An Optimist’s Guide to Climate Change: Technologies to Transform the Planet, Part 1

Climate change inspires awe. Well, not usually the good kind. In today’s discourse most discussion about climate change includes food shortages, rising sea levels and the increasing rates of natural disasters. It’s not wrong. However, an emerging part of the story that equally inspires awe has been left out. Climate technology. Technology that could not only mitigate climate change, but increase the quality of life for billions of people. So why isn’t there more noise about this? The optimistic view is that the technology is still new and in many cases unproven. A moderate would argue any good news about climate will stunt progress. A pessimist may say that doom = clicks = $. But that’s for a different post. This post aims to demystify emerging technologies and provide a much needed jolt of optimism into the climate change discourse.

There’s a lot to cover, so this deep dive into climate technology will be split up into a 5 part series:

1. Silver Bullets to climate change (this post!)
2. Energy
3. Food & Land Use
4. Industrial
5. Transportation

Specifically, what is climate change?

In pop culture (e.g. news, social media, activists etc.) climate change refers to the effects of humans burning fuels that release carbon dioxide (Co2) into the atmosphere.

The majority of Earth’s atmosphere is made up of Oxygen and Nitrogen. Both are pretty shit at retaining heat. It just so happens that the little bit of naturally occurring Co2 in the atmosphere is great at absorbing heat. Co2’s superpower is the ability to absorb heat, then reflect it out in all directions. Without Co2 in the atmosphere, the sun’s energy would radiate off the earth and there would be nothing but a frozen tundra of death and ice. So yeah, Co2 gets a bad rap.

This raises a question: If Co2 exists in the atmosphere already, how does the heat from the sun pass through the atmosphere in the first place?¹ Great question.

When heat is generated from the sun, it travels in visible light. Visible light is a scientific classification of its wavelength. Co2 doesn’t absorb visible light, so it allows it to pass through the atmosphere unperturbed.

Once the visible light heat is absorbed by the earth and reflected back out, it’s transformed from visible light to infrared light. Co2 loves infrared light. As the infrared light heat is reflected off the earth’s surface, Co2 molecules trap it in the atmosphere. This is great because it keeps us from freezing to death. But too much of a good thing….you see where this is going.

It’s a two front war on Co2 that goes something like this:

1. Burn fuels that release Co2. Gravity keeps Co2 in the atmosphere.
2. Visible-light-heat travels from the sun to the earth. Infrared-light-heat radiates off the earth back to the atmosphere. Co2 absorbs (traps) the infrared light.

The temperature increases. That’s climate change.

A Silver Bullet

Say it out loud, “There’s no silver bullet for climate chan…”. Well hold on there. Not only may there be 1 silver bullet to solve climate change; there may be 2.

1. Direct air capture

Direct air capture (DAC) refers to an industrial process of systematically removing Co2 from the atmosphere. It’s in the silver bullet section because, theoretically, you could undo all the damage from burning fossil fuels of the last 100 years. Simply put, you have giant fans that suck air in.

Source: TechCrunch 2022, Orca Diect Air Capture Plant in Iceland. Large fans are displayed across the plant for air intake which kicks off the Co2 removal process.

Once the air is in the containment system, it is passed over a physical structure with chemicals on them (sorbent). This chemical reaction removes the Co2 from the ambient air that was sucked into the containment system.

One of the benefits of this process is that there is no chemical waste. The chemical sorbent that removes the Co2 from the ambient air is left with H2O after the Co2 is removed. This means the waste byproduct from operating these plants is water. Woo hoo!

Well, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. The most popular method for removing Co2 from the ambient air requires the sorbent to be heated well over 100 degrees celsius. Sometimes it requires heat in excess of 900 degrees celsius. The cheapest way to generate this heat is with coal or natural gas. Since both coal and natural gas release Co2 into the atmosphere it would kind of defeat the point of sucking the air back in. At best you’d spend a lot of money to reach Co2 break even.

Which leads us to the cynics section of direct air capture.

Why won’t this work?

Obviously, this list is long. If it wasn’t, climate change would have been solved.

• Cost. Since heat sources generally are required to remove the Co2, you need to use a renewable energy source to power your DAC plant. This increases the costs to make it unprofitable to run. Speaking of profit…what’s the business model here?
• Business model. Unless you want to make seltzer or kill rats, Co2 isn’t super useful. This means there aren’t a lot of ways to make money outright with direct air capture. Recently, the US government set a price of $60 per ton of carbon captured, meaning the government will pay you directly for every ton captured. While this will boost research & development in the industry, investors are weary of legislative based business models which are subject to change in accordance with political cycles. It should be noted that many startups are working on a use for this CO2 waste, but it’s early days.
• Sequestration. Since Co2 isn’t useful…what do you do with it and where do you put it? Carbon Sequestration is an emerging industry that leverages oil and gas infrastructure to transfer and bury Co2 in geologic formations in the earth. This is risky, expensive work that has high CapEx and OpeX demands. Currently the cost to capture and sequester 1 ton of carbon is well over $100. That means at best, you lose $40 per ton of carbon that you capture and sequester. Thus, there are only 18 operational DAC plants in the world
• Jevons Paradox. This states that when the efficiency of a natural resource increases, so does its consumption. One of the main arguments against direct air capture is that it paves the way to continue burning fossil fuels. Hey, if we can remove the Co2, why stop burning fossil fuels?
• Value fungibility. At face value this is a good thing. No matter who removes the Co2, the value accrues globally. This is good because it means that there’s no scientific need for direct air capture distribution. If the US removes a gigaton of Co2 from the atmosphere the Chinese people get the same marginal value as the American people. You can see the economic disincentive here. Everyone accrues the marginal value for 1 country’s marginal cost. So, while the US has implemented a $60 / ton credit , it’s unclear that the government has an appetite beyond that credit to incentivize the removal scale that is needed. The most likely economic development that would make DAC feasible would be the development of a synthetic green fuel that is derived from Co2, that is cheaper than existing alternatives. Such a fuel does not yet exist…

In summary: let’s be excited but patient about the prospects of direct air capture.

