How we’re turbocharging negative emissions technologies to help solve climate change.
Our perspective, recently covered in the Wall Street Journal, is that we have to consider drastic, creative and scalable ways in which climate impact can be reversed. This is the premise of “negative emissions technologies”, which actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. An example includes Direct Air Capture (DAC) which, here at Deep Science Ventures (DSV), we have identified as a critical opportunity area for addressing climate change — one that offers abundant, fertile ground for viable, scalable and profitable businesses, and for which we recently launched a partnership with the Grantham Foundation and Stripe to tackle.
Find out more about our partnership with Grantham and Stripe here
Those are precisely the types of solutions that are needed. Historically climate solutions were viewed predominantly as a consumer issue: change the behaviour, and the impact will follow. The problem is that habits are not as pliable as once envisaged. They take time to evolve — sometimes they persist even in the face of compelling evidence. Governments have had to step in but they have also proven to be unreliable actors when it comes to meaningful climate policy introduced to date. It is also unclear that voters are, by and large, willing to take on the costs (e.g. higher taxation) that are often associated with backing drastic climate policy. Without a major shift in public opinion, deferring to governments is therefore unlikely to generate the long-term, scalable impact that is urgently needed. Businesses must be brought to the centre of this picture — ones that are in a position to sustain themselves through viable business models and access to private capital.
Profitable and sustainable solutions are not only possible, they are also necessary. By 2050 we are going to need to remove 10 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year, according to estimates. This is a far cry from the current rates at which this is happening; 15 direct air capture plants operate worldwide, and are responsible for capturing more than 9000 tCO₂/year, a paltry 0.00009% of the soon to be required amount.
While we need to rapidly increase this capacity, pumping more money into existing solutions is not necessarily the right approach, given that many of them still rely on natural gas and other fossil fuels to power them. We need solutions that do not contribute to the climate change problem that we’re trying to solve: new technologies that will also drive down the marginal cost of capturing CO₂ and enable widespread adoption.
There appear to be grounds for optimism, with investment in climate solutions rising sharply. More than half the money that found its way into European funds accepted last year went into sustainable products, according to the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry. Businesses are also facing increasing pressure and expectations from society and stakeholders. More than one in five of the world’s largest organisations have committed to some version of a net-zero target. This does not rely on good will alone. Businesses that fail to change swiftly enough will face consequences — from intense public scrutiny to outright fines and penalties.
But investment is far from being optimally allocated and climate solutions are not being generated at the rate that is needed.
At Deep Science Ventures , we champion a number of complementary approaches. We do not believe in one technology as a “silver bullet” — we think that to solve an issue as complex as climate change, we need a pool of viable and scalable solutions working together. To do so we identify “white spaces” — areas of massive climate-tech potential that market forces will not organically tap, if left to their own devices — and actively build scalable and sustainable businesses within them.
If negative emissions technologies is an area you are exploring, we would be keen to hear from you. We are working across a whole range of opportunities which we are looking to build upon. We have a strong, successful track record in building viable, sustainable businesses across several sectors and areas, all geared around tackling climate change. Within direct air capture (DAC), we have created 3 different startups addressing separate but interrelated opportunities — Mission Zero, Holy Grail, Parallel Carbon:
We have also identified a number of white spaces within negative emissions technologies, representing natural next steps in terms of shifting sinks in the carbon cycle and value creation in the sustainable CO₂ supply chain. Below we outline the main paths which lend themselves to various, scalable opportunities. In short, we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by enhancing naturally occurring mechanisms such as photosynthetic conversion to biomass (biotic path) and rock weathering (abiotic path). At the same time efforts to artificially capture, store or utilize CO₂ need to be extended, to accelerate the drawdown and significantly reduce the atmospheric CO₂ concentration.
Biotic Paths to Capture and Store CO₂
The most important CO₂ drawdown mechanism today with a net drawdown capacity of around 9.5 Gt/yr CO₂ is photosynthesis, where CO₂ is converted to biomass. The permanence of carbon storage in biomass is highly variable depending on the destiny of the biomass and is difficult to track: when burned, biomass emits carbon in the form of CO₂. However, if converted to soil carbon, it can be stored for decades or centuries. Rather than industrial conversion, plants could be engineered to optimize the formation of soil carbon in greater depths, e.g. by increasing their lignin content, by promoting the production of decay inhibitors or by optimizing plant-microbe interactions. An additional benefit to these potential approaches is an increase in soil health. Once stored, it will be essential to improve remote sensing techniques to keep track of the carbon conversion as well as the permanence of carbon storage, especially in light of changing environmental conditions.
We are now recruiting for founders to investigate and create companies to increase biotic paths to capture and store CO₂.
Abiotic Paths to Capture and Store CO₂
Mineralization is a sequestration pathway focusing on storing CO₂ as rock. While it is a smaller flux as compared to the net land or ocean flux today, it has a CO₂ drawdown potential of up to 10 Gt/yr. The rate of drawdown of CO₂ is limited by its exposure to metal oxides, reacting to form insoluble carbonates, capable of storing CO₂ for centuries. Enhanced weathering approaches aim at increasing the available surface area of abundant silicate rocks, serpentine and olivine minerals ex-situ in chemical processing plants or in-situ by injecting CO₂ in silicate-rich geological formations. To fully exploit this option it will be essential to establish an inventory of existing tailings of reactive but unreacted rock and explore industrial or mining substrate options. Future approaches within this area will have to enhance reaction kinetics e.g. by sparging CO₂ rich gas through mine tailings or using microorganisms, as natural processes are inherently slow. To sustain large scale CO₂ storage, it will also be essential to expand available subsurface CO₂ storage sites in geological formations, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline or coal formations. To accelerate the evaluation and selection of suitable sites it will be important to combine effective regulatory oversight, monitoring programs and remediation strategies to be able to detect and control CO₂ leakages.
We are now recruiting for founders to investigate and create companies to increase abiotic paths to capture and store CO₂.
Artificial Paths to Capture and Store CO₂
It is unlikely that even maximum biogeochemical capacity would be sufficient to meet our climate goals: To remove 1Gt CO₂ per year via afforestation or reforestation we would need 70–90 Mha, equivalent to an area twice the size of California, which would also need to be maintained and replaced continuously. Deploying point source and direct air capture and storage technologies will be key to maximising carbon capture at low land use values. Following the design principles of our previously built DAC companies, it will be essential to co-optimize the technology in context of its surrounding and its constraining resources (e.g. energy, land, offtake and water footprint) but also the CO₂ destiny (e.g. CO₂ conversion or storage). Using CO₂ as an alternative chemical feedstock has the potential to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and accelerate a shift to a circular economy. However, business opportunities to sell captured CO₂ into established supply chains are limited. To generate additional economic incentive to capture CO₂, we have to expand the solution space including cost efficient products and higher value products.
We are now recruiting for founders to investigate and create companies to increase artificial paths to capture and store CO₂.
These all represent massive opportunities that are currently, for the most part, overlooked. To meet our climate targets, that needs to change. In order to reverse the impact of human activity on the climate we have to turn to innovation and sustainable venture creation. It is the only way to advance at the scale and pace that is needed to respond to our collective “Code Red”.
To deliver on this, DSV will work in a new partnership with the Grantham Environmental Trust and Stripe, providing expertise and investment as a founding investor and serving as a first client, respectively.
We are actively seeking partners and collaborators that share our vision and our goal to develop game-changing, sustainable negative emission solutions and ventures that can take our collective impact to the next level. If you are interested, please get in touch. We are keen to hear from both organisations or investors as well as individuals looking to take on co-founder roles at promising businesses within the negative emissions technologies space.
