Tech’s green wave hits rough waters
Tech entrepreneurs have been selling the dream that we can save the planet without changing the way we do things for years, but the current focus on innovation is dividing experts and investors.
The tech industry loves splashy world-saving ideas and spends billions on the hunt for new energy sources, often clashing with calls from activists and experts to simply use less energy.
This week’s Web Summit in Lisbon, one of Europe’s biggest technology events, gave top billing to a Californian company called Twelve, which claims it can make sustainable jet fuel from the carbon dioxide in the air.
“In many ways we mimic trees and plants,” Twelve Etosha Cave co-founder told the audience, describing a process that takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converts it into fuel.
Cave painted a picture of a future where her company’s technology could power long-distance flights and even help exploit the mineral resources on Mars — a utopian vision that has helped her company raise some $650 million.
The interviewer on stage with Cave told her it “sounds like magic”.
Climate expert Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at Lancaster University in Britain, told AFP that world-changing claims about sustainable fuel or new energy sources should be viewed skeptically.
“Everyone is looking for a silver bullet that will save us from having to do anything difficult,” he said.
More generally, the green wave in technology is entering a difficult period.
While Twelve and other major startups are attracting huge investments, Bloomberg recently reported that funding for climate tech was on track to decline by 50 percent this year compared to last year.
– Big losses –
And climate technology has long been subject to the whims of politics and global economic trends.
The current green wave is the second of this century.
The first – now called Clean Tech 1.0 – was promoted by US politician Al Gore, whose calls for funding were met with an estimated $25 billion in investment.
The period ended in 2011, after the global financial crisis put an end to cheap loans and China ramped up its solar panel production, wiping out most U.S. startups and roughly half of investors’ money.
But those investments have not been in vain.
They ushered in an era of cheap solar and wind energy and laid the foundation for the electric vehicle revolution.
Clean Tech 2.0 started around 2018 when companies and governments committed to a carbon-neutral target, set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
However, the US has re-elected Donald Trump as president, with support from many leaders in the technology industry.
Trump – an outspoken climate change denier whose campaign slogan on fossil fuels was “dig baby dig” – withdrew the US from the accord in his first term and analysts believe he will do the same again.
And the global fight against climate change remains fraught, as national leaders meeting for the UN’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan this week were divided over the idea of ditching fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming to be phased out.
– ‘Serious reservations’ –
All this means that climate technology is in a precarious moment, and startups without world-saving stories are doing their best to get financing from a smaller pot.
Web Summit hosted dozens of them, offering everything from blockchain-enabled “virtual power plants” to smart widgets for stopping household leaks.
While some experts are cynical about the usefulness of these “shark tank” style events, Elisabeth Gilmore, a professor of environmental engineering at Carleton University in Canada, said she had no problem with young entrepreneurs making big claims.
“These innovations should raise eyebrows,” she told AFP.
She said events like the Web Summit could focus minds, but warned that entrepreneurs must look beyond the profit motive and create products that help communities.
Berners-Lee wondered whether some of the most eye-catching ideas could be as good as they sounded.
“If these are real solutions that are ready to go, if they are as good as they look, they would scale like crazy,” he said.
Sustainable aviation fuel, he said, was one of the toughest nuts to crack and would require major breakthroughs in storage and energy consumption.
Cave admitted onstage that Twelve needed utility-scale renewables as well as grid power for her company’s factories, though she said these used far less land and energy than biofuels.
More generally, Berners-Lee wondered whether the search for new energy sources should be a goal for humanity at all.
“I would have serious reservations about giving humanity an unlimited energy supply beyond carbon; we are causing enough damage with the energy we already have,” he said.
