Climate tech is big news and big business. But which ones actually work?
Selling the Big Idea
Right across the world, teams of inventors, businesses and entrepreneurs work tirelessly to address the problem of climate change. It's a high-risk world of unproven startups vying to emulate Elon Musk's success with Tesla. For every one that returns a profit, there are countless more that eat money, with experimental, untested, uncosted or sometimes fraudulent ideas, all trying to grab the world's attention.
On the other side, investors line up - financiers hoping to make a fortune; multi-nationals trying to greenwash their credentials; billionaire philanthropists. There's a lot of money available for anyone with a good story about how to reduce climate change.
But most dreams don't come true. Many of the biggest attention-grabbing ideas have a fatal flaw to overcome, acknowledge or hide, whether it's cost, complexity, efficiency, or simply that there are better solutions. We look at as many as we can to see if we can find the fatal flaw.
Check the Tech:
Which idea can you trust?
Clean Technologies - The flawed, the fraud and the Real McCoys
Some technologies have progressed spectacularly to exceed expectation - eg., wind, PV solar, electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, etc. Others have struggled (eg. CCS, wave & tidal power), spluttered (eg. hydrogen) and quietly disappeared (eg. supercapacitors), sometimes taking $millions from investors along the way, or even $billions from tax payers and consumers in some cases.
A big problem with all these new technologies is how to know which ideas, developers and backers stand up, and which are built on hot air and greenwash. Our media, our politicians, do they have the skill or will to find the fatal flaw in the science or economics behind the headline-grabbing claims of press releases? Sometimes even financiers and scientists might be so blinded by the possibilities of a technology that they fail to notice that there are already better solutions out there.
Don't believe the hype: Hydrogen
Hydrogen is easy to get excited about, with good reason, but it's also worse than coal at the moment. Journalists and politicians love it as a futuristic non-polluting wonder-fuel. It can be made from electricity, and turned back into electricity, with no carbon dioxide. But hydrogen today is one of the most polluting fuels around. It's not widely used, yet its production from the ‘steam reformation’ process still accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions, and electrolytic hydrogen is even worse, due to the extra fossil fuels needed to make the electricity.
Hydrogen won't work because Economics
It’s not just dirty, it’s also very expensive. Whether it’s made from methane, coal or electricity it works out costing way more than any of those. It's also very hard and expensive to contain and distribute to consumers, with high energy losses baked in. (The only possible route to clean affordable hydrogen is electrolysis that soaks up surplus renewable electricity for geological storage and reuse.)
Another problem is fuel efficiency. Hydrogen cars waste half the energy input, unlike BEVs (battery electric vehicles). Even the cars cost more, as hydrogen is hard to store and fuel cells use some of the most expensive metals on the planet (platinum, palladium, ruthenium). How are cars that cost more and use double a costlier fuel ever going to compete with BEVs? For the same reasons,
hydrogen boilers
Hydrogen made from natural gas inherently costs much more to heat with than natural gas, even before the added cost of compressing, storing and distributing the difficult gas.
1kWh of electricity is inherently cheaper than converting electricity to 0.8kWh of clean hydrogen, and then using more energy to convert, compress and distribute it. That's only the electrical cost, not including the enormous cost of all the hydrogen infrastructure
were never going to replace natural gas, when heat pumps are 3-4 times more efficient.
Bad science, naïvety and dishonesty swirls around 'green' startups
Industry Companies, media, politicians abuse it for their benefit -> erodes consensus, undermines trust, muddies the water, enables greenwashing -> Too many deceptive schemes out there.
So we look into the world of renewable tech: Which ones can you trust, and which ones are pointless, snake oil and fraud?
Generation
Which clean energy can help supply 100GW of demand?
The UK could need up to 100GW of electricity at peak times if heating and road transport are electrified, even when it's dark and there's no wind.
Wind energy - VERDICT: UK will need around
100-150GW
100 GW installed capacity is not the same as 100GW supply
Installed capacity is the maximum possible output, but output at any moment varies between 0 and 100% of this. A typical wind farm only averages about 25% of its 'installed capacity' over its lifetime. Modern offshore turbines (that reach higher into stronger winds) average nearer 45% of capacity.
installed
Wind and solar power are now the cheapest sources of electricity, making up to 60% of our supply at times, with the potential to supply all our energy needs if government chose. Despite $ multi-billion revenues and record growth in 2023, it has been a difficult year in wind. Tough market conditions have hit profits, including supply chain & costs squeezes, cost of borrowing and product reliability issues, as well as an unsustainable turbine-height arms race that supporting industries can't keep up with. But the good news is that demand growth shows little sign of slowing down.
