The Saudi British Joint Business Council and...
...a Perpetual Motion machine!
I spent yesterday wandering around the London Climate Technology Show, and I had many interesting conversations. There were way too many middlemen selling questionable climate offsets. These all provided an account and a fancy online dashboard for companies wanting to demonstrate their carbon neutrality. At least 4 of the companies were using Blockchain as a buzzword. The idea is that you write a contract with the farmer/landowner/whatever to improve soil carbon/not cut down trees/whatever and then you sign that contract and put it in an online ledger like the Ethereum blockchain. This prevents the existence of the contract being denied and enables ownership to be transferred, like with digital coins. Although in principle this can work it requires a single joined up database. With multiple companies offering the same service, but on incompatible systems, there's nothing to stop an offset being sold several times over.
None of the offset companies I spoke to had a satisfactory answer to the problem of leakage: the idea that if you protect one area of forest but fail to do anything to reduce demand (for animal grazing, animal feed, or timber) you simply transfer the destruction somewhere else. Nor did any of them address the false equivalence between a) not digging up and burning fossils fuels, and b) not cutting down trees. Fossil fuels left in the ground will remain safely locked away for hundreds of millions of years, whereas a tree that has been saved from logging may succumb to a climate change in the near future. Some companies were offering a different kind of offset where saplings are planted. Leakage is less of an issue here, but permanence is even less well guaranteed.
The telltale sign that something is wrong with an offset is a low price. One company I spoke to was offering offsets at $5/ton CO2, which is two orders of magnitude cheaper than what it costs to genuinely reverse - using Direct Air Capture - the process of digging up fossil fuels and burning them. These carbon offset efforts are mostly well-intentioned but have moral hazard written all over them.
I expected to see some carbon offset peddling at this show, but two things I did not expect were...
1. The Saudi British Joint Business Council
This cubicle had nothing in it save a desk with two well spoken and friendly British representatives. I went over to ask what they were doing at a Climate show and received some extremely vague response about KSA investing and diversifying. To their credit they pointed out that KSA had committed to going "carbon neutral" by 2060 (well, the Paris agreement did require an NDC of some sort). I obtained a concession from them that this did not cover the oil that they produce which will be burned in other countries. Historically new forms of energy technology have added to, not replaced, existing ones. Therefore, until KSA commit to leaving their oil reserves unexploited the climate crisis will worsen, however much PV capacity they install. The two advocates clearly understood their client's case was a difficult one to defend, but they kept smiling, and as we parted ways they suggested I come and work for them!
2. A Perpetual Motion machine
"What does Gravitational Energy mean?
Gravity is constant, nonstop force, existing around us, not depended on wind, sun, day, night or location. We all know that, what goes up, has to fall down. Falling objects are producing energy, but as you also need to spend energy to lift them back – gravity alone was considered as not efficient source. But, what if we use buoyancy force for lifting objects? That means, that two naturally existing forces are put together to get out permanent, low cost, renewable and sustainable energy, not ever depending on outside factors like wind, sun or etc."
A small group, which included me, clustered around this exhibit trying to get an explanation. No one was satisfied with what they heard. I tried to point out that their invention violated the Energy Continuity Equation. Eventually one of the crowd turned to me and said "Is this... a perpetual motion machine?" We concluded it was, had a bit of a laugh, and dispersed. But who knows, maybe the last laugh will be on us, and the laws of physics.
What was I impressed by?
It wasn't all mad. There was Carbon8 who were taking residue and CO2 from the cement making process to produce aggregate. Although it had limited capacity for reducing the emissions associated with the cement manufacture, it was genuinely true that the aggregate they produce is carbon negative. There were also a couple of aviation companies: one was developing battery powered engines for drone sized aircraft and another was a reseller for the Pipistrel Li ION powered two seater. This aircraft has a 22 kWh battery and a 50 mile range. That's about half the efficiency of a typical EV, which isn't bad considering it flies! The range makes it suitable for island hopping, and if it's recharged by solar arrays on hangars the flights are zero emissions. However, the true environmental cost, including that of manufacture, will depend on how long it stays in service. And it has to be admitted that this does not offer an alternative to the majority of existing air travel.
Both Carbon8 and the Pipistrel aircraft are positive moves but have a limited scope for mitigation of - or adaptation to - the climate crisis. Measured by those metrics I have two winners from the show
1. Mr Bug
Mr Bug sells dog treat biscuits made from mealworm protein. At present they don't have a license to sell for human consumption but there is no scientific reason to deny them one. At their current scale, and limited to dog treats, they're not making a big impact. But the scope for growth is enormous, if we can get over eating insects.
2. Dryad
Dryad have developed cheap solar powered smoke sensors that can be nailed to trees as an early warning for forest fires. The sensors need to be installed at a density of 1 per hectare and use an open source mobile standard to talk to base stations. These could detect fires far earlier than satellites or lookouts and prevent an enormous amount of damage.
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