Low Carbon Ones to Watch

Innovative technologies to drive a low carbon future.

**Warning** This is a ranty one.

Intermittently I reflect on the most interesting engineering/science/technology innovations I have seen on my travels. The last time I did this was at the very end of the beforetimes, when the new decade had dawned and I was feeling mildly tech-cynical (only 10-15 years of tech bro ascension) but really quite optimistic. Ha! Well, a cold hard dose of the unremittingly negative 20s has put paid to all that. I am now deeply, deeply tech cynical, extremely mistrustful of the new establishment and very, very world weary.

How is it, for example, that so many people have poured so much time, money, effort and unnecessary CO2 into the atmosphere for the obviously technically bankrupt, pyramid scheme that is Crypto when there are such a huge range of catastrophic problems to be solved, which if solved, would deliver astronomical new levels of value and wealth to the world?

It’s not difficult to understand: We’re just encountering an unprecedented and record-breaking northern summer. This extreme weather is brought on by man-made carbon emissions (Yes – fact. Based on overwhelming evidence. Not up for debate). There are going to be more extreme weather events more frequently and they are immensely disruptive to economies i.e. extremely expensive. Halting and reversing climate change is therefore an economic imperative and solutions that support this are going to be immensely valuable. And by the way, many of these solutions when scaled and mature will be vastly more productive overall leading to greater economic prosperity. The world is rich with solutions, but all out of political will, because adopting these solutions will involve disruption. Disruption to the economic status quo, leaving unimaginative, science/engineering/technology illiterate, lily-livered politicians too scared to get on with it. Pathetic.

What should we do? Start believing we have the solutions and pressing the politicians to stop pandering to vested interests and take action. Need evidence? Here are three very unsexy technologies which deserve a whole lot more attention and celebration:

1. Carbon Cure – embedding CO2 in concrete while reducing costs

The construction industry is horrific for carbon emissions – it apparently accounts for 37% of the global total and concrete is a huge offender (by itself something like 4x as much CO2 as the entire airline industry). IMO it gets let off the hook while everyday people are nagged about driving their cars, because pale-male economic theory counts infrastructure projects as holy. But I digress from hope...

Carbon Cure systems take CO2 (which let’s assume at scale will have been sustainably extracted form the atmosphere – more on that another time) and injects it into fresh concrete. In turn, the CO2 calcifies in the concrete. This process improves the compressive strength of the concrete meaning less, costly, cement is needed.

2. Lilac Solutions – expanding the supply of lithium

We need a lot more batteries in our electric future. In the 30 odd years since lithium-ion batteries were invented, no one has come up with an alternative that comes close in terms of performance. So if we’re going to maintain a fleet of electric cars (For why, I ponder, when we have the joys of electric bikes? But once again, that little diversion is for another time) and balance out the variability of renewables we’re going to need a lot more lithium…but lithium is a rare earth metal which is hard to extract and mined in geo-politically sensitive places.

There is another way – extracting lithium from natural brine. It hasn’t been possible to do that at efficiently scale until now, but Lilac Solutions has come up with a novel ion-exchange process to efficiently and reliably extract lithium from brine at the purity levels needed and in a relatively clean fashion.

3. Hutanbio - high output marine algae for aviation fuel

I have been a big fan of the potential of marine algae (that’s seaweed and the like) for a long time and was excited to learn recently that my former colleague Nathan has been doing some secret squirrel work with a company called Hutanbio developing novel photo bio-reactor technology for growing marine algae for use as avaiation bio-fuel. Early days, but a beautiful thing. Algae grows super fast with only CO2, sunlight and marine fertilisers as input, meaning they have lots of potential as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels as well as other compromised biomass alternatives. The challenge has always been, well the sea. How can you grow and harvest seaweed at scale in floating/swirling conditions. Hutanbio, are apparently making progress through a combination of biologically engineered algae and land-based photo bio-reactors. I am keen to explore if they would bring their pilot trials to Jersey where we are very familiar with the benefits of seaweed.

PS – On the crypto front, shout out to Molly White who is absolutely superb at debunking the hype. She starts by knocking down the foundational myths of blockchain - decentralisation & immutability.