The Impact Innovator | Issue 270
In this week's The Impact Innovator edition:
The economic news out of the UK has been less than encouraging ever since the nation’s weird and unprecedented withdrawal from the European Union in 2020, but finally a bright spot has appeared. Tata Motors, the leading Indian automaker company, has just announced that it will build a gigantic $5.2 billion EV battery plant in England for its iconic Jaguar Land Rover business.??The Tata news is significant on several counts. This is the company’s first EV battery gigafactory to be built outside of India, it is described as one of the largest investments ever in the UK auto industry, and it is a rare opportunity for the UK to save face after the Brexit disaster.?Until Tata made its move, the UK had exactly zero EV battery gigafactories in the pipeline, while the European Union already has?30 gigafactories , according to a count by?Reuters.
The UK is starting off with a bang. The new factory will have an initial output of 40 gigawatt-hours, which puts it in the running with some of the larger EV battery plants in Europe. The $5.2 billion (￡4 billion) investment is expected to create up to 4,000 direct new jobs, with thousands more to follow in the supply chain. The new EV battery plant will also play a leading role in the UK’s decarbonization plans. The Tata gigafactory alone is expected to account for about 50% of the battery capacity needed for the UK to meet its goals for the electric vehicle transition. The clock is ticking. As of 2030, the UK plans to ban the sale of new gasmobiles.
Octavia Carbon ?and?Cella Mineral Storage ?have agreed to build the first direct air capture plant in the southern hemisphere, using an experimental technology to remove climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The Kenyan plant, to be known as Project Hummingbird, aims to trap 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually and store it underground, the companies said in a statement on Wednesday. The gas will be injected into volcanic rocks using geothermal energy from Kenya’s Rift Valley.
There are currently 18 direct air capture plants globally, with those operating in Canada, the US and Europe, according to the?International Energy Agency . The biggest is a 4,000 ton-per-annum plant in Iceland.?Project Hummingbird plans to start operations in October next year and sell carbon credits verified by?Puro.earth , a company that assesses credits earned through “engineered carbon removal.”
It’s no secret that we need to uncover ways to make air travel more sustainable. In the U.S. alone,?air travel accounts for 10 percent ?of greenhouse gas emissions, and as?the number of flights taking off each day rises ?that percentage could go up. To combat this, aircraft builders and engine manufacturers have begun experimenting with novel ways of powering flight,?including electric motors ?and even?hydrogen-powered engines . But now, one British airline will trial the first transatlantic flight to run on something called Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).?On November 28th, a Virgin Atlantic?Boeing 787 Dreamliner ?will take off from London’s Heathrow on a flight to JFK in New York. But instead of its two Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines running on traditional jet fuel, the plane will be fueled for the entire trip on a sustainable alternative.
This will be a first for the industry, as presently airlines are only permitted to operate flights with up to 50 percent?sustainable fuels blended ?in with traditional jet fuel. For the test flight, Virgin Atlantic has partnered with Air BP and Virent, which will provide a new fuel that cuts lifecycle CO2 emissions by as much as 70 percent.?To make its SAF,?Air BP uses feedstock ?such as used cooking oil and household food waste. The waste is collected by BP, refined and turned into a fuel that can be blended with jet fuel as necessary. Because of this, it’s often called a “drop-in” fuel, which helps cut some of the emissions from air travel.?However, for the Virgin Atlantic flight, this fuel won’t be blended with traditional kerosene fuels, and will instead be used solo – albeit blended with 12 percent aromatics, which helps it meet the performance needs of the flight.
Carbon removal — technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in geological, terrestrial or ocean reservoirs—or in durable products — saw a big splash of attention last year after Stripe, Shopify, Meta, Alphabet and more collectively agreed to pump $1 billion into?funding removal startups . Today, a startup called?Isometric ?hopes to give some structure to that nascent industry. The startup, with offices in London and New York, is launching today armed with $25 million, one of the largest seed rounds this year for a climate startup.?Lowercarbon Capital and Plural are the co-investors in this round, alongside Niklas Zennstr?m (Skype’s co-founder and founder of the VC Atomico), David Helgason (founder of Unity Technologies), Ross Mason (founder of MuleSoft) and Ilkka Paananen (founder of Supercell).
Isometric will use the funding both to hire more scientists and technologists and to work on its products. Chief among them is a carbon removal registry that Isometric claims will be the first registry to issue “high-quality, long-duration” carbon removal credits. More immediately, it is today launching what it refers to as a “science platform,” which will provide a way for carbon removal companies to publish and share their data with those interested in seeing it, and for Isometric’s team itself to do more firsthand, human vetting, too.?Some of the first carbon removal startups on Isometric will include Charm Industrial (a specialist in bio-oil sequestration); Eion (focusing on rock weathering); Planetary (ocean alkalinity enhancement company), and Brilliant Planet (a microalgae burial company).
