The "Unexpected Perspective" has advanced the idea that if we really want to solve the problem of greenhouse gases, rather than rely upon governmental entities to solve the problem, we should do two things: 1) look to universities, other research institutions, and the private sector for solutions; and 2) look to create a portfolio of solutions, not a single "magic bullet". Yes, governments could play an important role, but mainly by creating policies that foster innovation in the private sector.
This week I offer three more companies that are demonstrating these two points. While the three companies are in widely different fields, each is attempting to make money using what I call a "harvesting" strategy.
The first is a six year old Chicago-based firm called Lanzatech. Lanzatech is a perfect example of the idea that solutions to the carbon problem already exist in Nature, we simply have to discover the solutions and adapt them to the problem at hand. In the case of Lanzatech, the solution lies in the guts of rabbits! What Lanzatech's founders discovered was that a key bacterium in the rabbit gut could convert carbon in the air into other forms of carbon, specifically into ethanol. The company is "harvesting" waste gases into something both useful and profitable.
Jennifer Holmes, the CEO of Lanzatech, uses the analogy of a brewery. Whatever your favorite brew, it is the result of the transformation of a sugary substance called wort into alcohol. The agent of transformation is yeast and fermentation. In Lanzatech's case, the instead of wort, the "feedstock" is industrial gas waste, and instead of yeast, the "agent of transformation" is that special bacterium found in the guts of your favorite bunny rabbit.
Following Lanzatech's logic, all of the excess carbon dioxide we're dumping into the air, the byproduct of combustion, could change from a problem to something valuable. Valuable because it becomes the feedstock for making ethanol.
Virtually all of the gasoline produced in the USA today contains some ethanol, usually about ten percent. Originally seen as a way to help solve the problem of lack of oil in the USA, ethanol has instead become a liability. This is because it takes up agricultural acreage, thus driving up the cost of food, and also because of the environmental footprint it creates. Ethanol is not exactly the kind of "alternative" fuel that wind and solar are. By creating ethanol from industrial gas waste, Lanzatech solves two important environmental problems.
Lanzatech has installed its bioreactor technology in a Chinese city to produce ethanol industrial gas waste. It's done something similar at a Belgian steel mill owned by Arcelor-Mittal, the world's largest steelmaker. In Japan it has a pilot program to produce ethanol from garbage. The technology has also been applied to aviation fuel. In the fall of 2018, Virgin Atlantic powered one of its 747's with Lanzatech-created fuel, flying from Orlando to London.
Lanzatech's CEO estimates that if the technology is put in place in all of the largest steel mills in the world – representing about 65% of worldwide steelmaking capacity – it would have the equivalent benefit of taking 55 million automobiles off the road.
The company predicts it can have three plants up and running in the UK by 2025, capable of producing a total of 125 million gallons of aviation fuel/year. Given that in all of 2018 airlines worldwide consumed 94 billion gallons of fuel, that's not a lot, but it's an important beginning.
Lanzatech looks like it will be a high tech startup success. We're accustomed to hearing about start ups that develop revolutionary technologies, but the second company profiled here may actually be more significant. That's because the company will in just three years celebrate its 100th year anniversary. Not only that, but it remains a family business. The idea of a family business, approaching its centenary, as highly innovative sounds quite unusual.
The company is called Freres Lumber and is based in Portland, Oregon. Freres Lumber employs a more conventional "harvesting" strategy, but one that includes an important innovation. What's gotten the company lots of attention recently is called cross laminated timber (CLT).
Cross laminated timber looks like other lumber, except that it has strength and other characteristics that make it suitable as an alternative to concrete and steel. In fact, cross laminated timber can be used to build structures up to 18 stories. From an environmental standpoint, that could be very beneficial, for two reasons. First, concrete and steel create very negative environmental footprints. In fact, both create significant amounts of waste carbon dioxide. On average, 1.83 tons of carbon dioxide are produced for each ton of steel produced. Likewise, concrete production generates about 8% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.
Second, wood is an excellent storehouse of carbon. Substituting wood for concrete and steel has a very positive impact on carbon emissions! Such substitution is certainly not a panacea, but it could be another offering in the portfolio of tools to reduce greenhouse gases.
While Frere Lumber has received recognition for its work with CLT, it can't claim it as a home-grown invention. The technology for cross laminated timber actually came from academia. CLT was first developed and used in Germany and Austria in the early 1990's. An Austrian-born researcher named Gerhard Schickhofer obtained a PhD in 1994 based upon his research in CLT. The Austrians then established the first building guidelines in 2002 based upon that research. Schickhofer, himself, received the Marcus Wallenberg Prize earlier this year for that groundbreaking research. Freres Lumber, however, has improved technology and is moving it beyond Schickhofer's lab to a commercial reality.
The obvious question is, how could lumber have comparable strength and rigidity properties that would make it a good alternative to concrete and steel? The secret is in combining sheets of wood and gluing each sheet at a right angle to the adjacent sheet. Lumber is normally anisotropic, meaning that the properties of the lumber change depending upon the direction to which force is applied. Gluing adjacent sheets together, each at a right angle to the next sheet, overcomes this weakness. It's similar in that regard to plywood except that the sheets are much more durable. Obviously, very durable if such lumber could be used to erect an 18 storey building!
As previously noted, timber is an excellent place to store carbon. After all, it's the result of photosynthesis, wherein plants transform carbon dioxide into wood. As such, a building constructed of cross laminated timber offers the dual benefit of reducing the carbon footprint of concrete and steel, as well as providing a good place to store carbon.
The third example is a company "harvesting" good old fashioned sunlight. What makes it noteworthy is that it adapted an existing carbon reduction strategy to a new market. The company is called Brooklyn Solar Works and is based in Brooklyn, NY. Brooklyn Solar has installed solar panels for homes for a number of years. Home installation of solar panels is hardly newsworthy, but doing the same in apartment buildings is. In fact, Brooklyn Solar has developed technology to facilitate apartment building installations. In a city densely packed with apartment buildings of all shapes and sizes, that's an important innovation.
Brooklyn Solar's solution is to place the solar panels on a nine foot high aluminum frame, which allows an entire flat roof to be covered in solar panels. The canopies, of course, make the panels more expensive than on a typical pitched roof, but it affords a solution to the problem.
The common element for these three companies is the development or adaptation of technology that will help reduce the carbon footprint. In each case the technology was either "home grown" or adapted from academia. More important, each solution involves a form of "harvesting" - waste gas, timber, and sunlight - on a commercial basis, at a profit; and in each case, adding something to the portfolio of solutions to the greenhouse gas problem.
