You're listening to the reversing climate change,
podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace.
This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs
developing solutions to climate change.
Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change
podcast. My name is Alexandre de Guerra
co-founder and director of corporate development here.
At Nori. We are here in Toronto.
We are tending, the Collision Tech event, which is my first
big Tech event. We were standing at our booth
all day. I'm so happy and excited to be,
sitting down with these two wonderful gentlemen, my feet are
tired. So tired, I also miss Ross, this
is the first podcast we've done without Ross.
So Ross if you're listening, we miss you, come back, come to
Toronto. I've said it wrong.
I've been calling it Toronto the whole time.
It's actually Toronto. Toronto, the t is silent or
TDOT? Yeah, something like that.
But anyway, it's the Collision conference sexually, North
America's largest tech Summit and Nori was Part of the AI for
Earth, transition track, which meant that we got a nice little
stipend and flown over here and got free Booth time, and got to
present to a lot of people and thank you Microsoft.
Thank you, Microsoft. We really appreciate that.
Hopefully, you're listening and thinking about ways to partner
with Nori. But this is not about Nori.
This is about carbon upcycling Technologies, and this is going
to be a really fun podcast. Because on our right over here
from the conference, we sort of got into the things that I love
to geek out about, which is like, Honest carbon lifecycle
accounting and not making claims that you can't substantiate and
like, all right, what's actually going to scale quickly and what
makes sense? And how do we not demonize the
entire fossil fuel industry, but use some of their great minds
and power to change for good. So if you want to keep listening
to that, sort of banter and conversation, don't hang up and
don't go anywhere hanging up, he's got eyes that will hang up
okay, we're not going to cut that with this is to right we've
Approve. Send her.
Here's the CEO of carbon upcycling Technologies.
He's a really great guy. He's listen to some podcasts.
I think so he's like, yeah, I want to get on that.
Yes, we want you on that. So how about we start a probe
with your story? How did you get to where you
are? Why are you doing what you're
doing? Why are you here on this podcast
today? Other than giving me your
jacket? So that I wasn't cold and
cranky. You're welcome, you.
Thank you so much. Hi guys, thanks Kristoff and I
like cilantro for hosting me. And and I guess likewise, you
know, we're from the western part of Canada.
So we don't get a lot of chances to come out to Toronto and
definitely don't get to come out to Tech conferences like
Collision. So it's been a really good
experience the last couple of days very serendipitous meetings
and overall I think why I'm here is probably, because you're the
only other two people in the city that could geek out about
climate change and The technical facets of that the way I'd like
to but to give you an idea of the story.
So I'm from India, originally moved around a lot and actually
grew up in Kuwait. I moved out there when I was
eight. So I've been through my family
exposed to oil and gas my entire life and that's really where I
thought was going and then went to Atlanta, Georgia Tech for my
undergrad moved out to Canada thereafter like in 2010 right at
the end of the mortgage crisis and as luck would have it
somehow got to 60 year olds in the I'll patch to start a clean
tech company with me in 2014. So it's been an interesting ride
and I think what's been really encouraging is to see the level
of awareness and, and the momentum and motivation that's
coming in with the newer generation.
Like people, you know, basically in our age groups, and frankly,
others as well, but there's definitely kind of a growing
tide around, not just protesting climate change or protesting,
all these things that are happening from what we've done
since the early 1800s but actually taking Tangible steps
to address that and create a closed loop.
So, pretty excited to talk about that.
A bit more in geek out. I love that.
So before you took the stage at the planet text age and
collision yesterday Minister, Catherine McKenna was onstage.
She's the minister of environment and climate, right?
That's Canada. And I was kind of grumpily and
like, all right, I don't want to be in another Tech conference.
I just was been on the road, I think I've been in Canada, it
feels like all month and I was just a Montrell but she was just
so I just so grateful for her presence because she was named
dropping things. Like I think she might have even
mentioned you guys, and other carbon capture or carbon just
solution provider. She said, she says, this is the
time we have to act on climate now and that made me feel
really, I don't know. Welcomed, like so I went down
and hunt her down behind stage. It wouldn't talk to her like he
did with me, I guess. Yeah, I did.
Yes. I'm tender moment.
I thought you were going to say that.
One of the things that you told me last night was like, She was
like it's you guys, the technology providers the
entrepreneurs who are going to get this, right?
You're going to figure it out, right?
And she's like, we need you. So, thank you, mr.
McKenna, if you ever hear this because that gave me the
empowerment to say, okay, I really think we have a good idea
and we just need to share that with you.
So I went up to her how to brief conversation because her staff
was rushing her away to a press conference.
But anyways, the point is solution providers and you are
one of those solution providers. So, I do agree with you, we need
to just while protesting and bringing awareness is important.
It is also very important to say, okay, well now what you got
us riled up and angry and wanting to act.
How what is the agency that we can take?
So why don't you tell us a little bit about carbon
upcycling? Yeah, no.
And that's an excellent point, I think, one of the challenges and
I guess being trained as an engineer, you're always taught
to think about things in Practical terms and I think the
idea is to be able to channel some of that movement and
motivation. Towards something that's
actually productive and long-lasting, right?
Like you don't just want to get worked up one day and lose that
over a day or two. But basically, what we've done
is started the company in 2014 with the intent of basically
taking pollution and creating the materials of tomorrow.
So one of the things that we've said is using today's pollution
to make the materials of tomorrow, and and we think that
the way to do that is not to take a traditional kind of
logical pathway around. How to tackle CO2.
