Talking Climate Tech 011 redux
Last week's newsletter - CDR Startups, Trump v Straws, Oil Orphans, The Abyss and Pylon of the Month!
🪨 Startups | 🌱 NatureTech | 🌊 Seabed Maps | ⚫ Oil Cleanup |
Issued to subscribers 14th February 2025
Less Executive Orders this week from DJT ripping up climate policy, so back to a 'regular' weekly newsletter thankfully.
Other than the one on 'plastic straws'. The leader of the free world is rowing back on paper straws. You would think he might be busy with some other stuff. 🤷♂️
“I don’t think that plastic is going to affect the shark very much as they’re … munching their way through the ocean,”
If you don't laugh at the ridiculous child-like mind and thought process [remember the Covid-19 bleach solution?] you'd be catatonic with despair.
Could alleviate inflationary pressure in the US economy though? 🤷♂️
Let's see what's happening out there...
💸 Startup News | 🔎 Deeper Dive | 🏡 Konfab News | 😃 Good Stuff
💸 Startup News
Apparently we have a lot of carbon kicking about, among our many other climate issues - we need to cut down on source emissions as our priority, particularly in transport, energy, industry and agriculture.
Carbon Dioxide Removal [CDR] is not one of the emergency handbakes to mitigate emission build-up and temperature change, that comes later - see the small global impact forecast over the next 20 years [green].
However that won't stop startups trying to reach the promised land early - and VCs looking to leverage innovation to scale...🥂
That being considered, Carbon Mineralisation from the CDR taxonomy is an interesting area; long-term carbon store as an opportunity from an existing process or waste stream, can have multiple layers of benefit.
As part of this, we aren't going down the boondoggle madness of the Direct Air Capture, looking for 400 parts per million as our carbon source. More on that folly here. Excluded ❌.
You can see some of the key startups [approx. 160 jostling for position via HackSummit here.] I selected 4 interesting ones to watch in this space - working with existing processes - waste industrial byproducts, biogas plants, quarry and agricultural practices.
🇬🇧 Carbon8 - Construction Materials - Series A, aprox $6m to date. Modular containerised source solution for industrial process waste byproducts.
🇩🇪 ZeroEx - Agriculture ERW - Accelerator/Angel to date. Enhanced Rock Weathering, a geological time short-cut of the silicate weathering process.
🇨🇭 Neustark - Concrete-Bio-Gas Recycling - Multi-round approx. $69m to date.
🇺🇸 Vesta - Coastal Shoreline Capture - Series A approx $35m to date. Coastal Enhanced Weathering with Olivine Mineral.
🔎 Deeper Dive
NatureTech
More HackSummit this week, they just dished out the prizes for NatureTech here. Summary of the key winners helping nature and biodversity fight back;
1️⃣ Mozaic Earth - collaborative platform - biodiversity and habitat data.
2️⃣ Earthly - biodiversity platform - projects and carbon credits.
3️⃣ Inverto Earth - coastal nature restoration - plan, plant & monitor.
4️⃣ Kanop - data platform - monitoring and compliance of nature projects.
Nature needs all the help it can get - high impact data-driven restoration at scale -great alignment for corporates, investors and philanthropy. 🌱
Cleaning Up ⚫
Oil permeates the fabric of our society, energy, systems, products, it's done us incredible service for a very long time, and will continue to do so - we just don't want to waste it by burning it anymore. That time served leaves a lasting legacy, that unfortunately hasn't been kept neat & tidy. 🙄
Legacy oil wells are a big problem.
How big? Well, [😆] in the US alone, around 3.7m wells were developed since the mid-1800s, some only 6 inches in diameter! Now think of that globally. 🌍 🤯
There are also an estimated up to 800,000 forgotten oil and gas wells according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). AI to the rescue - to accurately locate wells that need plugging to prevent methane and other leakage. 👏
See, it is useful after all.
Primary focus is on undocumented orphaned wells (UOWs). Not on official records, and have no known owner, leaving no legal entity responsible for sealing these “orphans.”
❓Why it matters - It's a massive job, we need to crack on. Reminder on the methane emissions from legacy wells here.
The Blue Planet 🌊
What do we know about the seabed? Well, not that much, other than its incredible scale, and it's very dark and scary depths - remember James Cameron's film, The Abyss 😱.
The Seabed 2030 project is working hard to map the global seabed by, yep 2030. They just rolled out a new section of International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO), Version 5.0, for 1.4 million sq km of mapping coverage – an area x3 of Sweden – to the global seafloor dataset.
With a grid cell size now down to 100m x 100m, distributed cloud compute and metadata, the tech and development is advancing rapidly - it's all free and publicly available, GEBCO global grid.
Mapping the Arctic seabed that's covered in ice - quite challenging!
❓Why it matters - there are many benefits to knowing what lies beneath - ocean circulation and climate models, resource management, tsunami forecasting and public safety, sediment transportation, environmental change, cable and pipeline routing...great project, we need this! Especially now NOAA is on the brink...
🏡 Konfab News
Up to London this week for more on UK Geothermal, and hopefully with news on exciting industry developments soon. ♨️
Back to London next week for the Materials & Manufacturing Showcase 2025, 19 February, a great event last year as we look at decarbonising UK Industry. ⚙️
Locally it's a return to Ocean Business 2025, 8-10 April here in Southampton on site at the National Oceanography Centre. It's here I first talked with Seabed 2030 last year and learned of their great work. ⬆️ 🌊
I am also booked in for London at Innovation Zero 29-30 April, last year had a fantastic speed-dating introduction programme - hope that's back this year! 🤝 🟢
😃 Good Stuff
Nature 🌳
In our regular 'Nature is Speaking' spot, this week it's a reminder of Coral Reef, the nursery of the sea, we can see it from space it's so big, or was - Coral Reef 🐠
NEMO!!!! Noooooooo
Climate Community 👥
Want to be part of a wider group of climate subject matter experts and people with a passion to drive change while protecting our planet. Sure you do - I will be sharing some interesting climate communities that I can recommend.
This week it's InClimate, led by Founder Tim Steppich, you can follow Tim on LinkedIn here. They are 3 years into their project and have some incredible meet-ups, career support functions and a thriving online community!
InClimate - 11,000 members, based in Germany with global footprint ✅
Pylon of the Month ⚡
Still no sign of January's pylon from Pylon HQ, so to bring some sunshine into our dull winter [for us in the Northern Hemisphere at least] here is a Tower of Power in clear skies and sun, August 2018.
What's the story with the big guy and his little friend? Repairs and upgrades need temporary cable routes:
Pylons will last for about 80 years, whereas the conductors, insulators and fittings normally last for about 40 years. Therefore each overhead line will usually go through at least one refurbishment during its lifespan.
A rare temporary pylon sighting, as they typically aren't in place for long!
Thanks as always, let's keep pushing forward with all things climate tech and the real-world solutions that meet our climate challenges.
Remember, despite everything you might see and hear, the momentum is unstoppable! 🌍
Stay warm, cool and safe, wherever you are 🙏
Kane 🌱
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