- The company won the “Best CO₂ Utilisation 2025” Innovation Award oxylusenergy
- Oxylus partnered with Element 1 Corp in early 2025 to unlock green methanol’s potential for hydrogen generation oxylusenergy
- Yale News profiled the underlying science in February 2025 under the headline “A catalytic two-step: Transforming industrial CO₂ into a renewable fuel” oxylusenergy
- Oxylus joined Third Derivative’s Industrial Innovation Cohort, hosted by RMI, focused on accelerating innovation in cement, steel, and chemicals oxylusenergy
The jobs story is early-stage but telling. [Intake placeholder: company to confirm current headcount, % of roles held by PhDs and MS-level engineers, Connecticut vs. other locations, and projected hiring over the next 24 months as the company scales from lab to pilot.]
What’s already visible is a team dense with exactly the kind of talent the U.S. needs to keep: Oxylus’s technical bench includes Ph.D.s from Yale, the University of Rochester, and Northwestern, plus engineers from MIT, NYU Tandon, and the University of Pittsburgh. Founding engineer Dr. Bo Shang trained at Jilin University in China before his Yale Ph.D. R&D Team Lead Dr. Jose Alvarez Hernandez trained at the University of Havana before his Rochester Ph.D. and Yale postdoc at CHASE, a DOE research hub. oxylusenergy
This is what a globally competitive U.S. climate tech company looks like on the inside.
The VC Partnership: The Capital That Makes Deep Tech Possible
Climate hardware doesn’t get built on a software timeline. It requires patient, specialized capital — investors who understand that a catalyst developed in 2023 might not generate commercial revenue until 2027 or 2028, and who can shepherd a company through DOE grants, pilot projects, and offtake agreements along the way.
Oxylus’s cap table reflects that reality. The board alone tells the story:
- Amy Duffuor, Azolla Ventures — co-founder and General Partner, named one of Fortune’s 2023 Top Seed Stage Climate Tech VCs to watch and recipient of the DOE’s 2024 C3E Award in Finance & Investment oxylusenergy
- Lisa Coca, Toyota Ventures Climate Fund — partner leading the firm’s climate practice, previously with Intel and GE Ventures oxylusenergy
- Dorian West, Independent Director — former Co-Founder and EVP of Engineering at Electric Hydrogen, and a former Director of Engineering at Tesla who led development from the original Roadster to the Semi oxylusenergy
- Henry Heitzer, Earth Foundry — former BCG strategy consultant with a chemistry Ph.D. from Northwestern oxylusenergy
- Konstantine Drakonakis, Connecticut Innovations — managing director of CI’s $100 million ClimateTech Fund, deployed explicitly to help Connecticut reach its decarbonization goals and create high-paying jobs in the state oxylusenergy
The Connecticut angle matters. CI’s ClimateTech Fund exists to anchor companies like Oxylus in Connecticut — and is a direct example of state-level capital working in concert with federal research funding and private venture capital to commercialize university science.