So you know to start the No Doubt session here.
You know, carbon dioxide is a very stable molecule, right?
Like it's got two double bonds from chemistry back in high
school, you can remember, double bond is a covalent ionic
actually doesn't matter by definition.
I think, you know, there's ions that are being transferred, but
the challenge is the fact that everything that we burn becomes
CO2 for a reason like just like humans nature takes the path of
least resistance. And CO2 is the most stable thing
we can produce from hydrocarbons.
And so since the 1820s, when the first locomotive and the first
industrial engine was produced back in the UK, we've been
burning coal. We've been burning wood even
before that for thousands of years and all of that is been in
this uncontrolled Loop like feeding the atmosphere.
And so the challenge that we have now and and how people are
looking at renewable energy, as kind of being this godsend,
that's going to solve all of this is I think what we need to
keep in mind is the most efficient engines.
We make right now or less than 40 percent efficient, you need
to essentially reverse. All of the emissions from 1820
on with renewable energy, that we're going to produce between
now and twenty one hundred. And some of the new ipcc Reports
say that even that won't be enough like we are already
Beyond, you know, just reducing those emissions.
We have to actually remove some of the stuff that's already out
there so yeah, yeah because also I don't love it when people just
talk about efficiency and like oh let's improve the efficiency
and get more out of Of the carbon we use?
Well, yeah, that's part of it. But it's not the whole story
because you could be super efficient, but then everybody
all of a sudden is burning everything.
And then you still like if you scale up the magnitude but
you're more efficient with, it doesn't really solve the
outcome, which is decreasing total CO2.
That's right, right? And that can be the jevons
Paradox, right? So if you get more efficient,
and actually can use more energy than you're going to, just like
fuel economy and cars, like the more fuel-efficient cars, get
the more we drive, the bigger engines, we get everyone now has
an SUV instead of a A small Ford Focus doesn't change the
outcome. Yeah.
Okay so we're eight minutes and and I have no idea what carbon
upcycling Technologies does but I want to zero in on a word
upcycling. That's like the stepsister that
we don't talk about of recycling but like it seems like that's
core to what your technology is about.
Yeah, we're hoping that you know up cycling has a Cinderella
moment sometime in the future but you're right.
I think essentially what we do is we fix carbon emissions into
a solid product. So we need a second feedstock.
That's A cheaply and abundantly available so we can make fly ash
from coal. Power plants from would plants
incinerators essentially that burn sawdust and Pulp we can
take coal petroleum Coke. We can essentially put that into
a reactor with CO2 activate that so that it acts as a sponge for
the CO2. And what we've shown over the
last four or five years is that, that activation and that gluing
process essentially chemical adsorption for the legendary
ocean with the D adsorption with Addie.
Yes, that takes a lot less energy than Reducing CO2.
Meaning converting it into something like syngas or a
precursor for a biofuel or bioplastic.
So from an energy standpoint, you're not anymore.
Kind of going back, you're not trying to convert that CO2 back
into a hydrocarbon, your rather just gluing it onto something
else. That's really abundantly
available. And what we found through our
work is that as this material absorbs CO2, the actual physical
characteristics of that material changes.
So it ends up becoming a nanomaterial meaning instead.
Being somewhat similar to a strand of hair which is about 10
microns. It'll be a thousand times
thinner than this, the thinnest kind of hair you might find and
at that level, these things act differently.
So these materials once they get to that Dimension can be used in
materials like Plastics and concrete and Coatings even a
solar cells and actually improve the performance of what they do.
And so this is what we see is almost like a cheat code, right?
Like we think that we don't just have to look at Carbon emissions
as kind of a problem within it. We need to combine that problem
with the bigger problem of how efficient are we with our
materials? And we think that by bridging
that using this kind of a technology, we're helping people
make behaviourally, kind of astute choices, and, and become
more efficient day-to-day. And we're helping remove carbon
in the atmosphere, because it's acting as a, as a good
ingredient for our technology. So I think I'm tracking that
makes sense. You've got some adsorption
process. You're able to make this new
material to To change the materials that you can create
new materials, right? And so but you talked about
individuals but also businesses. What exactly is your business
model at? What are you guys working on?
Yeah, so we are in industrial technology like we think that
the problem of carbon emissions is at least in part because of
industrial emissions and scale up.
And so we think that the solution at least in some part
has to be industrial. So we have basically reactor, we
have one up in the north west of Calgary whenever you guys Brave
the cold and come out there, no. All you come out in July When
it's nice and warm, I just got cranky.
I mentioned the jacket that we were outside waiting for a lift
and I got really cranky guys. I'm from Miami.
I don't like the cold. I'm ready.
Canadians out here. It was actually kind of a
lukewarm day. Yeah, whatever.
This is the girl from Miami. Yeah.
But yeah like you know, so we've got a unit right now up in
Calgary which is literally about 20 feet long and about 7 feet in
diameter. So it's a large unit and that
can capture roughly 100 kg of CO2 a day and produce a ton of
XO 1,000 kilos of product. We're competing in the carbon X
prize and we're scaling that up and are there seven times.
So by the end of this year we'll have something slightly bigger
than that. And essentially our business
model is to show that this technology is D.
Risked enough that very very large operators.
Like cement companies, infrastructure companies
companies that make Plastics at scale.
For example, can essentially say look like we know that there is
a stable source for this, this can scale viably for use around
the world and then Since the technology to them.
So that they put this as part of their own operations or
potentially become a vendor to them directly.
