The Impact Innovator | Issue 287
In this week's The Impact Innovator edition:
The US and the European Union are leading a global push for the United Nations’ climate talks to endorse the tripling of renewables and doubling of energy savings by the end of the decade.?More than 60 countries are backing the targets to be included in the outcome of the UN’s forthcoming?COP28 talks ?in Dubai, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Leaders from those nations are planning to join a call for action at a Dec. 2 meeting during the conference, they said.?The pledge is also promoted by the United Arab Emirates, the host of the climate talks running from Nov. 30 to Dec 12. Its objective would help keep global warming from rising by 1.5C, a critical threshold, according to the International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency.?
COP28 is due to set the direction for how to fight climate change over the rest of the decade, but there’s still a deep divide between developing and developed countries over how to cut greenhouse gas emissions and, more importantly, who should pay for the transition to greener energy.?The push to triple renewable sources like wind and solar is supported by countries including Australia, Zambia, South Africa, Japan and Singapore. However, its fate will largely depend on China and India, which so far haven’t signaled endorsement. Decisions at the UN talks need unanimous backing from more than 190 countries.
The Michigan Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a bundle of clean energy bills, transforming a state at the center of industrial America into a leader in the fight against climate change.?The legislation, which passed both chambers of the Statehouse with narrow Democratic majorities, represents a turnaround for a state that had long blocked policies to curb pollution from the factories that have underpinned its economy for generations.?It is based on a 58-page “MI Healthy Climate” plan proposed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat with a growing national profile who has promoted progressive measures on labor, gay rights, guns and the environment.?The centerpiece of the new climate package, which Governor Whitmer is expected to sign into law later this month, would require the state to generate all of its electricity from wind, solar and other carbon-free sources by 2040, eliminating the climate-warming pollution generated by coal and gas-fired power plants.
The legislation would also tighten energy efficiency requirements for electric utilities, allow more residents to enroll in a rooftop solar energy program and streamline permits for new wind and solar power. Support for the legislation, which once would have been unthinkable in such an industrialized state, has grown as?Michigan has experienced the economic toll of climate change , Governor Whitmer said. She pointed to increased flooding in Detroit, the spread of toxic algae in the Great Lakes and the decline of the state’s cherry and other fruit crops.?In 2022, coal and natural gas each supplied roughly a third of Michigan’s electricity, while nuclear power generated 22 percent, according to?data compiled by the Energy Information Administration .
Activity is heating up in space, and that means the demand for larger, more powerful space solar arrays is heating up, too. The challenge is to balance costs against power. Lifespan factors in, too. NASA has been scouting for companies that can deliver the most bang for the buck, and the Arizona startup Solestial is in the running with new ultra thin solar panels that can repair themselves in space. Solestial cites “sustained, scaled activity on the Moon, Mars and possibly other bodies as well” among the factors driving the demand for new, more powerful solar arrays in space.?Solestial already has a spot on the NASA radar, having garnered previous contracts from the National Science Foundation and the US Air Force as well as the space agency. Apparently NASA liked what it saw. In January of 2023, the agency awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research contract of $149,987 to refine its new space solar panels.?In the latest development, Solestial won a $849,954 Phase II contract from NASA for its project titled, “Next Generation?Silicon Based Solar Arrays for Space Stations ?and Other Permanent Space Infrastructure.”
Solestial is aiming to fill the rising demand for solar panels that can withstand the harsh conditions in space while also providing a less costly alternative to the?“extravagantly expensive” photovoltaic technology ?used in space applications for the past 60 years. Solestial estimates that filling the demand for new satellites, space stations, and space missions will require an increase in solar capacity of 3 to 4 orders of magnitude over current levels. “This is a huge opportunity, but also a huge challenge as we’re entering a completely different environment than the one in which current space solar solutions evolved,” Solestial notes. The company also aims to prove that innovative startups can leverage new technology to gain a foothold in the space solar market, which until now has been dominated by governments and big multinational firms.
BlackRock is set to invest $550mn into the world’s biggest direct air capture project, which is being developed by Occidental Petroleum, in a sign of growing investor confidence in the nascent technology.? The companies said on Tuesday they would form a joint venture to develop Stratos, a project under construction in west Texas that aims to extract carbon emissions from the atmosphere. “This joint venture demonstrates that direct air capture is becoming an investable technology and BlackRock’s commitment in Stratos underscores its importance and potential for the world,” said Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental, one of the biggest US oil companies. It is one of the biggest-ever investments in the technology and a boon for Occidental, whose largest shareholder is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The company is betting that carbon management will come to play a significant role in global decarbonisation efforts.?Direct air capture — or DAC — sucks CO? emissions out of the air to be buried underground or reused in building materials, agricultural products or fuels, rather than contribute to global warming by lingering in the atmosphere.