A Denver-based startup, Koloma, received $91 million in funding from Bill Gates and other investors to drill natural hydrogen in the U.S. Midwest, a venture that can ramp up the clean energy revolution.??The hydrogen startup has plans to avail incentives both from the U.S. Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, particularly the hydrogen production tax credit (PTC).??The knowledge of the existence of naturally occuring hydrogen has been around for centuries but is not well understood. With the recent revelation by Koloma, this could be about to change.??Natural hydrogen, also called gold or white hydrogen, has made headlines as a potential new renewable energy source. It differs from other types of hydrogen in that it’s a primary source of energy like fossil fuels but carbon-free.?
Koloma?believes that it can tap into a regenerating supply of underground hydrogen through a process called?serpentinization . The process breaks down iron- and magnesium-based minerals under the earth’s surface deep in the seafloor to produce hydrogen-rich fluids and other minerals.?This process of natural hydrogen production can deliver around?23 million tonnes of H2?each year, Koloma said. This amount is equal to almost a quarter of current total global hydrogen demand.?The company refers to this regenerative gas geologic hydrogen with clean and environmentally-friendly attributes. Coming from iron-rich source rocks and as a primary energy source, geologic hydrogen requires no external energy and water inputs. It also has a low carbon footprint compared to electrolysis and results in minimal surface disruption.??Koloma , founded in 2021, has been operating in stealth or secret mode but revealed itself in an interview with Forbes magazine.?The $91 million investment made Koloma the most-funded company in the space. It got the funds from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other big climate investors Energy Impact Partners, Evōk Innovations, Prelude Ventures, and Piva Capital.
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An alternative investment vehicle controlled by French insurer AXA?(AXAF.PA) ?said on Tuesday it will inject $49 million into?reforestation projects ?in Brazil led by local startup Mombak.?AXA IM Alts, which has over 185 billion euros ($208 billion) under management, will take a minority stake in the startup to help scale up operations and technology.?Mombak, which is also backed by Bain Capital, will lead projects to reforest over 10,000 hectares of degraded pastureland, generating up to 6 million carbon credits.?"We are building the largest carbon removal projects in the world," Mombak co-founder Peter Fernandez said in an interview. "The single largest opportunity that humanity has to do reforestation is in Brazil."?Mombak buys degraded land from farmers and ranchers or partners with them to replant native species in the world's largest rainforest, which has been increasingly destroyed in recent years.
That business model, ultimately generating CO2 removal credits that can be sold in carbon markets, helps Mombak shield itself from some of the risks non-governmental organizations face to reforest the Amazon, Fernandez said. Critics of?carbon offset markets , including Greenpeace, say they allow emitters to continue to release greenhouse gases. Reuters reported last month that although experts see?reforesting the Amazon ?as a promising bulwark against catastrophic climate change, the non-profits attempting it face a series of challenges including illegal land-grabbers and tight budgets. "The land purchase model gives Mombak the ability to execute on all its quality procedures and also assure the long-term permanency of the forest being created," AXA IM Alts' natural capital lead Adam Gibbon said. "But it does require capital."
The Bezos Earth Fund announced the launch of the Greening America’s Cities initiative, committing $400 million to support enhancing green spaces in underserved urban communities in the U.S.?The Bezos Earth Fund was founded in 2020, with a $10 billion philanthropic commitment from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, aimed at funding scientists, activists, NGOs and others driving solutions to fight climate change and protect nature.?The new initiative begins with $50 million allocated for urban greening efforts in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Wilmington, and Delaware, with more cities to be added through 2030. The program aims to enhance urban areas with more parks, trees and community garden. According to the fund, “greening” cities can increase local resilience to climate impacts such as extreme heat, reduce energy consumption, and improve physical and mental health.
Lauren Sánchez, Vice Chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, said: “Access to nature is deeply unequal, and the importance of green spaces to underserved communities is often overlooked and unaddressed. Green spaces make a city more beautiful, livable, healthy, and joyful, but studies show that they also lower extreme summer temperatures, reducing heat stress. They support the mental and physical health of communities and even improve students’ academic performance. This $400 million commitment will impact communities across the country, making a tangible difference people can see.”
