Oct 13 2023
How AI could supercharge battery research

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

During one of the final sessions at our ClimateTech event last week, I got to hear about how AI could help develop battery materials for future electric sports cars.  

This came during a discussion with Venkat Viswanathan about the potential for electric aviation—an exciting prospect as well as a huge challenge, given the steep demands on batteries during flight. Today’s batteries simply can’t cut it in the skies. 

In our discussion, Viswanathan said one of the reasons he saw hope for electric aviation is the potential of AI to speed up battery research. In fact, he cofounded a startup called Aionics in 2020 to bring AI into battery development. 

On stage at ClimateTech, Viswanathan announced a new research partnership that he says could make AI a key force in developing future EV batteries. The deal is between Aionics and Cellforce, a German battery maker that’s a subsidiary of Porsche. Aionics will help Cellforce design new electrolyte materials, in the hopes of making better batteries.

I’m still buzzing about this session and all my other chats from ClimateTech, so for the newsletter this week, let’s dive in a bit deeper and see how AI could help drive progress in batteries. 

Hitting the gas

We need better batteries. EVs that can charge faster and hold more energy could help get more fossil-fuel-powered cars off the roads. And for some industries, like aviation, significant technical progress in battery chemistry will be necessary to get newer, cleaner tech off the ground. 

But new batteries dreamed up in a lab have a long journey before they can be produced at large scales. It’s a road that can take well over a decade to traverse. 

During our session at ClimateTech, Viswanathan outlined this problem and pointed to the fitness tracker on his wrist, which contained a battery made by Sila. Its novel anode is made with silicon, which helps pack more energy into the device. Landing on the battery chemistry for this tiny product took over 55,000 iterations, according to the company. 

That’s a pretty typical situation for battery developers—and a big bottleneck for new technologies, said another Aionics’s co-founder, Austin Sendek, in a call before the event. “There’s so much urgency around batteries and climate tech in general … and this trial-and error approach of years past just won’t work,” Sendek says. 

The problem is, there’s an almost unfathomable number of potential materials, and combinations of materials, to use in batteries. Sendek puts the number of commercially- available chemicals that could be used in the billions. “It’s way too many for us to know what to do with,” he says. 

Aionics is working to use AI tools to help researchers find better battery chemistries faster. The company is primarily focusing on electrolyte, the material that shuttles charge around in batteries. “This is a huge opportunity for us to accelerate this whole industry,” Sendek says.

Shifting gears

So how does all this actually work? There’s a wide range of tools under the AI umbrella that Aionics hopes will help make better batteries for future EVs and other applications. 

  1. Machine learning can sort through a wide range of options. Even considering only the chemicals that are used in batteries today, a huge number of combinations are on the table. Machine-learning tools can help design experiments to speed the process of screening these options while optimizing for a desired result. In a recent paper, Viswanathan and coauthors used these tools to find electrolytes that help batteries charge faster, as my colleague James Temple wrote last year.
  2. Generative AI can design new materials. It’s possible to go beyond even the billions of molecules that are available today. Using generative models trained on existing battery materials, Aionics hopes to develop new materials that haven’t been discovered yet. Those molecules can then be added to the pipeline to be synthesized and tested in batteries. The idea is similar to using AI for drug discovery, a topic that my colleague on our AI team, Will Douglas Heaven, covered in depth earlier this year. 
  3. Large language models can help researchers work faster. In another announcement at ClimateTech, Viswanathan shared progress on a large language model that Aionics has developed, called ElectroBot. The model, which is trained on textbooks and published research in electrolyte chemistry, can help answer questions about chemical properties or give suggestions to help solve problems in the lab. These types of AI models often have a problem with “hallucinating,” or generating a response that’s not factually true. The startup is working to combat this in its model with responses that point scientists back to textbooks or published papers. 

As Viswanathan put it on stage, AI could be our best shot at accelerating the battery development timeline. This is an area I’ll definitely be following closely in the future, so stay tuned for more. And in the meantime, check out some of our recent stories on battery materials and AI. 

Related reading

AI and robots can help researchers develop new batteries, as my colleague James Temple covered in a story last year.

Battery materials can seem niche, but they can be crucial to getting better products onto the roads. Read more about how new materials could help you charge your EV faster in this story I wrote earlier this year.

Battery giants like BYD are scaling production at a wild pace, making batteries cheaper across the board. Read more about this company, one of our 15 to watch, in this profile from my colleague Zeyi Yang.

Another thing

In case you weren’t able to join us at ClimateTech this year, here are just a couple of highlights from the show. 

That massive climate bill is still on everyone’s minds over 400 days after it passed in the US. James Temple sat down with environmental policy expert Leah Stokes to talk about this and other key ideas in climate policy. Watch the session here.

We debuted our list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to watch in 2023 on stage. In a special session, MIT Technology Review editor in chief Mat Honan and I spun through all the companies in just six minutes. In case you missed that bit of fun, you can dive into the full list here, and read more about why we decided to put this project together and how we picked the companies here. 