The International Energy Agency has said the technology will play “an important and growing role” in setting the world on course to achieving net zero goals as economies continue to burn fossil fuels. But it is not proven at scale, and some environmentalists worry it will slow the transition to cleaner forms of energy. BlackRock is investing through its fourth global infrastructure fund, which focuses on climate-related projects including those that help brown industries become greener.
French-Dutch airline AirFrance-KLM?AIRF.PA ?has made a $4.7 million investment in DG Fuels' Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) production plant in the U.S. state of Louisiana, a step towards its 10% SAF incorportation target for 2030. "Air France-KLM acquired an option to purchase up to 25 million gallons / 75,000 tons of SAF annually over a multi-year period beginning in 2029," the group said in a press release on Friday.
Sustainable aviation fuels, which use waste such as cooking oils and have either net-zero CO2 emissions or lower CO2 emissions than kerosene, a fossil fuel, are seen as an option to curb air travel's carbon footprint. The European Union has?adopted rules?requiring flights departing from EU airports to carry a progressively increasing amount of SAF, starting from 2% of total fuel in 2025.
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Princeton NuEnergy , a clean- tech innovator specializing in recycling, repurposing, and commercializing lithium-ion battery materials, is pleased to announce the initial?closing of its Series A funding round, raising?$16 million. The round was led by?Wistron Corporation?(TPE: 3231), a Fortune Global 500 member and industry leader in electronics recycling services. Additionally, new institutional investors participated in this round, including?Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (NYSE: HMC), GS Futures, and Traxys North America, joining previous investors Greenland Technologies, Shell Ventures, and WorldQuant Ventures, among others. PNE will use the proceeds for new recycling facility construction and equipment procurement to further increase processing capacity and support company operations.
PNE’s flagship innovation is a low-temperature plasma-assisted separation process (LPAS?), a patented technology that significantly reduces costs, environmental waste, and carbon emissions commonly associated with lithium-ion battery recycling. PNE’s approach enables higher critical material recovery rates and superior material performance compared with traditional recycling methodologies.?In addition to the?$16 million?Series A and previous seed rounds totaling?$7 million, PNE has been awarded multiple research grants for battery recycling from the U.S. Department of Energy, most recently for?$12 million?and?$4.375 million. The Series A funding will fortify PNE’s commitments to reducing the nation’s reliance on foreign critical materials, expanding domestic manufacturing capabilities, and enhancing the creation of high-quality clean energy jobs in the U.S.
Every annual meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) brings a chorus of scorekeeping. Did the so-called Conference of the Parties (or COP) live up to expectations? Did negotiators and other stakeholders create a new sense of momentum for avoiding or minimizing anthropogenic climate change? The impulse to grade each COP naturally reflects the global community’s hopes for climate solutions. But real breakthroughs are hard when 198 negotiating parties gather, each with distinct circumstances, politics, and opportunities that are sometimes in conflict with one another.
Disappointment often results. But COP28 in Dubai could be different in regard to the important topic of climate finance, as the authors discuss in this Q&A.?
Why Is Climate Finance an Important Topic for COP28?
The host United Arab Emirates (UAE) has made clear that it intends to make progress on climate finance at COP28. In mid-October, Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the president-designate for COP28, circulated a?letter ?discussing priorities for the upcoming summit.[1] ?Featured prominently was the need to “radically scale up climate financing” by “delivering on old promises” and “setting the framework” for new finance.
Will Dubai Bring Progress on the Unkept $100 Billion Promise?
Al Jaber’s framing highlights the long and difficult history of UNFCCC discussions on climate finance. At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2010, advanced economies pledged to mobilize $100 billion annually to developing nations by 2020 to be directed toward climate adaptation and mitigation efforts. The funds delivered to emerging economies via bilateral and multilateral grants and loans, export credits, and private finance?fell far short of the goal .[2] ?Worse yet, to align with sustainable development and climate goals, the true?financing need in the developing world ?is far greater than the pledged $100 billion per year.[3] ?A successful step at COP28 would be to set a robust goal for the coming years—not just in terms of dollar amounts but also specifying the types of projects to fund, with an emphasis on adaptation—along with clear metrics for implementation and tracking of progress. Article continues here.