So you were telling me a little bit yesterday about some process
or Pilot that you're about to do with creating products.
Can you talk about that? Yeah.
So at the carbon conversion Center in Alberta were
essentially scaling with the knowledge that there are a
couple of concrete companies locally that have committed to
using our product. If we can churn out the scale
that we're currently, Anticipating.
So the idea there is to show from start to finish that we're
taking carbon from a polluting Source, like a natural gas power
plant. We're taking a slipstream off of
that converting that carbon directly into the solid form and
then selling it to a local construction company so that
they can use it in projects around the downtown core.
What is that replacing of what they were currently using?
In this instance, our objective is to replace cement and
concrete. Yeah.
What does that total decrease? Just to give us a paint.
The Broader picture here, the concrete that's coming out of
carbon up, cycling that you guys are producing versus
conventional concrete. Is it sequestering Carbon on net
if not what is the carbon saved or voided that we're getting so
cement currently on a global scale accounts for about eight
percent of the global emissions. So 34 gigatons you're talking
about 8% of that coming from production and use of cement.
There's a lot of work recently that cement companies have done.
In to look at secondary cementitious materials, so they
call them sems. So these are other materials
that you can use in place of cement and still get to
something that serves a structural purpose.
One of the key areas of interest is materials like fly out.
So when you burn coal, there were a tease and coal which are
basically minerals that were intricately embedded in the
carbon frame work and they don't burn like there.
There are very stable. Yeah, exactly.
So they get collected in these silos and then companies
concrete companies and sometimes Brokers will sell this fly ash
to local construction companies. So what we have found is that we
can use that fly ash as an adsorbent or a sponge for the
CO2 and in turn improve the performance of that Ash within
the concrete mix. So to give you kind of a rule of
thumb. What we're saying is that based
on the results that we've seen over 2018 with a couple of our
partners, we could potentially reduce the carbon emissions
associated with a cubic meter or cubic yard of concrete by up to
20% by using our technology. Lodging place of what they use
currently. Yeah.
In 20% of eight percent of global emissions is significant
More Than A Drop in a bucket. And one of the things that I
love about your approach is it's not necessarily A do this
because it's good for the environment.
It's do this because it's good for your bottom line.
You're getting a product which is more durable longer-lasting
than you'd be silly. Not to.
Is that generally accurate? We hope so.
You know, every step of the way, we have to keep proving those
assumptions but that's definitely been our driver is
Think that carbon policy writ large, like globally has not
gone far enough to really Drive industrial players to change how
they do business. So in the interim tell policy
catches up or if the global sentiment gets to a point where
there is a carbon tax around the world or something like that.
The onus is on the entrepreneur to make a business case for
today. We can't just keep waiting till
twenty Thirty and say that, you know, everyone's going to like
to Justin Trudeau. And we're going to have a carbon
tax around the world, kind of thing.
So, from our perspective, we have to live In today and we
think that this is really the only way to gain and keep
interest of some of the incumbents that dominate the
industry. There are so many like little
trails and bathe that you have laid out for me.
So I'm going to keep with the most common thread.
The recent one was the politics side.
Christiana figueres. Was there at the event yesterday
and she took stage, but before she took stage, I love that
Collision did this. They did like they have a really
small, like intimate open sir. On the middle of this exhibition
circle of benches and have Q&A stage.
She came on and we got there early enough that we were able
to Kristoff and I sit there and then asked for the mic, maybe
three questions were asked was 30 minutes.
And the one that I asked her was, what is it that we can do
these entrepreneurs that are providing Solutions and can act
really quickly? Really nimbly, how do we
interact best with policymakers and the private sector?
Who move a little slower policymakers way?
Slower than Private sector a little faster than that and then
you have these boots on the ground, entrepreneurs, how do we
do that? And she painted this picture
that I thought was helpful for me interested in your take
Kristoff, which is okay. Well, the Paris agreement came
out after the private sector was kind of saying we need something
more certain we need to have a more concrete that we can act on
and then the politicians came together and worked on the Paris
agreement. And now she said it, she said
it's a spiral that's building up so it might be coming back
around again. Which is how did the
entrepreneurs then work with the private sector?
And then Loop it back to the policymakers that we build on
our policies. So given that in mind, what
might policy be in the next run that can enable you guys some
more really right off the bat. And this is something that we
thought about a bit. If every government said that
10% of their infrastructure spending or procurement was
focused on solutions, that have a net carbon benefit relative to
what they use currently adding that would be some of the most
Reverse practical, I guess, change that would really speed
things up because there's not enough capacity in the carbon
utilization or just in the green clean tech space, in general, to
even meet that demand, like that would still need a surge of
activity. It would, it would drive a lot
of innovation and scale, but that would be enough that it
would make a lot of these companies get past that startup
level. Get into the growth stage and
become well-established companies in their own, right?
So it's a calculated. You know, you don't have to
change everything all at once. And this is actually something I
really admire about the Rocky Mountain Institute like the
Amory Lovins crew is outstanding and how they talk about
pragmatic Progressive changes and how you know if you did ten
percent one year and you just build compound interest on a
scent. What?
So let's say, 10% of all the procurement that people do it on
construction. How to component that they said
requires a carbon negative solution or a carbon negative
element. So if 10% of all roads in
California, Ten percent of all the construction projects are
public publicly funded construction projects in Canada.
Suddenly, we're introducing carbon Tech or, you know, some
kind of Green Technology that would move the needle quite
significantly and then you can build on that every year.
