Last year, Cody Finke got game-changing news from the Department of Energy (DOE): his climate tech startup was in line for a $189 million grant to help build its first commercial-scale plant. The company, Brimstone, has developed a new way to make cement—one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions on the planet.

The startup also makes smelter-grade alumina, a critical mineral that the U.S. currently imports. The team spent months going through the DOE’s grueling evaluation process, from a 200-page application to a three-hour-long interview in front of a panel of 30 technical experts. After the DOE moved the project forward, months of negotiations followed. The grant was finalized in January, just before the inauguration. Then came the Trump administration.

This summer, the DOE announced that it was pulling the funding, along with grants for more than 20 other projects working on industrial decarbonization and carbon capture. Brimstone is appealing the decision, since producing critical minerals in the U.S. is a priority for Trump. But the company is also moving forward with its plans to build its plant regardless of what happens with the government funding.

“Our belief has been from the beginning that our technology has to work without subsidies,” Finke says. “And if it doesn’t work without subsidies, then it probably isn’t going to have the impact we want.”

Brimstone’s technology tackles an industry that’s notoriously hard to decarbonize. Cement production is responsible for around 8% of global CO2 emissions, or three times as much as the airline industry. That’s not just because of the energy it takes to make cement, but because of chemistry: Typical Portland cement is made by heating up limestone, and that process releases CO2........

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