An?electric jet engine ?is silently taking flight in the suburbs of Prince Edward Island in North America that promises to deliver similar performance to its fossil-fuelled counterparts.??Canada-based Duxion Motors has successfully completed the ground test of its patented eJet Motor, which, according to it, is "poised to make high-speed electric aviation a reality," said its?website . The ground tests with a scaled prototype included both low-speed and high-speed testing.?According to its founders, the automobile sector has made significant progress toward sustainable transportation, whereas the aviation industry has lagged. One of the key factors contributing to this gap is a lack of high-power, lightweight electric propulsion, which it aims to fulfill.? ?The aviation company, founded in 2017, is engaged in developing high-power density electric propulsion systems for aviation and marine industries with applications in jet aircraft, large unmanned aerial vehicles,?vertical takeoff and landing aircraft , and marine vessels.?
A standard airplane propulsion system consists of a motor that transfers torque through a rotating shaft to drive a propulsion fan, which propels the aircraft. The spinning shaft is usually contained inside the motor or is directly linked to it. The motor is often situated inside the duct and coaxial with the fan (e.g., downstream of the fan) in ducted fan propulsion systems. The fan blades are connected to a central hub, which is connected to the motor shaft, which operates the fan. To achieve higher thrust, using a more powerful motor is an option, but larger motors can reduce propulsion efficiency when placed inside a duct. This is because they may not match the optimal fan hub/tip ratio for a fixed nacelle diameter.? To compensate, longer fan blades may be used, but this increases system weight, lowers thrust-to-weight ratio, and may lead to more vibrations, more maintenance, mechanical issues, and increased noise. All this causes aircraft to contribute more to?global emissions , which is increasingly becoming a challenge amidst efforts to reach net-zero targets.
Consider a scoop of ice cream: part of what makes this dessert so delicious is palm oil, a product that comes from vast plantations, which have been linked to millions of hectares of deforestation and biodiversity loss. Such devastation in the name of nutritionally-unimportant foods such as ice cream—or biscuits, crisps, and pizza dough, which also contain palm oil—seems like a travesty.??But now a new review suggests that exciting advances in food tech could enable us to make molecularly-identical fats, without any farmland or crops, and near zero emissions.?This seemingly alien technology actually depends on the same raw materials as in photosynthesis: hydrogen from water, plus carbon. In place of photosynthesis, artificial methods of fat production use a series of chemical reactions that can make fats quickly and at scale.??One example that’s used today is similar to the process used to make ‘coal butter’ during the Second World War. Burned coal is transformed with gasification into a synthetic gas (syngas), which is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Then, through a chemical process called the Fischer-Tropsch reaction, the syngas is transformed into paraffins, and that’s oxidized to release fatty acids. Syngas could also be derived from less polluting sources, like organic biomass and municipal waste, or carbon captured from the air.?
In the study, the researchers analyzed the lifecycle energy use, emissions, and water use of these and other methods of artificial fat generation that currently exist. Then they compared these to the lifecycle impacts of palm and soybean production for dietary fats. These impacts were calculated right from the point of fossil fuel extraction as potential feedstock for artificial fats, to the land-use emissions associated with deforestation and fertilizer to grow oil crops.?And when the results came out, artificial fats undoubtedly had the lower footprint. The environmental benefits of these synthetic foods were striking, in fact: the researchers calculate that while soy and palm oil produce between one and three grams of carbon dioxide emissions for every 1000 calories, artificial fats produced from feedstocks like syngas produce less than a gram.? And, if artificial fats were produced using carbon dioxide extracted from the air (instead of derived from a fossil fuel source), and the production process was powered by renewable energy, that amount plummets to almost zero emissions.
Lockheed Martin has been handed a contract to work on nuclear-powered spacecraft technologies.?The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) awarded $33.7 million to Lockheed Martin as part of the Joint Emergent Technology Supplying On-Orbit Nuclear (JETSON) effort to "mature high-power nuclear electric power and?propulsion technologies ?and spacecraft design."?JETSON aims to launch a?fission reactor ?that will be started up once in space. The reactor will generate heat, which is then transferred to Stirling power converters to produce electricity. This can then be used to power spacecraft payloads or electric thrusters for propulsion.The reactor builds on NASA's earlier Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY ) demonstration in 2018.
"Nuclear fission development for space applications is key to introducing technologies that could dramatically change how we move and explore in the vastness of space," Barry Miles, JETSON program manager and principal investigator at Lockheed Martin, said in a?statement . "From high-power electrical subsystem and electric propulsion to nuclear thermal propulsion or fission surface power, Lockheed Martin is focused on developing these systems with our important government agencies and industry partners," Miles added. On JETSON, Lockheed will work with Space Nuclear Power Corp (SpaceNukes) and BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT), both of which have expertise in nuclear power and reactor design. The project is currently in the preliminary design review stage, with the option to go to critical design review level.?"A future JETSON flight experiment will enhance maneuver and power capabilities shaping future space force operations," said Andy Phelps, CEO of SpaceNukes.