Solar PV energy - VERDICT: UK might need up to 200GW installed
Solar, combined with offshore wind and energy storage is likely to provide most of the UK's energy. Solar is now the cheapest form of electricity available. Panel costs continue to fall steeply, even as performance improves. Solar's big weakness is that it isn't around at peak times of day or peak times of year, so it needs to work with storage, which is challenging. Another problem is the growing opposition to grid-scale solar on farmland. The UK could easily meet future demand with far less controversial solutions: over car parks, airfields, industrial estate rooftops, residential rooftops, reservoirs...
Tidal range - VERDICT: insignificant prospects
Rance Estuary tidal barrage
Opened in 1966, its power output still averages 57MW over the course of the tides, peaking at a maximum of 240MW
Photo: WikiMedia/
Fabioroques
Tidal lagoons are controversial and expensive to build, but it is a proven mature technology that can generate energy reliably and predictably for 50-100 years or more. The Swansea tidal lagoon project was estimated to cost £1.3 billion, and generate 320MW at peak flow. Nine sites have been identified around the UK, offering a total of about 7GW at tidal peaks. But the UK needs at least 100GW of electricity, so 7GW is nowhere near enough to make an impact. For that reason, we ignore tidal range in our analysis.
Tidal flow - VERDICT: insignificant prospects
Capricorn Marine Turbine circa 2016, Scotland
Photo: WikiMedia/
GreenWikiGuys
Turbines submerged in strong tidal currents around UK headlands to capture the power of moving water. However, at 5x the cost of wind turbines, higher maintenance costs and fewer suitable locations, these are unlikely to be pumping significant power into the grid anytime soon, or maybe ever.
Wave power - VERDICT: too much machinery for not enough power
Wave projects have been bobbing around for over 20 years with very little real progress. Whilst nobody has really demonstrated an economically viable or even promising technology, perhaps there would also be an issue with area of ocean required to harvest useful amounts of energy, and the amount of hardware spread out over that area.
Geothermal (Deep geothermal) - VERDICT: currently more suited to volcanic regions
Geothermal wellheads in New Zealand
Photo: WikiMedia/
Rjglewis
This taps into the heat of volcanoes to heat water to steam, which drives turbines to make electricity. This could be incredibly useful for countries with accessible resources, such as Italy, Indonesia, USA, Iceland and numerous others. However, drilling down through volcanic rocks is much harder and costlier than drilling for oil, and the energy return may not pay off, at least in the UK.
Geothermal (Shallow geothermal) - VERDICT: untapped resource with great potential
This makes use of natural warmth at shallower depths (<2km), typically in sedimentary rocks that are more accessible than volcanic base layers. Warmth can be as much as 200C, not hot enough to drive a turbine, but more than enough for district heating. Shallow geothermal could be a key plank to the UK's net zero strategy that remains under-explored to date. However, district heating has a poor reputation in the UK at the moment, as unregulated private companies run 14,000 (fossil-fuel powered) schemes across the UK, serving half a million households, often vulnerable tenants in local authority housing. Most work well, but when things go wrong, homes can be locked into overpriced heating that doesn't work or they can't afford, with no option to escape.
Geothermal (Shallow geothermal with heat pumps) - VERDICT: untapped resource with great potential
Natural warmth at shallow, easily accessible depths can be used to make industrial-scale heat pumps much more efficient, particularly for district heating. An examples could be Chipping Community Energy.
Electricity from traffic - VERDICT: misleading claims sensationalised by lazy journalists
A view along the very busy M1 towards junction 21 near Leicester.
Photo: WikiMedia/
Mat Fascione
Every so often, you might read an
article
about how some researchers have created a device to harvest energy from passing cars or by driving over. As this takes energy from the cars (eg via air turbulence), it is not free energy, and is unhelpful in the context of reducing carbon emissions. It could, however, have applications for traffic control tech.
Wearables - VERDICT: misleading claims sensationalised by lazy journalists
Similar to drive-over, these take their energy from the wearer. The energy harvested is minuscule, although it could have applications for wearable tech, or possibly medical devices.
