The fight against climate change already is and will continue to be one of the colossal challenges humankind faces. Is START Summit the right place to look for innovative ideas of brilliant minds that will solve this issue for us? Well, it’s not going to be that easy, but prisma was listening to some talks and panels including young companies that are at least trying.
Emit less, remove more
As everybody should know by now, the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane or nitrous oxide, are the central issue in this whole climate change problem. Society and individuals should reduce their carbon footprints to alleviate the worst consequences of an alternated climate. Tell you what, that doing it alone is not going to cut it for us to reach net zero. What if we could just find a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere? Carbon removal seems like a great idea, at least if we can push the boundaries of existing technologies to reduce the massive cost that currently comes with it. The panel discussion revolved around two main ideas about how carbon removal is possible. First up, nature-based solutions are building on initiatives like reforestation projects to foster the amount of CO2 the environment can store for us. Thank you trees! Companies like goodcarbon and OCELL are both on a mission to provide investors with CO2 certificates stemming from projects that make a concrete impact by relying on technology, science, and the careful selection of project initiatives. The second option is a technological one building on the direct removal of CO2 from the air. However, this solution by the Swiss company Climeworks, providing this service to businesses eager to offset their emissions, is still only available at high costs, requires a vast amount of electricity and seems difficult to scale. No wonder the company representative stated that the cheapest way to remove a ton of CO2 is not to emit it in the first place.
Consume at the greenest point in time
This is one of the incentives provided to customers of Ostrom, a German-based start-up with the mission to provide green electricity for all, while offering a service at cost to emphasize the goal of reducing overall energy consumption. And the best part: Through an app, consumers are always aware of how much electricity they use, what they pay for it, and to be sure it came from a renewable source. Additionally, owners of electric vehicles, like the fancy Porsche Taycan they showed off to all summit attendees, can profit from a smart feature that allows them to charge their car at the cheapest and greenest point in time. Ostrom’s solution might not build on complex algorithms. However, in a market landscape in which established electricity providers mostly send out paper bills and customer support can only be reached by calling a hotline, maybe a fully digital service is enough to be innovative.
Protein shakes, but it’s material science
The last idea I want to share with you might not be the most obvious on the journey to reach our sustainability goal. Cambrium, another German start-up in the field of material science, innovates to find new ways to create materials for cosmetics or fashion while not relying on crude oil or proteins like animal collagens. Don’t ask me how they do this, it’s probably very scientific, but they said they are using our best friend AI to find protein structures that serve the required need of a materials properties such as skin compatibility. As the materials are created using yeast and fermentation instead of the common resources mentioned above, they not only fulfil the necessary performance specifications to be relevant for later processing, but also make products more sustainable and potentially bio-degradable.
What every one of us can do
That’s for you to decide, but the opportunities seem to be there, we just need to seize them. No worries, this will not be a lecture now, we have enough lectures every week. Speaking of lectures though: If you are interested in solutions to climate change and want to deepen your knowledge in this field of research, maybe the Master Certificate Managing Climate Solutions (MaCS) is something for you