The Systems Approach to solve Climate Change

Is your climate solution a game changer or a distraction?

Recently Taiwan said they want to import hydrogen, ironically to replace liquid natural gas in the production of electricity. This seems nonsensical to me. Import a product that can be synthesized anywhere? Use a fuel made by electrolysis to produce electricity? Why? Taiwan feels its small landmass is a liability, not able to support traditional clean energy like wind and solar to produce enough electricity to power the electrolysis needed for hydrogen production. They rely largely on imported natural gas. But… they’re an island nation, surrounded by wave and tide. They have gigatons of energy hitting their shores every day, more than enough to support hydrogen production.

Like Taiwan, most of us are limited in our systems approach to solving climate change. We still think about energy the way we did with fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are location sourced. They’re dug from the ground in one location and shipped to the place that uses it.

Hydrogen is location agnostic. It can be located anywhere, at any scale, provided there is electricity for it. Not only devoid of location, it is agnostic about the electricity production that creates it — wind, solar, wave, tidal, solar energy beamed from space — it doesn’t care.

So much of the technology we’re creating, from ammonia to ethylene to cellular agriculture to cement binders, is location and energy agnostic. Yet we’re still thinking about supply chains and pipelines and trade imbalances. We still think outside and across national borders rather than inside. That blind spot is crippling.

When it comes to a choice between two technologies, we need to support the one that fits what other industries are doing. We need a systems approach.

Plug and Play

Imagine you have a complicated clock with one gear failing. You need to replace it. You wouldn’t say, “Here’s a great cog, but we’ll need to change half a dozen other cogs in the system to accommodate its greatness.” No. You just want to replace that part.

Electric cars succeeded because they were plug and play. They look virtually the same as IC cars, inside and out. They function essentially the same. They use the same tires. They use the same roads. They follow the same rules and regulations set by transportation departments. The only thing different about them is a battery instead of an engine. Easy to adopt. They even had the additionality of powering your home, doubling as a battery backup in emergencies, and advanced technology enablers like autonomous driving. Best of all, they were nodal, powered at home. Rather than add infrastructure by attempting to compete with gas stations, they removed the need for stations altogether, bringing value to every business that installed a charger. Within the next 15 years, all cars on the road will be electric. That’s a good solution.

Compare that to natural gas. LNG is a plug-and-play solution for the energy sector. It has a reduced carbon footprint, but can be mined with many of the same techniques, shipped in the same supply chains (with modified ships), and burned in many of the same process as the fuels it replaced. But it had no additionality, was still location dependent. That’s why new products like biofuels or hydrogen are palatable alternatives for the industry.

This is where systems thinking comes in. Biofuels and hydrogen have a problem. With biofuels, yes, you plug and play into the energy sector, but you subtract from the agricultural sector. With hydrogen, yes, it seems like burnable energy, but its source is nodal, meaning the entire energy infrastructure system the energy sector invested in might be dismantled. Even as the energy sector explores these options, they will face opposition from within and, more importantly, from other industries.

Hydrogen or Ammonia

Consider hydrogen vs ammonia. Both can be created with electrolysis, both burned as fuel, both with no greenhouse gas contributions. But ammonia requires a few extra steps. You first have to synthesize hydrogen before you incorporate it into ammonia. Why not just stop there? And ammonia adds urea on the emissions end to neutralize NOx emissions. Burning hydrogen just gives you water. It seems like a no-brainer, right?

Wrong. Because hydrogen is not a plug-and-play solution. Ammonia can be burned in existing engines on ships and trucks with only minor modifications. It can be stored and transported in, essentially, LNG storage modules. It already has one of the largest chemical markets in the world with a wide range of products, primarily agricultural fertilizer. Electrolysis synthesized ammonia can plug and play instantly, approaching price parity, whereas hydrogen is an almost entirely new industry. For hydrogen to take off, you would need to change a lot of cogs, from pipelines to shipping to a whole new energy market.

This is how we will solve climate change. Not with innovation alone but with systems innovation. Find the plug-and-play solution that speaks well across industries with the most additionality and the least location dependency.

How to solve Taiwan’s climate change problems

So we return to the original question. Why is Taiwan looking to import hydrogen? Because their solution lacks systems thinking. They want to replace natural gas by importing a greener fuel.

With systems thinking, Taiwan could pursue this: Wave and tidal generators on the abundant coastline generate more than enough electricity to power the Taiwanese islands. That power is then used in electrolysis to make ammonia and ethylene and electric arc furnaces for heavy industry. Not enough land for agriculture? That new electricity source feeds cellular agriculture and biogenerators, meaning more food on less land. Pozzolanic concrete mined from Taiwan’s volcanoes means construction materials don’t have to be imported to build the infrastructure for tidal energy and heavy industry. All the component parts work together.

Through this scenario, rather than the net-importer of energy and materials that Taiwan is today, this tiny nation may become a net-exporter of ammonia, chemicals, food, and concrete, especially if it adopts systems thinking earlier than other countries.

Taiwan is not alone among island nations. If Taiwan insists on their current strategy, that bodes well for New Zealand. With abundant green energy, we can supply them with hydrogen and ammonia galore.

The self-reliance and export potential of those who use system thinking to solve climate change will give them the resiliency to survive. The country or industry that fails to will soon be reliant on those who do.

The next time you plan to invent or fund or adopt a new technology, think about how it interacts with other industries. Is it a plug-and-play solution? Is it location and energy agnostic? Can it be produced at home? How will it interact with other industries? Answering these questions will go a long way toward separating the technologies that solve climate change from distractions.

To learn more about wave energy, ammonia, and concrete, check out my podcast “Replace Remove Recover” wherever you get your podcasts or click here to listen online.

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