Criticisms of rushed climate tech solutions

What people don’t get about technofixes …could fill books, yes. Unintentional consequences, the mismatch between a mechanistic paradigm and the real world, etc… But there’s something people don't get about timing. I realized it this week. Bill Baue and Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov published excellent posts about the 5 preconditions of decoupling (worth checking out!). People commented to the effect of, ‘New technologies may make decoupling possible. We don’t know the future.’ That exemplifies a common mistake. What crosses your mind when you read the word 'technology'? Smartphones, Silicon Valley, AI? I bet it wasn’t an industrial plant. People are used to seeing technology as a field of rapid advancements. But that’s not how clean technologies work at all. We can’t fix the climate crisis with software. Instead, climate technologies are ‘deep tech’, or ‘hard tech’. Tech that relies on scientific discovery or engineering innovation. That takes time. I know it, because I’m a clean tech researcher. I spent 5 years during my PhD developing a carbon capture reactor. (Yes, really...) So we’re not talking about a room full of coders in San Francisco. We’re talking about PhD students sweating away in labs for literal years to reach a breakthrough. Once they do, they will have an innovation around Technology Readiness Level 3 (in NASA’s system): an experimental proof of concept. Getting it to market is TRL 9. It requires real world validation, prototypes, a first-of-a-kind plant, setting up for commercialization... Climate technologies based on today’s knowledge will take about seven years to achieve scale (McKinsey) [1]. If we’re talking from the lab bench, it’s more like a decade. So let’s do the math together. Limiting warming to 1.5C means cutting emissions in 48% (wrt 2019) by 2030 (as per the last IPCC report). For a climate tech startup to be deploying in 2030, they would have to have started… four years ago. Technologies relevant for solving the climate crisis on time are already in development. Now, as you read this. Perhaps, centuries from now, we will be using technologies we don’t dream of today. But that won't be solving anything, that will be damage control. It’s also a huge risk to rely on them. Even if I wanted to bring my carbon capture device to market, the chances I could achieve that are slim. Deep tech is much more risky for investors. Getting funding is hard. And 90% of startups fail [2]. Now imagine this challenge in a world disturbed by climate change. And we haven’t even discussed other planetary boundaries… I’m not saying technological development is pointless. We need clean technologies. And we need to redesign them to make climate solutions into planet solutions. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be working on it. But hope is not a strategy. A strategy is working with what we have, and designing policy and interventions accordingly. We don't have time for 'what might come'.

Every week, I talk to startups in this space, which has made me think a lot about why genuine breakthroughs in climate tech, especially in electric/H2 aviation, are so elusive. We don't lack ideas. We very much lack scalable winners. A recent ICCT blog by Deniz Rhode (links in comments) lays out just how far zero-emission aircraft still have to go, with significant pain points remaining around technology and infrastructure. I had the chance to moderate a panel on this very topic at the Sustainable Skies World Summit in Farnborough, where Douglas Costa, Head of Propulsion and Systems at VÆRIDION, raised an important challenge: Does rushing to high-profile test flights help or hurt long-term progress? Take Eviation's Alice, a high-profile failure in this sector. The widely publicised nine-minute electric flight drew global attention. But at what cost? The flight burned through vast amounts of capital without solving the many hard problems that needed to be overcome. In particular: 1 - High Cost, Low Return: The test flight showcased what we already knew, that an electric plane can fly. But it didn’t move the programme meaningfully forward. 2 - Limited Technical Progress: Core challenges such as battery weight, range limitations, and infrastructure remained unresolved. 3 - Inflated Expectations: The buzz arguably created unrealistic timelines and investor pressure that ultimately backfired. Douglas made the case that electric aircraft startups should resist the pressure to go big early. Instead, progress comes from disciplined engineering, not headlines. It's the hard work in the lab and with regulators that leads to real breakthroughs, not viral PR. Some of these same themes are explored in our new book, Sustainability In The Air: Volume Two, which looks into why most climate tech startups don’t scale and what separates the winners from the rest. #ElectricAviation #SustainableSkies #ClimateTech #AviationInnovation #SustainabilityInTheAir

Carbon capture is making a comeback in the climate solution discourse, championed by the fossil fuel industry as a way to justify ongoing and even expanded extraction activities. Amidst escalating climate crises, with temperatures hitting record highs and extreme weather events becoming more common, the debate around carbon capture and geoengineering intensifies. Full article: https://lnkd.in/gbe2vZw5 Solar geoengineering, while potentially lowering temperatures, doesn't tackle the root problem or its various manifestations, such as ocean acidification. This phenomenon, exacerbated by carbon dioxide becoming carbonic acid in the oceans, severely impacts shellfish by depriving them of the carbonate ions needed for their shells. My analysis of ocean carbon drawdown solutions has left me unimpressed, particularly with ideas like Planetary Technologies's scheme of adding magnesium hydroxide to the ocean to combat acidification—a method that's not only expensive but also ineffective on a large scale. Another approach, Captura's electrochemical process, seems impractical due to the sheer volume of seawater required and the extensive energy needed just for operation, which could otherwise decarbonize the grid significantly more efficiently. The latest entrant I've become aware of, Equatic.tech, proposes a method that not only requires vast amounts of seawater but also risks depleting essential ions for shellfish, with the added complexity of needing carefully selected locations to avoid harming marine life. As always in my explorations of mechanical carbon drawdown I'm left with the same conclusion. It's vastly more effective, efficient and cost-effective to avoid emitting carbon than to try to deal with carbon emissions after the fact. #carboncapture #ocean #climateaction #economy