You know, nuts that forward and you know it's a risk but it's
calculated and it's significant in terms of the market potential
that it generates right away. I like we're saying I want to
spill out a little bit and respond to some of the things
you're saying and then I said some of the things you were
saying Alessandra first, a quibble.
I don't like considering your technology.
Carbon - thank you so much Kristoff.
I'm like, holding myself back because because it is reducing
the flow of carbon to the atmosphere, but it's not when I
think carbon - then I think taking it back out of the
atmosphere. So this is a way to reduce and
to be quite honest. I hope it doesn't catch on in
the cement industry because until the cement industry has
found a way on net to get access.
As CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in the product, I don't
consider it carbon-. However, I do 100% commend
everything that you're doing as getting the pollutant out of the
supply chain. And so, in your policy, I'm so
on board because it's like, what do we need to do to actually
solve climate change? We need to reduce the flow of
carbon to the atmosphere. We need to retain the carbon in
the stocks where it is and we need to remove the excess and
all of that can be done when we're focused on actually
reducing the pollutant. You're so it's like they're
these existing cement plants. People are always going to use
cement you know we think of like where does that 8%?
Come a lot of it comes from making the clinker right, which
we didn't even talk about, but you have to somehow get the lime
out of the Limestone because that's what binds all this
together. They're interesting ideas around
how to reduce the carbon there and certainly Pro that the other
direction where I wanted to go to is that absolutely like
things change slowly and things need to be proven at scale and
So, you were at one point, a bright-eyed PhD student at
Georgia Tech. I did my undergrad there
actually as well, cool, okay as well or wait.
So yeah, I actually quit my Master's.
I haven't actually done. Grad school Masters drop out
even better. You know that that's a sign of
like true dedication to working on Solutions.
But anyway you were connected to things that happened at the lab
scale and then just going something up that works at Point
1. Ton a day scale which is
capturing Slipstream which basically for those who don't
know what a slipstream is you're connected to a power plant which
is spewing out, a bunch of pollution and you grab a bit of
that and then figure out how to do things with it in order to
make a viable product and part of the learning along that way,
is how can we do more of that? But let's let's throw some hard
cold map out there. A typical coal-fired power,
plant emits 20,000 tons of CO2 a day.
Alright? And so, I guess this is a many
part question, but I mean, it's kind of in the spirit of first
of all, Cole's going to go away. Maybe it's going away more
quickly than we thought it would.
And that's great because we need to get carbon out of the supply
chain and maybe find ways to do natural gas, maybe you find
other metallurgical coal which is by the way everyone who's
very Pro solar always forgets this like you need to burn coal
to make solar, it's metallurgical coal.
So like stop saying, solars, 100%, carbon free.
It isn't. Okay.
I'm just feeling right now because it's been a long day.
So, you want to scale up, but if you're dealing with a full like
gigawatt size, coal-fired power plant, you have 80,000 tons
needed to do something with and so, is that even the right scale
on? Are you better off at cement
plants? Are there variations of where
we're all this fits? But it's one of those questions
like how is this all going to fit and is it as good as it
seems to be or not? Yeah, so I'm probably going to
respond with this repeal of my own but very firstly, I think
the point that you made about the carbon - peace.
I don't know if the right terminology would be to say
carbon efficient. But I think it is very important
and this is actually a pet peeve of mine.
In the sense that I think all of us in this small field is
growing need to come up with a terminology that we all agree
on. Because I think the point you
made is an excellent one. I do agree with you that this is
not a carbon - technology if you think about it from that
technical standpoint. However, when we're going out
and pitching and there's a broad set of audience in the field,
it's sometimes dilutes the Precision of the words that we
use and I think as a field if we started to study Other days that
that would be a service to everyone.
So I commend you for correcting me on that.
And I would say, you know, I would say because it's better
than business as usual and maybe carbon efficient or something
along those lines. Might be a better way to show
where we fit having said all that I think to get to your
question about. How do you tackle something of
the scale of what a conventional Coal Power Plant does, I'll go
back to something. I've heard Amory Lovins say, I'm
not sure if he's taking it from something, but he says when you
can't solve a problem with in a box you have to make the Box
bigger and this Might also be something Einstein said
actually, but one of the interesting things about that is
we do think that some of these points were submissions in terms
of just the carbon emissions at that specific area,
geographically spatially is a really big problem and probably
the only way that you can get two hundred percent reduction of
that twenty thousand tons is by using electrochemical method.
So you have to essentially reverse combustion or reverse,
the oxidation of carbon, like you have to somehow go back to
something like a fuel or something like that.
And We think that that can only happen if there's adoption of
renewable at scale so much more practical Target before, you
know Renewables, take over if ever is to shoot for a
meaningful reduction in that 20,000 tons.
So from our perspective for roughly speaking, there's only
about a ton or so fly ash produced for every 10 or 20,
tons of CO2 depending on how efficient your processes and how
contaminated your coal seam is just geologically speaking.
So the math, in our case, will never ever get even remotely
close. Looks like we'll be at best,
maybe capturing 5,000 or 6,000 of that. 20,000 tons a day with
the absorption system that we have.
What we're saying though. Is that if that fly ash, once it
captures, you know, ten twenty, thirty percent of that.
CO2 is now going in and on the back end replacing something
like cement, which has a carbon emission factor of .8 or Point,
85, kg per kg of cement. Now, you're getting a knock-on
benefit that adds on to what you did on that. 10.