A startup based in Texas has announced a key milestone in geothermal energy. This new technology could finally bring large-scale?geothermal energy ?to the masses. The company, Fervo Energy, successfully completed a 30-day test at its pilot plant in Nevada. The team drilled 2.3 kilometers into the Earth’s surface in order to pump water and obtain clean energy reliably.?Geothermal energy, a renewable energy source, uses the Earth's natural latent heat. Basically, the Earth has a large reserve of heat from its formation and the gradual decay of radioactive substances. The heat is stored within rocks and fluids deep inside the Earth's interior. It's an excellent source of energy to tap in to -- but this is proving to be pretty difficult. Economically, geothermal energy only makes sense in some parts of the world. A classica example?is Iceland , where the heat is close to the surface and easily accessible. This limitation, along with difficulties operating the wells, has put the brakes on geothermal energy. Currently, just about?half of one percent ?of global renewable energy production is geothermal.
This is where Fervo's new discovery comes in. The startup seeks to improve access to geothermal resources which it was previously expensive to get to, by using technology from the oil and gas industry. “We have proven that we can produce 24/7 carbon-free energy resources in new geographies across the world,” its CEO Tim Latimer said in a release.?Geothermal plants rely on identifying areas with specific rock features, such as permeability, and temperatures. They drill a vertical water injection bore on one side of this area and a steam recovery bore on the other side, hoping the water will pass through the hot rocks and emerge as steam. However, this method has often not produced enough steam or required extensive and expensive processes. To address this problem, Fervo has developed an innovative technique called “enhanced geothermal.” They use horizontal drilling techniques to create long channels through the rock. They then inject pressurized fluid to fracture the rock, creating large areas of high permeability. This offers more reliable results compared to traditional methods.
The oldest known sundial was made in Egypt over 3,000 years ago, for telling the time as the sun passed through the day’s sky. Since then, we’ve upgraded our time-telling technology significantly—but the fascination with tracking the sun remains.??Today, the sun’s power is often discussed as a means to create clean, renewable energy through solar photovoltaic and thermal cells. A?recently announced permanent artwor k in the city of Houston, Texas makes a way to celebrate sun-centered technology over the eons. Artist and architect Riccardo Mariano plans to build the world’s largest free-standing sundial which will simultaneously generate clean energy. The 100-foot-tall arch is expected to produce around 400,000 kilowatt-hours of solar electricity each year, equivalent to the demand of around 40 Texas homes.?Artist and architect Riccardo Mariano originally entered the idea, called the Arco del Tiempo (Arch of Time), in a Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) design competition for Abu Dhabi in 2019.
The arch has found its new home, however, acting as an entrance to Houston’s Second Ward community. The sculpture acts as a giant clock, as different beams of light create geometric shapes corresponding with the seasons of the year and the hours of the day on the ground and surfaces of the arch. At night, the arch will be used as a stage for concerts and other community events.??The south-facing exterior of the giant arch will be linked with solar modules, which will allow the artwork itself to offset the power demand of the nearby community arts center Talento Bilingue de Houston. Over its lifetime, LAGI states that the artwork will be able to generate over 12 million kilowatt-hours of energy, enough to “pay back” the footprint required to create the artwork and it’s materials.?This isn’t the first, or likely the last, exploration of?renewable energy as art . While some opponents to clean energy projects note the less-than-attractive appearance of solar panels or wind turbines lining the landscape, innovative projects can turn energy-generating projects into?gorgeous murals ?to?funky sculptures that double as charging stations .?
Some animals, like crocodiles and geckos, can regrow their teeth, replacing them throughout their lifetime. However, the ability to endlessly replace lost teeth has been beyond human reach for quite a while. Now, though, a team of scientists may have created a tooth-growing drug that lets us regrow teeth that we’ve lost, and it’s set to enter a?promising clinical trial ?very soon.?The trial is set to start in July 2024 and will first focus on participants with tooth agenesis, which is a genetic condition that causes the absence of teeth. The hope is that they’ll be able to regrow the teeth. They also hope to be able to make the treatment widely available to the general public in 2030. Being able to grow new teeth is a dentist’s dream come true, Katsu Takahashi, the lead researcher on the new drug, said in a statement, according to?New Atlas. “I’ve been working on this since I was a graduate student. I was confident I’d be able to make it happen,” Takahashi said.?
Researchers discovered that an antibody for uterine sensitization-associated gene-1, known as USAG-1, could stimulate the growth of teeth in mice that have tooth agenesis in an earlier study. The trick, the researchers found, was to block the interaction of this gene with others, which often block the growth of new teeth. The?original study ?was published in 2021. This new drug could indeed revolutionize how dentists work, especially to combat tooth agenesis and other related issues that lead to tooth loss or lack of tooth growth. Further, it could unlock the ability to replace lost teeth in any patient, which is something that could replace how dentists handle these cases entirely. Hopefully, we’ll see some good results from the trial and more widespread options for this kind of drug treatment for people who need or want it.