Reflective solar - VERDICT: Obsolete. Superseded by solar PV
Reflective solar plant in Nevada USA
Photo: WikiMedia/
BLM Nevada
This uses mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays onto water pipes, or onto a tower containing molten salt. The future looked bright for reflective solar in the 2000s, with 7GW installed around the world, particularly in Spain and the US. But then the cost of solar PV panels came down twenty-fold, all but killing off this technology.
Solar updraft towers - VERDICT: Obsolete. Trivial energy output eclipsed by solar PV
Solar Chimney at Manzanares, Spain, 1982, seen from 8 miles away
Photo: WikiMedia/
Widakora
The most famous attempt to develop this technology was at Manzanares in Spain, in 1981. It had a 195m-tall chimney and covered a circular area 244m in diameter, equivalent to five football pitches, to produce only 50kW of electricity (equivalent to the power output of just one large domestic boiler). However, some supporters maintain that 200MW is achievable with a 1km tall tower, and greenhouse area 7km in diameter. By comparison, the same area covered in solar panels could generate (*up to*) 5.7GW.
Table comparing different generation technologies
Type- installed capacity - potential capacity - cost per MWh - cost per MW - strengths - weaknesses
Storage
Pumped Storage Hydro - VERDICT: Much cheaper than batteries... for now
Upper reservoir at Dinorwig power station in Snowdonia, Wales
One problem with pumped storage in the UK is that all our mountains are in national parks
Photo: WikiMedia/
Meirion
Proven, very cost effective, potential high capacity, but controversial and not suited to longer-term storage. Pumped storage has been extremely effective since the 1950s at storing excess energy to boost the grid supply during peak hours each day. It can be cheaper than firing up power stations to meet peak demand, but can typically only hold a few hours of supply before it needs 'recharging'. Drawbacks include (1) large reservoirs required at the top of mountains, areas generally seen as beauty spots unsuited to industrialisation; (2) Cost: large reservoirs are extremely expensive, so pumped hydro is only affordable for daily use, not long term storage between the seasons of the year; (3) Typically stores 2-3 hours of energy - a reservoir to store 2 weeks of energy would have to be 150 times bigger/more expensive, and the grid would need many more of them to prop up 100 GW of demand.
Batteries - VERDICT: Could potentially solve the storage problem if prices fall enough
Lithium-ion batteries are proven to work well, but far too expensive to deploy at really large scale, and not suitable for more than about
four hours
Batteries are only affordable for short-duration uses, typically 4-6 hours
Lithium-ion batteries are very costly in relation to the amount of energy they can hold, and its value. Even if lithium ion batteries cost less than £100 /kWh, it could cost £1,000 to store as much energy as a £1.50 litre of petrol. But if you use it every day, and the electricity only costs £0.20, the battery can eventually pay for itself.
Contrast £100/ kWh for batteries to hydrogen proposed for long-term storage. The £2billion Rough Gas storage facility will store 10 TWh of hydrogen, which is only £0.20/kWh of storage capacity, so storing huge amounts is cheap, even if making the hydrogen isn't.
of power. That, however, hasn't stopped some energy investors from doing so anyway, primarily for load shifting and arbitrage where the economics can add up. Other battery technologies - Form Energy's iron-air; ESS's iron-flow, and many others - promise to be much cheaper. Breakthrough announcements came thick and fast in 2022 and 23, from all around the world, in other technologies such as lithium-sulphur, sodium-ion, next-generation lithium-ion, liquid metal, and many more. Expect batteries to play a major role in energy storage.
Heat Batteries - VERDICT: Lots of potential, depends upon cost and convenience
Night storage heaters are nothing new, but heat batteries aim to store much more cheap energy to use later. Many groups working on domestic- and industrial-scale projects, often using sand, water or bricks. Whilst it's proven technology for load shifting (from night to day), warmth still leaks out of the battery, making it hard to store energy over long periods such as between seasons. Solution such as phase change materials or thermochemical changes could potentially eliminate the problem of leakage, but the path to a commercially viable system is far from clear at the moment.
Hydrogen - VERDICT 1: Highly polluting production, big inefficiencies, high costs
Hydrogen - VERDICT 2: The only viable way to store energy between the seasons
Hydrogen can be produced from electricity and water, stored in underground gas reservoirs, and burned in air to make water and energy. The industry is in its infancy, but expect hydrogen to be the best way to store massive amounts of surplus electricity in the summer, to produce electricity in the winter. Hydrogen cars however, hydrogen trains, hydrogen boilers in homes etc... no amount of investment and research will make these competitive with their electrical equivalents because the energy equations just don't add up.