So from my perspective I think you know a lot of how you answer
a question is determined by how the question is asked?
And and we don't think that the way to tackle, 34 Giga tons is
to pinpoint every single place that has twenty thousand or
hundred thousand or million tons of CO2.
It's to look at the entire society and say where can we
become more sustainable with our use of concrete?
Where can we be more useful with some of the daily materials that
we use? Can we increase the life cycle
so that instead of having To do something every day.
We can do it every two days or three days and, and taking that
systemic approach is a much more effective way of creating change
and, and also more Equitable way where everyone can play a part
in our opinion, or in my opinion.
Because if we're going to keep targeting specific areas and
specific players that are, you know, they're not around to
admit like you know, if a cement plant today could wave a magic
wand and get rid of all their emissions.
There's no reason why they wouldn't.
Like it doesn't serve any purpose except to meet a demand
that our own Society is created and so instead of villainizing
them and I'm focusing on them, I think taking a systems kind of
wide approach is probably a lot more effective and one of the
things that I guess from a tangible perspective like carbon
efficient Technologies are in General, trying to trying to
facilitate totally Talk to us about manholes.
Yeah. So it's I just wanted to say I
kind of just soft and be our voice.
Yeah I can't follow that up so I'll stick to my normal voice.
Yeah. So it's been interesting for us
like the journey that we've taken the nanomaterials that
were making have a range of different applications and and
one of the things I was told to us early on is like we're
basically a solution looking for a problem.
And so through the trade Commissioners Office, that the
Canadians run, In Denver, we got connected to a company and
infrastructure company that makes manholes in grease
interceptors. So these are tanks at the back
of any fast food joint, you hit up at the back of the kitchen
under the sink. They'll usually have a concrete
or fiberglass tank, that stores a lot of the oils and grease
that came from the fires and things like that.
And these oils carry microbes. That essentially create hydrogen
sulfide and sulfuric acid, which can eat through concrete, pretty
radically, and very, very kind of in an accelerated fashion.
So what this, He was looking for is a cost-effective way to make
these tanks last longer. They said that they were going
out to a couple of these joints and the customer said, nah, you
know, we don't want to use concrete anymore.
We'll use something that's four five.
Seven times more expensive, but we know it last longer because
it's, it's essentially corrosion-proof.
So the, the alternative that the concrete guys were looking for
is some kind of a surface treatment, basically a paint
that they could apply to their concrete tanks to provide a
corrosion barrier. So through 2016, we work with
this company in Denver. They gave us A lot of Market
feedback they give us kind of these very stringent guidelines
for what they would pay and how they want to apply it.
And just in in the fall of 2017, right?
Before Halloween, we went down, we coded a couple of Tanks.
One of them got installed at a Red Lobster.
Another at a Dunkin Donuts on the opposite Coast when
infinitely in one in Portland, and they started buying that
product commercially since April of that year.
So it was, It was kind of an interesting story in the sense
that we've This carbon derived coding which we call the alpha
carbon product line and it's being used in some of the
greasiest grease interceptors. You might see in the world but
not the sexiest way to start making a steak for carbon Tech
and things like that. But it was practical, it's being
driven by economic kind of arguments like, you know, keep
in mind, like most of our work right now.
Incidentally is in Miami and and Miami-Dade is not using us
because well, at least not currently, they're not using us.
Because we're carbon a carbon efficient solution.
But rather because we're cost-effective like we're easy
to apply the customer or the contractor uses us whenever they
can because there's no vocs. There's no volatile organic
content that can create toxic emissions for guys.
Breathing this stuff, it's cheap.
It's sets quickly, so they can be done with the job in four
hours instead of having to take a full day on site.
So there's a few of those practical advantages that are
really kind of Paving the way for this to get adopted and you
know, one of the I've been bugging Kristoff about for the
last four months. Is, how do we get going back to
the point about government procurement and policymakers
that you were talking about Alexandria?
Like, how do we get people to start adopting?
Some of these kind of solutions which are practical like they
were ready, buying this stuff, how do we get them to use
something and accelerate the path to becoming an approved
product vendor? And you know, getting on these
exclusive list that were kind of updated back in 2005?
Well, I'll tell you why Miami-Dade isn't using it
because it's not sexy. Just kidding.
Haha. Love you guys.
I just want to commend you because like what?
You just described from entrepreneur to entrepreneur.
Like you need to find the product Market fit and then you
need to scale from there, and absolutely.
Like, if you work in a government procurement office
right now, and you are looking at, innovative ways to drive
reductions in carbon across a jurisdiction.
Like, you should absolutely get in touch with a perv and carbon
upcycling Technologies and take the risk and figure out that
manholes is just the beginning. And it seems like a first step
in a multi-pronged approach of finding carbon efficient, carbon
beneficial. Maybe we've played around with
that, not sure carbon reductive, I don't know, not yet carbon -,
but whatever carbon Tech products.
So my next question for you is what comes after manholes, what
we're hoping is the concrete itself.
So the unit that we're building out in Calgary and we hope will
be used ubiquitously around the And in five, or ten years is
basically to replace cement with a secondary cementitious
material. If I actually we're talking
about. We think that that's a really
exciting opportunity. We just came back from a
plug-and-play Venturi vent over in Stuttgart in Germany.
Where we met with a couple of car manufacturers, there about
some of the internal car parts that are made of plastic.
And how do we get some of these carbon embedded additives, like
ours into some of those parts to reduce the footprint and
potentially to improve performance as well?
