Technology and Sustainability Together

Exploring the State of Sustainability

A significant shift of recent years has seen sustainability become more than a corporate buzzword – transitioning to a critical component of ensuring ongoing power supply, water security, and social responsibility in the face of climate change and resource scarcity.

Businesses and governments are recognising how important environmental consciousness is to our ongoing survival – placing greater emphasis on sustainable ways of generating energy and ensuring commerce can continue in a way that minimises environmental impact.

This longer-term view of how to run industries and nations gives many of hope that we can maintain elements of we live without sacrificing the wellbeing of future generations. The pursuit of profit needn’t be at the price of our planet, particularly as new technology developments illustrate how we can address pervasive climate issues, embedding purpose in private and public sectors that goes beyond the bottom line.

Innovations in Carbon Reduction

Finland is set to launch an industrial scale 'sand battery' with 1MW power and 100MWh thermal energy capacity. Developed by Polar Night Energy, the sand battery consists of a steel silo filled with sand, heated via a central heat exchanger using excess electricity from the grid. The stored thermal energy can last for months with minimal loss, mainly used for heating rather than converting back to electricity. In Finland's cold climate, the heat is fed into the local district heating system, providing hot water and steam for community use.

The project is expected to reduce district heating CO2 emissions by 160 tonnes annually, a 70% reduction. Furthermore, it uses sustainable materials like crushed soapstone, a byproduct from local industry, which conducts heat better than regular sand. While primarily useful in district heating, sand batteries could also complement other grid-scale storage technologies.

Meanwhile, Iceland is home to the largest direct air capture (DAC) plant, which sucks in air and strips out carbon using chemicals. The carbon is then injected underground, reused, or transformed into solid products.

While in its embryonic stage, the DAC plant’s current cost of carbon removal is close to $1,000 per ton. However, it aims reduce cost to $300-$350 per ton by 2030 and $100 per ton by 2050. It also aims to scale up to 1 million tons of carbon removal annually by 2030 and 1 billion tons by 2050.

Sustainable Sodium-Based Solutions

In May 2024, a 10MWh sodium-ion battery energy storage station was put into operation in Guangxi, southwest China. The plant is operated by China Southern Power Grid Energy Storage and is part of a larger 100-MWh project that is expected to deliver 73 million kWh of clean power annually, meeting the electricity needs of 35,000 households while reducing CO2 emissions by 50,000 tons.

Sodium-ion batteries provide a host of benefits including abundant and easily extractable raw materials; lower cost; better performance at low temperatures; suitability for large-scale energy storage; and the potential to reduce energy storage costs by 20-30%, lowering the price to USD 0.028 per kWh.

Furthermore, 210 Ah sodium-ion cells can charge to 90% in 12 minutes while thermal systems maintain temperature difference within 3°C for over 22,000 cells, extending thermal runaway time from 30 minutes to 2 hours.

Japan is currently developing a next-generation fast reactor in cooperation with US-backed nuclear firm founded by Bill Gates, TerraPower. The agreement will combine Japanese and US technologies to commercialise fast reactors that use high-speed neutrons to efficiently burn plutonium and other fuels, with liquid sodium as the coolant. These reactors are crucial for Japan’s nuclear fuel cycle, which involves reusing plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.

In 2022, the Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry released a road map with a demonstration reactor set to be designed by March 2025 and operate into the 2040s. Meanwhile, TerraPower plans to build a demonstration reactor in Wyoming that will be operational by 2030. With the assistance of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the reactor will use a new technology called Natrium, which is touted as a “carbon-free, reliable energy solution”.

Last year, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Seaborg Technologies announced a partnership to develop floating nuclear power plants. These plants will use Seaborg Technologies’ CMSR technology, which leverages molten fluoride salt as both fuel and coolant. Consequently, if exposed to the atmosphere, the molten salt cools and solidifies to safely contain radioactive material.

The project will incorporate a modular design to deliver 200MWe to 800MWe. The first project, a 200MWe power barge is part of a broader mission to enable timely commercialisation and scalable export of CMSR-based floating nuclear plants. Each 200MWe unit can save over 23 million tonnes of CO2 emissions over 24 years compared to coal-fired plants.

Reframing Hydrogen

We’ve also seen an emerging technology that uses water as an electrolyte, breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen ions, which are then used in combustion engines or fuel cells to power electric vehicles.

Unlike fossil fuels, water-based fuel only produces steam and oxygen, making it a cleaner, renewable energy source. Water-powered vehicles offer high fuel performance, a long driving range, faster refuelling, and abundant raw materials.

The technology offers a range of 1000 kilometres per charge and 15 times more power than current batteries. Water-based fuel has a significantly higher energy density than lithium-ion batteries, potentially providing 10,000Wh/kg compared to 500Wh/kg for lithium-ion batteries.

Another key development in this space is the potential in hydrogen powered aircrafts. However, it faces several obstacles in reaching widescale adoption. Firstly, hydrogen production varies in environmental impact: grey hydrogen (high CO2 emissions), blue hydrogen (costly and storage issues), and green hydrogen (renewable but rare and expensive).

Hydrogen also has lower energy density than kerosene, resulting in heavier aircraft due to necessary high-pressure, super-cold storage tanks. These aircrafts also have limited range of up to 2,500 kilometres, making them more suitable for short-range flights compared to long-haul routes that are responsible for most aviation CO2 emissions.

Airports need significant revamping to supply hydrogen instead of fossil fuels. Making hydrogen on-site at airports is suggested to reduce transport costs, but the scale of this challenge is large, costly, and requires significant regulatory approval.

Sustainability in a Growth-Driven System

The self-sufficient solutions outlined here may seem antithetical to profitability. How can an energy or transportation provider ensure repeat business with products and services designed to be one-off purchases?

However, the limited scope through which businesses view the market needs to make a meaningful shift in changing for the better. It can’t simply be about reducing costs or improving efficiency – transformation needs to benefit the environment, community, and planet.

Changing mindsets and economic systems would mean that energy and technology were no long a race, a competition driven by ROI. It’s about addressing some of our most prevalent threats, like climate change and resource scarcity. After all, social sustainability is just as important as environmental sustainability – and neither can be achieved when operating in a system that demands continuous transactions and profits.

It may seem naively hopeful, but the projects and innovations outlined here have real potential to solve critical challenges we all face – but they will only succeed if they’re developed to benefit everyone. Cynics fluctuate between climate change being a non-issue and an inevitability – believing it will take a miracle to fix. However, as Arthur C Clark explained, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.