'White' hydrogen - VERDICT: a potential game changer, but not yet proven
Naturally occurring hydrogen constantly produced by geological processes deep within the earth could potentially supply more hydrogen than we could ever need, if only we can get it out and channel it to useful work. So why isn't this big news? A few excited articles have reported the successes of a discovery in
Mali where 30 wells provide enough hydrogen to "provide electricity for the village" and make plans to export hydrogen to Germany. Other discoveries in Australia, the USA and Spain have helped raise hopes that there may be hydrogen all over the world. The biggest of all is in Lorraine, France, estimated to contain up to 250 million tonnes of hydrogen. The many challenges include proving that the hydrogen is recoverable, economically viable, and able to get to locations where it can be useful. Hydrogen only contains 30% of the energy of Natural Gas by volume, so already, hydrogen wells could be three times as costly as conventional gas wells.
Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) - VERDICT: Too expensive and inefficient at the moment
If LAES can overcome the energy losses associated with compression and decompression, and safely scale up to use geological storage instead of air tanks, costs might drop to a level where it starts to become competitive. UK startup
Highview Power claims a round-trip efficiency of 70%, but
55% seems more realistic.
Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) - VERDICT: Too expensive and inefficient at the moment
Faces same issues as LAES. Canadian startup Hydrostor self-report a round trip efficiency of 60%.
Flywheel storage - VERDICT: not enough energy stored
Flywheels are best at delivering short intense bursts of power, but power quickly drains the stored energy
Supercapacitors - VERDICT: not enough energy stored
Capacitors can store large charges that could deliver a massive shock in an instant. Well suited to massive pulse of energy, but not for any sustained period of time.
Sunvolt's 10,000 farad
supercapacitor could deliver (10,000 x voltage x voltage)/3600 watt-hours, or V2/360 kWh... but this is meaningless if it can only handle a few volts.
Gravity storage - VERDICT: Inefficient, too much machinery, not enough energy stored
This seems to make sense, but cost will be the fatal flaw. The principle is the same as pumped storage hydro, except this relies on loading and unloading 10,000 tonnes of sand onto trucks EVERY MINUTE to generate 100MW of electricity (from a 600m shaft), then doing the same in reverse to 're-charge' it. Compare this to pumped hydro storage where 10,000 tons of water just flows between the high and low reservoirs, and the fatal flaw is obvious. Also, mines are incredibly unstable structures, needing constant maintenance to overcome the relentless downward movement of the ground above.
Biofuels - VERDICT: Not sustainable
The problem with biofuels is that growing the feedstock takes large tracts of precious land out of food production. As demand for soybeans and palm oil continue to prove, this accelerates the destruction of virgin rainforest for new agricultural land.
Biomass (wood fuel pellets) - VERDICT: Environmental vandalism
See here for more details of the damage and harm of 'biomass'.
Biogas (anaerobic digesters) - VERDICT: Feeding biomass to microbes wastes most of its energy
Biogas produced by fermenting farm products. One tonne of maize silage can produce 200m3 of biogas (a mixture of methane and CO2, or 1 hectare of arable land can produce 2kW of electric power plus 2kW of heat by this process. For comparison, 1 hectare could accommodate 2,000kW of solar panels.
Biogas (landfill) - VERDICT: Trivial in scale, but could help cut harmful methane emissions
Impure waste gases collected from landfill sites. Similar to anaerobic digesters.
Biogas (thermal gasification) - VERDICT: Wasteful; environmental vandalism
Woody biomass cooked up to 800℃ to turn it into 'syngas', which can then be processed and purified to produce methane. This is obviously an energy intensive process, so the resulting gas contains only a fraction of the energy originally present in the wood.
eFuels - VERDICT: Might be the only option for jet air travel
eFuels are basically synthetic petroleum products, made from hydrogen and CO2. The problems with eFuels are (1) the energy that goes into making them is much greater than what comes out of them, and (2), petrol engines waste over 75% of energy in the fuel, compared to only about 25% energy loss for electric cars.