So you know, really Going back to the point that you were
making Kristoff about Market. Pull, we can only kind of direct
our sales to see where the winds blowing and and use it.
Well, so where this goes, if you'd asked me that question,
six months ago, you said absolutely plastic like, that's
where we're going. And the Winds of slow down on
that front for his in the last like a line out of the graduate.
But I think what we're trying to do is really just increase
awareness and and tap into some of the momentum that's building
in this space. But ultimately, what we want to
do is Is show, people tangible examples of carbon being
sequestered into a real product. We think that that's going to
really initiate a whole bunch of conversations and creative
thoughts that maybe aren't that accessible today.
And and you know, if that does, you know, spurt some kind of
momentum and conversations that could potentially go towards the
upward spiral that you're talking about Alexandra.
Like we think that we need to make this accessible to people
like we need to make it real and and that's The biggest challenge
in the is climate change or you know, global warming kind of
feel writ large is how do you make this an urgent problem and
how do you give them actionable things that they can do so that,
you know, people don't just feel powerless and go back to
watching Netflix or something, right?
I think it's beautiful. What you're, what you're saying,
because the way that I'm seeing it is we have to think about
carbon and atmosphere carbon from different approaches,
right? There's okay, we we just Don't
admit, right? We stopped emitting more then
there's okay. We reuse it as much as we can.
We upcycle we like extend the lifespan of that, CO2 molecule
or carbon molecule, right? Because it goes from gaseous
State solid and we just keep cycling through that.
And then we also for a period of time to restore to healthy
levels, maybe 300 parts per million.
We would have to remove more than we're reusing or emitting
and this Vision that we see at norias.
Like yeah we're just going to get Order and not nor itself.
But us as a species smarter and more adaptive and more creative
and Innovative with, how are we managing our carbon stock in the
atmosphere and then someone gave me a really good question the
other day and kind of poking me but it was a good one which is
like how do you know 300 parts per million is the right one?
I don't know. But like well it could be more
than I could be that you're right, who knows.
Personally I just believe we've got about a few Decades of
sequestration that we have to do before we can figure that out.
But that would be a lovely. Problem to have, which is
figuring out when do we stop? And what is the safe level of
carbon dioxide that? We're like, the thermostat that
we're setting for our atmosphere.
Yeah, I had a similar experience in a lift to where the rioters
like what if you remove all the carbon to the atmosphere is like
that. It's not going to happen but
well that's what we want. We need, it's like oxygen and
nitrogen, it's in a balance, right?
We need to make sure that it's in the balance that we involved,
too, and that the planet has had, before we started messing
with it, we've brought up this quote before Or, but I want to
say it again because this guy is such a Visionary Buckminster
Fuller who, at one point wrote pollution is nothing, but
resources were not harvesting and it I think that's true to a
lot of some of the efforts that people like you who are on the
good side of finding value from pollution and then converting
that into things that sequester CO2.
It's not all Rosy though and that's why life cycles are
really important. Sometimes you might be doing
something that actually consumes a boatload of energy and is
adding all this Additional load onto a graded.
Maybe you need to burn even more fossil fuels.
So I'm just kind of lay the bait and we'll see how much of it.
You take approve, but I'm starving.
So. All right.
Yeah my go. Well what matters when you're
doing life cycles on carbon accounting?
When it really talks about like pollution to Value like what
should one think about and what are some of the best examples
you can? Cite yourself is the best
example. But what are some of the worst
examples to Yeah I'm definitely not going to cite yourselves as
a good or bad case. But what I will say is that
generally speaking it's not rocket science, right?
Like ultimately everything has a mass and energy balance and
ultimately what you want to show is that you're somehow creating
a valuable product without creating enough of a cider
by-product which is actually negating the positive impact of
what you did. So you don't want to solve
cancer and cause Alzheimer's, or you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, you can trade one problem for another look at the
net benefit or the net harm. Exactly.
Yes. You have to look at the full
picture, you have to be very quick just really hard to
discern where that control volume is.
So thank you very simple, engineering a few, They're
bringing back some bad memories from Tech right now.
But all right, he dropped out for a reason.
Yeah. You know, you mentioned the
ambition for dropping out. I think there's other reasons,
like supervisors and All that stuff as well but I think
generally speaking, one of the things that you want to look for
is what are the key assumptions that went into building a model,
right? And so if people are making
claims around the full use of renewable energy that has
absolutely zero carbon equivalency associated with it,
that's good. But, you know, it's not
necessarily applicable in most jurisdictions around the world
currently. Now, over time, it was
interesting actually at the Bloomberg conference in New
York. April last year, I got to talk
to Amory Lovins about this one-on-one.
And I've been kind of having a fanboy thing for him for like
years, and that's my him last week and I wasn't going to say
anything. But you've mentioned him like
four times on this bad guys. I love the guys, he's a
character and he's been pitching in the Aviation Space.
This like new sustainable Aviation fuels like offset
credit that he is saying is truly additional.
So I don't know much about that. Yeah, we're coming for you Amory
Lovins. That's such a cool first name.
By the way, it is cause anyone. In a memory like but in any case
I think going back with a graph. Yeah, but it's gonna say, is in
the current environment there is a possibility that, you know, if
they're trans keep growing and wind and solar and stuff gets
adopted, there is gonna be a lot of off peak power, so there's
going to be a lot more capacity to produce at times that we're
not using it and we can use that excess capacity towards
technologies that really do need a carbon-free electricity source
to make life cycle sense. So for example, if you reverse
Thing combustion. So if you're making a fuel out
of CO2, you essentially need to put in all the energy that you
got by burning the fuel in the first place, plus some more
because you're not going to be 100% efficient, right?
