DTN 009: Regulating Solar Geoengineering

Plus: Playboy in the metaverse, the vertical farming bubble is popping, a vertical solar power tower, $100M for a bat biology startup, and more.

March 04, 2023

Welcome to The Deep Tech Newsletter, a weekly exploration of the business, science, and engineering behind the world’s most important frontier technologies.

Jean-Louis Kindler is the CEO of Ways2H, a leading commercial provider of Waste-to-Hydrogen solutions for mobility and grid applications. In this conversation, Kindler discusses how to decarbonize the waste processing industry, why waste-to-hydrogen is superior to conventional gasification technologies, the strategic importance of using commercially available parts in innovative new systems, and more.

Why the waste industry is reluctant to adopt new carbon-negative tech: “The whole waste industry has seen so many failures in this quest for reliable ways to do waste to gas conversion. So when we go to these companies and talk about our solution, they really want to see it in operation. I understand that and it’s perfectly legit. So our primary challenge today is to deploy a first demonstrator of the system and to overcome all those concerns and suspicions from the industry.”

Hydrogen’s time has come: “If you look at hydrogen from an industrial point of view, it has really only been exciting for the past maybe 2 or 3 years. There are still lots of people who will tell you there is no market for hydrogen and so who would be crazy enough to work on something like waste to hydrogen? I hate to use this term, but we really are witnessing a paradigm shift in our attempt to get away from fossil fuels. This is a fact. I don’t know how big the hydrogen production infrastructure will be in 5, 10 or 20 years, but hydrogen itself is here to stay.” 

The Big Picture

"This group unanimously suggests [stratospheric aerosol injection] be considered within a new broader framework for the governance of the stratosphere," the experts wrote in the report by the United Nations Environment Programme, or UNEP. "Other activities such as rocket launches may also be considered as little regulatory or governance structures presently exist for the stratosphere." (Scientific American)

“Nearly 20 years after the first vertical farm opened, with capital drying up like heads of romaine under an unrelenting California heat wave, one now has to wonder two things: Is it even possible to compete with the economics of outdoor farming? And how did investors think that they could find Silicon Valley-style returns in . . . lettuce?” (Fast Company)

“The world’s long-overdue, fitful transition to renewable energy is hobbled by an Achilles’ heel: It requires staggering quantities of natural resources. Manufacturing enough electric vehicles to replace their fossil-fueled counterparts will require billions of tons of cobalt, lithium, copper, and other metals. To meet the exploding demand, mining companies, carmakers, and governments are scouring the planet for potential mines or expanding existing ones, from the deserts of Chile to the rain forests of Indonesia. Meanwhile, what might be the richest source of all—the ocean floor—remains untapped.” (Wired)

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