Other fuels: Ammonia - VERDICT: possible alternative to hydrogen
Produced from hydrogen, ammonia is much easier to store and transport, but has the disadvantages of being highly corrosive, toxic, and may produce highly polluting nitrous oxides when used as a fuel. Could potentially decarbonise shipping (in 30 years' time) and enable hydrogen exports
Removing CO2
Cleaning - 'negative emissions' technology
Planting trees - VERDICT: A leading form of greenwash, and poorly-planned schemes don't work
Many caveats, to check & confirm: some conifer plantations exacerbate emissions they were supposed to curtail; Plantations and ill-thought-out planting schemes
don't necessarily work
;
New understanding of forest ecosystems reveals complexity of interdependence between trees, fungi and other organisms ('wood-wide web') that helps explain why plantations can be less efficient.
Mangrove swamps & sea grasses - VERDICT: Little-known opportunities to store carbon naturally
Vast stores of carbon that could be nurtured instead of destroyed (by prawn cultivation etc)
Soil conservation - VERDICT: Could have major influence on atmospheric carbon
Soil contains many times the amount of carbon as stored in the world's rain forests, so it is vitally important to conserve it. Peatlands are especially vulnerable, and the UK still hasn't banned peat for some reason.
Biochar production and burial - VERDICT: insignificant carbon sequestration, but may benefit soil
This is basically putting coal back into the ground. Whilst it might help fertilise soil, putting enough back to offset the amount of coal mined is ... let's say 'unrealistic'.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) - VERDICT: Deceitful, fig-leaf for fossil fuels
US government invested $ Billions in CCS over the last 25 years, paid to polluters to enable them to continue their operations. The results have been profoundly unimpressive, failing to capture up to 50% of emissions, costing an extra 25% in fuel, plus massive costs. More details here.
'Direct Air Capture' (DAC) - VERDICT: Either deluded or fraudulent. Great for greenwash!
Makes great headlines and attracts many $millions from big investors, but does it live up to the hype? The physics, chemistry, economics and geology of capturing a useful amount of CO2 look extremely dubious. Their pilot only stores a puny 4000 tonnes CO2/yr (equivalent to 4 long-haul flights), seems shockingly expensive at well over $1,000/ tonne, inefficient, very difficult to scale, energy intensive, and over-engineered. Any design that involves electric fans to suck the sky in looks like a hoax, but Climeworks attracted over $100 million in investment even before Microsoft backed it, and a further $600 million since, from big name investment funds. Is the false promise of removing CO2 worth more than actually dealing with emissions?
More plausibly, at Squamish, Louisiana, Carbon Engineering started building
'the world's largest'
DAC facility in 2022. Originally backed by Occidental, Chevron, BHP and Bill Gates, the Stratos plant proposes well-established caustic potash and quicklime method to absorb 500,000 tonnes of CO2 from the air each year. It will 'bury' the carbon in local oil fields at a cost of $91 to $232 per tonne. This effectively sets a price for cleaning up CO2 from petrol burned at $0.21 to $0.53 per litre of petrol. New owners Occidental Petroleum plan to begin commercial operations in 2025.
Geoengineering - Surface-based brightening - VERDICT: Harmless at worst
Using light surfaces to reflect heat back out to space is widely considered ineffective, but ice-melt has the opposite effect, allowing the land to absorb more heat.
Geoengineering - Ocean seeding with iron - VERDICT: Highly dangerous for all life
The idea of taking on nature like this reminds me of Chairman Mao's campaign to kill birds because they were eating the crops. The terrible famine that ensued was caused by the plague of insects that could thrive in the absence of birds. Geo-engineers don't understand the delicate balances of the earth's fragile ecosystems enough to risk the mass destruction that their actions could cause. Nobody does.
Geoengineering - cloud seeding with SO2 - VERDICT: Possibly worse than ocean seeding
(stratospheric aerosol injection, cirrus cloud thinning, marine sky brightening etc).
Geoengineering - space mirrors and more dangerous Geo-engineering ideas - VERDICT: Reckless
Dangerous ideas in this 2018 paper
Transport
Biofuels - see above under 'energy storage'
eFuels - see above under 'energy storage'
Hydrogen vehicles - VERDICT: Destined to fail due to cost and inefficiencies
Wind-powered boats - VERDICT: nice idea, but clearly not working
Could flying sails help power ships?