2. Fusion Energy

When you hear of nuclear energy you typically think of Chernobyl, Fukishima , nuclear waste etc. That type of nuclear energy is fission, or the splitting of an atom that releases energy. The byproduct of fission reactions is radioactive isotopes e.g. nuclear waste.

Source: The independent 2022. Scientists prep a Tokamak Fusion reactor for an experiment. The Tokamak is a favored, donut shaped fusion reactor whose shape helps generate a magnetic field strong enough to contain the reaction.

Fusion is the exact opposite. It’s the process by which atoms are combined releasing a fuck ton of energy. The most famous fusion reactor is the sun. All stars generate their power via fusion and the awesome thing is that the byproduct of that energy is helium, not radioactive waste.

The promise of fusion energy is: What if we could create a clean, almost limitless supply of energy. What if we could recreate the Sun…on Earth?

Let’s go down the weird rabbit hole of how this all works.

David Byron, CFO of First Light Fusion gives a concise description of what Fusion is, “Fusion is the process of joining two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one, and the difference in mass is released as energy.” E=Mc²!

The cocktail for fusion power has 3 main ingredients:

Temperature. Fusion reactors need to be hot. Very hot. 100 million degrees Fahrenheit hot. Temperature is a measure of how fast particles move. Cold particles move slowly. Hot particles move fast. Because fusion is two particles coming together you need enough heat that the particles (a) are likely to collide (b) are moving so fast that they overcome their innate fear of touching one another (e.g. overcoming their electrostatic repulsion).

Why won’t this work?

Well it should be self evident that keeping a fusion reactor at a sustained temperature of 100 million degrees F is quite troubling. Specifically, one of the issues is that the hydrogen moves very, very fast when it’s that hot (remember, we need that to smash into each other). When the hydrogen moves that quickly, it’s hard to keep it contained. Which means if it touches the wall of the reactor, it will cool rapidly, thus decreasing the overall temperature and stopping the fusion reactions.

Particle physics have come up with some ingenious to keep this from happening, but still have a long way to go before the temperature can be sustained on in perpetuity.

Density. Fusion reactors want to use the most dense compounds possible. Since density is a measurement of the average number of particles, using a more dense compound increases the number of particles that can smash into each other, which creates more fusion reactions and thus generates more energy. Currently deuterium (H2) and tritium (H3) are the dense fuel molecules used in fusion reactions.

Why won’t this work?

Deuterium and tritium are isotopes of hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe.

The good news is Deuterium is common. About 1 out of every 5,000 hydrogen atoms in seawater is deuterium which equates to roughly ~ one gallon of seawater producing the equivalent of 300 gallons of gasoline². At current market prices 300 gallons of gasoline would be ~$1,179 compared to a gallon of seawater which costs…I mean I have no idea. Why would anyone want a gallon of seawater?

The issue is with Tritium. Oh Tritium, why must you be so difficult? Building a supply of Tritium is extremely difficult for two main reasons:

1. It has a short half life. Science speak that indicates the molecule changes very rapidly. If you have a stockpile of Tritium for a decade it will turn into Helium.
2. Effectively, Tritium does not exist on Earth. You have to mine it from the moon, or create it using chemical reactions with large amounts of Lithium (which just so happens to be extremely expensive as well).

This suite of problems has led critics of Fusion power to claim that Fusion reactors may run out of fuel before they are even invented.

It’s technically possible to use other fuels for fusion, however less dense fuels would require higher temperatures and stronger magnetic fields, that would then drive the timeline to achieving fusion out even further.

Time. Fusion reactors need to hold their conditions (temp @ 100M degrees F, Dense fuel smashing into one another) for sufficient time to generate the amount of energy promised. China recently set the world record for the longest fusion reaction at 17 minutes.

Why won’t this work?

While Fusion reactors are theoretically self-sustaining. That is, they can continuously generate fusion reactions that give an endless supply of energy a la the sun. The challenge is that current technology makes it really difficult to generate fusion reactions that persist. It currently takes a tremendous amount of fuel to sustain temperatures of 100M — 900M degrees Fahrenheit. It will also take huge advances in particle physics to contain the fusion reactions on an ongoing basis. The current approaches use magnetic fields to contain the deuterium & tritium. The Chinese reactor currently uses a magnetic field 280,000 times stronger than the Earth’s and it will take many years to find exponential improvements needed to increase the field strength.

Fusion energy will take generational breakthroughs on multiple fronts to make fusion power attainable, even on a small scale.

While saying there could be silver bullets to climate change is heresy in many circles, I think it’s important to be intellectually honest about the technology that exists and inspire people to continue these investigations. It’s okay to recognize both that there likely isn’t a silver bullet while progressing the scientific research towards finding one.

Next up; Energy. This will include power generation, distributed energy resources (DERs), hydrogen , energy storage and grid management. Stay tuned!

¹ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/02/25/carbon-dioxide-cause-global-warming/

²https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsdeuterium-tritium-fusion-reactor-fuel