So the only way to close that Loop is by using wind or solar
or some kind of maybe even nuclear, but you have to use an
energy source that has no carbon emissions associated with it and
then reverse combustion, like, whatever it is, whether it's at
a car scale or an industrial 20000 ton.
Coal Power Plant scale, right? And So, just to put that in
layman's terms a little bit more, what that means is, it's
not sunny all the time. It's not windy all the time in
the times where it is and there's all this Excess power on
the grid. You can zap CO2 with electricity
which splits it into Co and zap water, and that gets uh has and
then you have the cso's and H's which are the building blocks to
make liquid hydrocarbons, and you should activate those
reactions. When you have that Excess power
to create this carbon neutral Fuel.
And if you don't then Actually, you're pulling a whole bunch of
extra energy onto the grid to make a carbon neutral Fuel.
And you may have been better off, not making that carbon
neutral fuel in the first place. That's probably the best way
I've ever heard that said, that's really well done.
But and and yeah I think the point is you can't burn the fuel
in an internal combustion engine or coal or gas power plant, and
then somehow expect a reverse that using that same energy
source that you just got that CO2 from You Catches reverse
that and expect to be whole. There's always lost Is like
efficiency isn't perfect beautiful laws of
thermodynamics. Exactly.
And and you know, it's interesting because a lot of
people talk about catalytic activity and catalysts one of
the analogies we've used in the past is a catalyst is like an
elevator replacing a stairwell. You're still doing all the work
to get up to that level, you're just doing it faster, but it
doesn't make that, you know, second floor any closer to the
first. So you're still spending the
same amount of energy. You're just being with faster.
I getting their rights when accelerators like putting your
pedal on the gas. It's Necessarily making your,
you know, the conference center, any closer to the Airbnb?
That, I don't love that analogy because there's like losses and
efficiencies and like how fast you speed.
But yeah, I get you, I kept yeah.
Mentor, I'll have to defer to Kristoff for some better
examples here, but the point that I'm making I think just
going back to the life cycle piece, is that I think Gary is a
need, especially given that carbon removal is only kind of a
new term that's beginning to be thrown around a bit more.
Like there's more awareness about it.
Now than there was even 12 months ago.
And so there is a very, very urgent need in my opinion to
create a bunch of standardization.
I mean, we talked about terminology earlier and even
more importantly, I would say around.
How do you draw those control volumes?
Like how do you draw a box around?
What this process does you know if you're using a feedstock that
needs supercritical CO2 like liquid CO2 that needs to be
cooled and compressed and all this energy needs to be spent to
get it to that level versus a technology that doesn't need
that. There were distinctions there
and they need to be clearly laid out and there has to be almost a
governing body or some kind of a resource that can look at these
and compare them on an apples-to-apples basis.
And if we do that as a system or an ecosystem, right?
Large, I think that will put us in a much better position both
in terms of making meaningful, change and doing things which
are not like seemingly good, but actually not doing that well and
then also getting us credibility with You know, especially in the
era of fake news and all that. Like the last thing you want to
do is go out there saying we're going to solve climate change
and two years later. It's like man, like if someone
had just done the LCA on that that way of never flown, right?
Yeah, I think this, this whole end of the conversation for me
is resonating a lot. Because last week when I was in
Montreal and did a quick video, French accent.
Well, thank you. Yeah.
I studied when I was in college, anyways, I did a quick little
video for LinkedIn. I try to do these great way to
engage with people. And one of the speaker's was
talking on, circularity Philippe Fanta and we did a quick video
and he talked about what carbon engineering students,
essentially capturing carbon and creating jet fuels.
And if I understand correctly, that would be a carbon -
technology. No no, no.
Because you're taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
You are taking hopefully hydropower, which it seems like
they're using. But yeah, they just actually on
this will be old news by the time.
This podcast goes live but they have a plant that's going up in
Texas but that fuel When they burn, it goes back into the
atmosphere. So that's just carbon neutral
carbon cycling. It's stifling, they call it
ultra low carbon fuels because they also are using a natural
gas-fired power plant. So I think they do a full honest
life cycle. Anyway, I'm distracting that'll
back so so I but I got comments. The first coming I got was from
Nikki from origin power and she's like, you know, be careful
because you could disparage the industry by saying that this is
gonna like actually impact. And at first, like I'm Saying,
and I'm rereading this. I reached out to Nikki.
Thanks Nikki for listening. And we chatted privately for a
bit and she's like, yeah, it depends on the energy source.
So so just exactly what you're saying and I taken that lesson
lesson learned and I probably should have asked it's hard when
you're doing a quick one-minute video.
Maybe I'll do it two or three minutes instead and say okay but
you know given certain context because, you know, we talked
about this, all the time. We talk about vegetarian versus
meeting, and it's not all the same, it's not bad, it's all
good. It's really depends.
And so, So depends on the energy source that you are using to
supply that conversion of gaseous, CO2 into this new fuel
or new product. And so if it's coming from a
little carbon Source, then, yes, you might be getting the
outcomes that you want, which is decreasing.
The total amount of CO2 that you're admitting to create this
product or or what have you but everything needs context and
apart from that piece that you just alluded on.
I think the other thing that we're talking about on the lift
right here, Was the importance of using those assumptions at
one state? So when you're at the lab scale,
the bench scale, right? And then as you scale those
assumptions need to reflect that scale as well.