Photo: WikiMedia/
Yves Parlier
In 2007, German company Skysails hit the news with their kite system that promised to cut fuel consumption from maritime transport. But where are the kites today? The company continues to operate, but bemoans ship owners' disinterest in saving '$1,000-1500 per day' in fuel. Skysails' website is rich with flashy graphics and videos, but provides very little real-world hard data and evidence to back up its vague claims.
Electric aircraft - VERDICT: Not suitable for long haul
Small electric aircraft are already available and gaining in popularity, with hopes of commercial electric short-haul flights in not-too-distant future decades. But commercial passenger flights present two big challenges. Firstly, energy density: batteries are heavy; and secondly: propeller planes are too slow for longer haul. Lithium-sulphur batteries might promise much higher energy density than lithium-ion, but to date, manufacturers trying to make them a reliable commercial reality tend to go bankrupt. The world's fastest electric plane
Hydrogen aircraft - VERDICT: eFuels are much simpler
In principle, jet turbines could equally work on hydrogen as they do on kerosene, but almost a century of engineering has gone into tailoring them to jet fuel, which has very different properties to hydrogen. But most turbine manufacturers are testing hydrogen versions of their products, from electricity generation turbines to aircraft jet engines. Hydrogen is the most promising solution to the long-haul flight problem, but faces many hurdles... not least with memories of previous ill-fated attempts at hydrogen aircraft: the Hindenburg and other hydrogen airships, still etched into the public imagination. Which takes us nicely on to...
Airships - VERDICT: Exciting possibilities for off-road cargo?
The "Flying Bum" hopes to revive travel by airship
Photo: WikiMedia/
Philbobagshot
British startup 'Hybrid Air Vehicles' famously crashed their 'flying bum' airship on its maiden voyage in 2016, but fair play to them, after the laughter died down, they didn't give up. They continued to dream, but now without the media fanfare, and in 2022 attracted something like an order for 10 aircraft to carry 100 passengers on short-haul routes. Could it really happen? As of 2024, they have orders to go into full production in 2025, but there are a slew of other players hot on their heels, including LTA research (backed by Google co-founder Sergey Bryn). Maximum speed 100 kmh is not going to challenge the jumbo jet, but it might start to get interesting for carrying cargo. Could this be a new way to carry wind turbine blades?
All of these seem to be self-powered, but another possibility is that unpowered blimps could lift loads that could then be towed from the ground below, greatly reducing the need for building roads.
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Non-CO2 greenhouse gases
Methane & hydrocarbons, refrigerants, nitrous oxides, SO2
Reducing methane emissions by adding algae to cattle feed
Reducing methane leaks from industry
Refrigerants in air conditioning and heat pumps
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Non-CO2 greenhouse gases
Methane & hydrocarbons, refrigerants, nitrous oxides, SO2
Need an introductory para on non-carbon emissions that puts them in perspective, with a chart possibly in the side-window
Reducing methane leaks from energy industry - VERDICT: urgent action required
Methane leaks from many points during extraction and transport. LNG is especially leaky , as only 1/3 of the extracted methane reaches the end user.
Photo: WikiMedia/
Gordon Leggett
Methane is the world's fastest growing source of greenhouse gasses. Its greenhouse potency is 80 times worse than carbon dioxide. About 35% of manmade methane emissions come from agriculture (see below), but a further 33% comes from fossil fuel extraction processes. Oil accounts for 13%, mostly from flares that fail to burn properly; Coal mines seep a further 10% that could be prevented; and gas extraction and transport leaks a further 7% from well to end-user.
Reducing methane emissions from cows - VERDICT: essential to reduce these emissions
Hey cows, we're going to feed you sea weed...
Photo: Electric Shock
Dairy farming is a major source of methane emissions which contribute significantly to global warming. The problem is that cows' diet and digestive systems produce large amounts methane. World beef consumption continues to rise fast, so it's unlikely that the world's population will be persuaded to slash their meat intake any time soon. One possible solution is to create additives for cattle feed that reduce methane production, some of which are derived from algae. However, these don't address the harm caused by deforestation to make way for cattle ranches, and the massive carbon emissions that result.
Reducing methane emissions from rice farming - VERDICT: essential to reduce these emissions
Flooded paddy fields are a major methane source, but farming practices are changing to address the issue
Photo: WikiMedia/
VU HUNG
Traditional rice cultivation uses flooded paddy fields that cause 20% of agricultural methane emissions. Mid-season draining, water management and changed fertiliser practices have potential to slash emissions by 50%. But the news isn't all bad - many rice-growing areas are already implementing the necessary changes.
in many rice-growing areas.
