When we think about the net zero transition, it’s no secret that it’ll be all-round easier to achieve in some sectors rather than others.
To say that the trickier ‘hard to abate’ industrial and energy-intensive sectors have got some serious work to do to make the transition by 2050 is something of an understatement. But it’s also a space ripe for innovation – and nature-inspired innovation at that.
Yes, if you look at hard to abate sectors such as steel, cement, petrochemicals and fertilisers, the super interesting spaces are those where nature is stepping in to replace otherwise polluting entities. And we are loving the growth in entrepreneurs toiling away on innovations that replace these dirty industrial materials or processes with cleaner natural alternatives. You’ll find five featured below, but we’re always on the lookout for more, so do send in your suggestions to hello@thewilful.com.
If we’re talking dirty sectors of the economy, the $6 trillion global chemicals industry is hard to beat, with carbon dioxide from chemical production one of the biggest contributors to industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Not such a dirty little secret, eh.
But luckily help is at hand in the form of innovators such as Solugen. This self-described ‘first carbon negative molecule factory’ is subverting the conventions of chemical production by making chemicals with enzymes, not oil. In a pretty radical move, it’s swapping out the traditional petroleum-based chemicals usually found lurking in industrial and consumer commodity products in favour of a far more planet-friendly alternative.
How? The company has conceived a process that converts corn syrup into industrial chemicals using enzymes and metal catalysis, thereby replacing the dirty industrial processes that require fossil fuels. By making chemicals out of sugars, air and carbon dioxide, its enzyme-based manufacturing operation creates none of the emissions of traditional petrochemical processes. And here’s the kicker: it has figured out how to replicate its chemical engineering process for one chemical after another, so it’s able to provide value – and emissions reductions – to multiple industries. No wonder it has scored $635 million in funding to date and was feted as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2022.
And talking about dirty industrial materials that need to be replaced with cleaner natural alternatives, nitrophosphate fertilisers are a prime offender. Humankind’s excessive use of these substances continues unabated; according to some estimates, we can only support between a half to one third of our global population without the synthetic production of such fertilisers. That is one helluva sobering thought. To compound our unhealthy global reliance on fertiliser, the way it is made, distributed, and applied has a heinous impact on the environment too.
Thank goodness, then, for innovators like Nitricity, which is looking to radically disrupt this dirty status quo by producing fertilisers in a fundamentally different, more nature-embracing way. How? Well, Nitricity is commercialising a breakthrough technology that produces fertiliser using only air, water, and renewable energy. Yes, you did read that right.
Nitricity refers to its process as ‘harnessing the power of lightning’, which frankly we think is pretty cool. Its first test systems pulled water from an irrigation system, charged it with nitrogen, and then reintroduced the water with its fertiliser product to be applied to the farm field. With this lightning fertiliser, only a tiny fraction of a pound of CO2 equivalent emissions remains, which is pretty radical compared to conventional fertiliser production. Check out their handy video explainer here.
Backed by investors including Khosla Ventures and Fine Structure Ventures, and currently working to go from prototypes to a larger pilot system, Nitricity’s technology has the potential to produce a less carbon-intensive, cost-effective and clean fertiliser, closer to farms. Perhaps that’s why it was selected in December for an R&D grant as part of Frontier’s largest round of carbon removal investment. We’ll be keeping an avid eye on their progress.
Alongside the pernicious role of conventional fertilisers in global farming, a raft of common agricultural practices also contribute to the widespread depletion of farm fertility and key nutrients in soil. With all terrestrial life depending on soil, and it quite literally being our lifeline, you could say that restoring its health is rather important.
Against this sobering backdrop, enter Loam, which has developed a microbial seed coating that supercharges a plant’s natural ability to store carbon in soil. This innovative technology is designed to increase carbon within structures in the soil called micro-aggregates, increasing the amount of CO2 stored for the long term.
A quick 101 on how it works: before sowing, the farmer coats their seeds with the microbial inoculum (like a fungus coating, to us laypeople), and the plants and microbes then work together to build carbon in the soil and keep it there. Added benefits include better soil health and plant growth, nutrient-rich crops, higher yields – and as if that wasn’t enough, it also offers the potential to generate higher quality carbon offsets. Quadruple win, anyone?
Such microbial soil sequestration is rapid and globally scalable, and also handily doesn’t need any extra costly energy, land or equipment to function. So Loam is bringing plants and microbes together to create value for agriculture in a new, non-polluting way. As they themselves say: ‘Through a better understanding of how microbes influence the carbon cycle, we can create new planetary-scale opportunities for carbon sequestration and improve agricultural productivity’. And backers are flocking to this opportunity, including Marc Benioff’s Time Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital, the latter of which rather nattily sums up Loam’s USP as ‘Fungus eats carbon and pays farmers’. Nice.
Next up in our foray into where nature can play the part of an otherwise polluting entity, we’re turning our attention to the global steel industry. Whether we’re talking buildings, cars or railways, the world is reliant on steel: but by gum it’s a notoriously hard sector to decarbonise.
This is not something that’s been lost on Electra, which has set its sights on cleaning up steelmaking, one of the world’s dirtiest industries. In fact, we were pretty astounded to learn how these Colorado-based innovators are effectively reframing how steel is made, in an exciting paradigm shift from the centuries-old model of burning fossil fuels.
Electra has raised a cool $85 million for their technology that uses planet-friendly renewable electricity to make carbon-free iron at a mere 60°C. ‘What? How does that work?’ we hear you ask incredulously. Well, when Electra makes steel, out goes the conventional coal-fired furnace, intense 1,600 degree heat and all that carbon-intensive molten metal. In its place comes an innovative electrochemical process that refines iron ore to high purity iron by radically lowering the process temperature to the aforementioned 60°C, and replacing coal energy with renewable electricity from solar panels or wind turbines. This effectively powers the removal of oxygen from iron ore using only electricity. So, with no coal used at all, they’re electrifying ironmaking with zero carbon emissions. Impressed? You should be. With backers including the Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BHP Ventures and Amazon, Electra is most definitely going places.
And lastly, a feature about replacing dirty substances with cleaner natural materials can’t overlook the need to tackle the global scourge of plastic waste. Happily, Epoch Biodesign has stepped up to address this massive problem by developing “tuneable” enzymes that can be programmed to transform a wide variety of plastics into polymers for everyday chemicals and materials.
If that sounds impressive, it is. Through Epoch’s unique biological process, their enzymes (aka proteins that act as a catalyst) are applied to mixed waste, and handily break down any combination of plastics: no pesky cleaning, sorting or treating required here! The resulting molecules can be used to create new products like adhesives, cleaning products, and fertilizers. And it turns out that these molecules are the very same chemicals that today are made from oil and gas. So when the company says they’re ‘developing natural solutions to unnatural problems’ they’re not kidding. If this isn’t one mighty fine example of the circular economy in action, we don’t know what is.
Epoch is targeting plastics that are currently unrecyclable, which would otherwise go to landfill. And while plastic-munching enzymes are definitely cool, we reckon this is just the start of an innovation pipeline we’ll be seeing from this company developing novel technologies powered by biology. After all, if we consider how the accelerating development of cheap computing power, AI, ML and advances in biological sciences are changing the game, Epoch looks well positioned to bring all this together to create further new industrial solutions inspired by nature. They say such an approach is called ‘Total BioDesign’. We say: watch this space.