So you can't just keep using the same assumptions that you used
in a bench scale system in DC, where it is, all Hydro, right?
And you can credibly say that's all clean when you're scaling.
And if that changes in context, as you said, the assumptions
need to reflect that. And, you know, Carbon
engineering is actually an excellent example of people that
do that. Ooh, that well, and they've been
very transparent about it. And I think that's a great lead
for the rest of us to follow, you know, I think that is a
perfect. Like, we are closing the circle
now and that's because we're talking.
Now, on the meta level when it comes to constraints and lab
scale, and, and these systems and outcomes.
But it goes back to what you were saying in the beginning.
Like okay, well, now you've got these nanomaterials, and these
nanomaterials, because they're so small, you can treat them
differently, you can use them in different ways.
So really just like in physics and politics, you have to look
at the scale and Have to reassess after certain kind of
micro and macro boundaries are crossed and realize, okay?
Now it's a whole, another level quantum.
Physics is a whole new realm like things.
The laws of Newtonian physics don't apply?
Yeah, we can't solve a problem. That's been growing over 200
years in the next 30 by thinking about them the same way that we
created those problems in the first place like we have to
think about them differently. And that means, I mean, you
know, I used to game either Bucky Fuller, quote there, Is
it? Yeah, well, I'm glad you
credited because I didn't want to place your eyes but but yeah.
Like, I think, you know, any of us that were like real time
strategy players like Age of Empires and stuff like that kind
of love that game. I used to want a good throwback.
Yeah. And World of Warcraft and stuff
too. But the thing is one of the
things you love and games like that is when you have a cheat
code to pull on and and unfortunately, the place we're
at today and, you know, you talked a little bit about kind
of setting expectations earlier, right?
Like about how do you get policy makers and entrepreneurs and
Nationals on the all on the same page.
I think similar to the question that you asked about like, what
kind of stuff should we do and what are our options.
You know, there are people out there that are still not
convinced that climate change is real or that it's man-made.
I think ultimately we just have to say, look change is good.
As long as it's happening at a rate that we can keep up with.
And so, regardless of whether it's man-made or not, regardless
of whether, you know, some of these erratic weather activities
and climate activities are If creatable to like human
behavior, I think we have to reach a consensus and say things
are changing way faster than we're used to.
So let's become more resilient, let's become smarter and what we
do and find consensus like instead of picking fights.
I mean, you know, one of the things that came to mind earlier
when you talked about kind of that difference between carbon
negative. And carbon efficient is I was
thinking earlier, like, we had a chance.
This was about 12 or 16 months ago, and Scott Pruitt was still
heading up the EPA and he came up to Canada and he wanted A few
Canadian companies to pitch and he said, nah.
Nah, don't talk about carbon like that will never make it
through the shortlist and and one of the things we told to
Meredith who run student energy, Meredith Adler, she was speaking
a few youth entrepreneurs like under the age of 35 to go out
and pitch and and I said you know I'd be I would challenge
myself to be as convincing to Scott Pruett as I would beat a
minister meccano. And and I'm not saying that we
would have but I think in a sense we need some of that
bridging right now like we need people to say These are
practically good things to do and you know it's not enough but
there has to be some consensus on it.
On a fundamental kind of lowest common denominator basis and
then hopefully the progressive people can do more than that but
you know we can't just do it with a minority like we need to
get kind of a swelling like almost to a Tipping Point as
Malcolm Gladwell would put it before.
You accuse me of plagiarizing or anything like that, I would
never. I totally agree and I think
we're getting there. I think it will take a bit more
time. I'm but I do believe that all
the disparate efforts are coming together and if I were to have
my druthers, I would say, just focus on getting carbon out of
the supply chain. Don't let phony emission
reduction certificates that have no, underlying value trade,
destroy those things, the Kyoto Protocol didn't really work.
Nearly did the clean development mechanism.
Zai mean. Good on you for like figuring
out what didn't work United Nations, but like it's time to
remove the excess CO2 from the atmosphere and stop the CO2 from
Getting into the atmosphere in the first place and just focus
on the climate math. So, before I keep ranting on
this subject, I'm going to pass it back to you, approve.
We're getting to the end of the hour.
If people are interested in carbon upcycling Technologies,
they want to follow your progress.
What can they do? What's next?
Yeah, we just got a new website going.
So we actually have something relatively presentable now so
you can check us out at www.minettis.com.
All one word, it's kind of like We Cycling but with up' instead
of the Ari should be easy to spell and we've got a Page as
well. So you can follow us at Carbon
up cycling. But overall, I think one of the
big things is happening for us. Right now is that ramp up for
the carbon X prize competition. So this is the X prize
Foundation out of l.a. is running something similar to the
SpaceX challenge. That a lot more people know
about. And they've already selected the
top 10 companies within the the competition from all around the
world, and they will be announcing the winners of that,
in June next year. So we're quite busy right now.
Working in the relative cold of Calgary to scale up and build a
unit that Enshou carbon going right?
From a flu stack all the way out to an end product.
And yeah, if you guys are ever out near Calgary to visit Bound
for anything like that, come check us out or hit us up.
We'd be happy to host. You thanks again for coming on
and see you next time. Thank you.
Enshou carbon going right? From a flu stack all the way out
to an end product. And yeah, if you guys are ever
out near Calgary to visit Bound for anything like that, come
check us out or hit us up. We'd be happy to host.
You thanks again for coming on and see you next time.
Thank you.