Refrigerants in air conditioning and heat pumps
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Wasted billions
Ideas that don't add up
How a green startup can make millions from a terrible idea
How can green startups thrive on a fatally flawed idea? The technology could be ineffective, implausible, costly, or maybe or less effective that existing alternatives. Many are ineffective, typified by Climeworks, whose 'Direct Air Capture' plant only removes 4000 tonnes of CO2 per year, despite raising hundreds of millions from wealthy backers including Bill Gates. An example is 'Energy Vault's system of cranes lifting concrete blocks that overlooks the existence of the thriving industry of pumped hydro storage that beats it on every level.
How do these companies persuade prestigious blue-chip investors to put big money and big names behind stupid ideas, and what's in it for the investors? High profile institutions and individuals that want to be seen to be doing something about their carbon emissions will pay handsomely to anyone that can offset polluting activities. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work, so long as it sounds as if it should, and everyone looks like they're doing their best. Presumably everyone involved is intelligent enough to know full well that it's just a big lie, but nobody cares because both sides benefit, and anyone that calls it out is just a climate activist who nobody listens to anyway.
Maverick companies - there's a myriad of opportunists and idealists out there, capturing the public imagination with outlandish schemes. They might raise many $millions for idealistic sounding schemes to develop obscure technologies, often shrouded in buzzwords, incomplete disclosure, or overlooking fatal flaws. Beware of any scheme backed by sophisticated graphics and optimistic videos rather than hard data and a self-critical roadmap to overcome the problems that lie ahead. Then again, maybe this is where Tesla started off.
Some maverick companies
Skysails ... great idea, but where is the data to back it up?
Climeworks ... raised $170 million, a pilot plant that claims to capture a paltry 4000 tonnes CO2 per year and depends upon the unique geology of Iceland, but is it really scaleable to deal with emissions a billion times that?
Energy Vault ... Similar concept to pumped storage hydro, but much less efficient or effective. How did this idea ever get hundreds of millions in financial backing from serious multinationals? Cemex & Saudi Aramco may be after the greenwash, but Softbank, Prime Mover's Lab?
text
From my other notes
In the late 1990s, as the climate crisis first came to the mainstream, there were no clear solutions. The oil industry came up with its promise to capture CO2 (carbon capture and storage, or CCS, which we are still waiting for), whilst other sectors looked to cleaner fuels (nuclear, gas, hydrogen or electricity). Wind, solar PV, electric vehicles, batteries, barely existed at the time, too small and expensive for anyone except rich off-grid idealists. (That eccentric image problem has arguably helped draw the lines in culture wars.) Other alternatives included hydroelectricity, wave and tidal power, and at the extremities, geo-engineering, Stirling engines, solar towers...
So why did a few disruptors progress spectacularly whilst the favourites and others fell away, sometimes taking $millions from investors along the way (or even $billions from tax payers and consumers in some cases)?
So how should we decide which technologies to back? How can we tell the difference between the unicorns, the distracters and the fraudsters? Which ideas, developers and backers stand up, and which are built on hot air and greenwash? Do our media and our politicians have the skill or will to find the fatal flaw in the science or economics behind the headline-grabbing claims of press releases? Sometimes the dazzling possibilities of a technology can blind even financiers or scientists to the reality that there are already better solutions out there.
The question is "Why have UK government, media, the science community and economists failed to address this problem?" It could be where a 'can-do' attitude collides with a fatal flaw that falls across different disciplines, such as science and economics. Scientists designing better electrolysers and fuel cells might not see the economics, whilst economists might not see that the energy equations don't add up. Politicians are only as good as the people they listen to (who often have other interests, such as continuing lucrative business as usual), and media writers are usually journalists, not scientists and economists. So it's easy to see how poor ideas could gather traction.
Does our media have the skill or will to find the fatal flaw in the science or economics? and greenwashing behind the headline-grabbing claims in press releases?
Which technologies can we really trust to get us to net zero, fast?
At the fraudulent end of the scale, countless opportunists or misguided idealists raise funds for idealistic sounding schemes to develop obscure technologies, often shrouded in buzzwords, incomplete disclosure, or overlooking fatal flaws. Beware of any scheme backed by sophisticated graphics and optimistic videos rather than hard data and a self-critical roadmap to overcome the problems that lie ahead.
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