Keeping up with climate  

Oysters could help efforts to restore coastal ecosystems and boost local economies at the same time. This is a great deep dive into the science and politics of the humble oyster. (MIT Technology Review)

A new project will use hydrogen produced using renewable electricity in a power plant. It’s probably not the best use for the fuel, according to energy experts. (Canary Media)

The UN climate meeting is coming up in December in Dubai. Leading the talks is the head of the UAE’s national oil company—a controversial pick, to put it lightly. (The Guardian)

Researchers are racing to map out vast underground fungal networks. The findings could help them understand biodiversity and learn how natural ecosystems can trap and store carbon. (Washington Post)

Nobody can keep up with how fast Tesla is slashing prices. The automaker has sold over 60% of all fully electric vehicles in the US, and legacy automakers like GM and Volkswagen are struggling to keep pace. (Bloomberg)

Just checking in on climate progress: things aren’t moving fast enough. The UN panel on climate change released a special report five years ago laying out the path to keeping warming at less than 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) over preindustrial levels. We’re not on track. (The Messenger) 

Climate change is breaking the insurance industry. Disasters mean sky-high damage costs, which push rates higher. (Grist)

AI could soon use as much electricity as some countries. A new study estimates that by 2027, servers used for AI could use up to 134 terawatt-hours of electricity annually—in the same ballpark as Argentina and Sweden. (New York Times)

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Oct 13 2023
The quest for equitable climate solutions

Sweeping legislation in the US, including the Inflation Reduction Act, is infusing hundreds of billions of dollars into new climate and energy technologies, funding research, development, and implementation. But as the money begins to flow, there are open questions regarding who will benefit most, and who might bear the brunt of unexpected consequences. 

Shalanda Baker, director of the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity at the US Department of Energy, spoke at MIT Technology Review’s ClimateTech event in Cambridge about the need to simultaneously address climate change and equity and the possibility of seeking justice during the energy transition. You can watch her full talk below. 

Afterwards, Baker sat down with us for a conversation about how to distribute the benefits of new technologies and address community concerns around new projects. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. 

In your session, you talked a little bit about these situations where climate change and inequality intersect. Could you give some examples of clear cases where we can achieve progress on addressing climate change and inequality at the same time?

I like to think about the [low-income] tax credit program—it’s a 20% additional tax credit for investments in solar, wind, and clean energy.  

I’m really excited that my office leads that program as the program administrator in partnership with Treasury. And over the last nine months or so, we’ve designed a program that we think will actually move the needle for low-income households, so they’re going to get access to solar and wind through either community energy, rooftop solar, or small-scale wind. 

That access obviously helps to fight the climate crisis while also, if we’re successful, bringing down the overall cost of energy for those folks and actually bringing true economic benefits to those communities.

We think about a lot of clean energy technologies as being good for communities—like, having more access to cheap power is obviously a good thing. But there are also things like the hydrogen hubs or carbon removal, where there might be environmental impacts, especially for projects that still involve fossil fuels. How is your office navigating that and addressing those concerns?  

Your question reminds me of the 1970s, which was the high-water mark for environmental laws and legislation making it to the books, with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. All of these new laws protecting our air and water were beneficial for many, many, many communities around the country. But communities of color, in particular, were saying: “We’re not seeing the benefit of these laws.”

So fast-forward 50 years to the climate movement, where we have this unprecedented legislation, and it’s all to tackle the climate crisis. 

And communities are saying to us, “We’re not going to see the benefits of this locally, even though in the aggregate we may be reducing carbon dioxide emissions. You’ve already been polluting me for 50 years, then you’re going to put carbon dioxide removal technologies in my community and site other facilities that will add more impacts.”

So how do we deal with that? How do we prevent the mistakes of the past? The only way to do it is to hold ourselves accountable, and to hold companies that are availing themselves of taxpayer dollars accountable, through our community benefits planning framework.

We also empower communities to be at the table, not as recipients of information but as partners and experts and negotiators in the room as these technologies are being talked about and as the development impacts are being discussed. And the hope is that they’re going to win this time—that they’re going to get economic development, they’re going to get job creation.

No community is a monolith. But we’re talking to folks to really understand what they need and how we can best provide them with the capacity to be at the table.

There’s been lots of discussion specifically around the planned direct-air-capture hubs in Louisiana and Texas, including recent reporting from E&E News laying out communities’ concerns that they haven’t been consulted. You said that you don’t want communities to be just recipients of information. Do you think that there has been adequate communication engagement as these projects have been announced and the response has started to come out?

We were in many of those communities. When you look at a map of the country where existing fossil-fuel infrastructure is, it’s the Gulf South—outside of New Orleans, South Texas. These are places where we know that if we’re going to fight the climate crisis, we’re going to need to mitigate emissions in those areas.

So my team organized two different roadshows where we brought delegations of DOE colleagues to those places to meet the communities that would likely be impacted by the work that we’re doing.

That created a foundation of relationships and information being shared with those communities. At the time, we didn’t know when and if projects were coming to those communities.

So fast-forward to September, when the direct-air-capture announcements were made. One is going to be in the Corpus Christi area—we were there in April. One is going to be in Lake Charles—we were there in June.

So we had already created relationships, and our colleagues already understood what those communities look like. We had a small meeting with advocates we had met with in both Corpus Christi and Lake Charles, and we said, “These are announcements that are going to be made.”

The developers that were the winners of these awards were charged with doing the engagements on the ground. But we heard in some of those meetings, “This is the first time we’re hearing about this.” So that’s a problem—we understand that.

And then subsequent to that, folks were asking a lot of questions. So now we’re going back to Lake Charles, and we were in Corpus [Christi] a couple of weeks ago, to actually meet with community members and talk to them.

I will say that this is messy. I will also say that we’re building it as we go. We’re teaching a lot from my office to other parts of the agency about how to do community and stakeholder engagement. We have a lot of expertise around the agency, but we’ve never done engagement at this scale. We’ve never been an agency that does industrial development. 

So we’re learning a lot. We’re listening—my ear’s to the ground, the secretary’s ear is to the ground. And we’re operating in real time to try to adjust based on community concerns. And there’s more to come. It’s not the end of the story.

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Oct 8 2023
The businesses changing climate technology

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Awards season is due for a refresh. While you wait to hear who got the nod for the Oscars, Golden Globes, and Emmys, check out MIT Technology Review’s 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. 

We’ve spent nearly half a year working on this new special project, identifying climate tech companies we think are worth paying attention to. These are businesses doing especially innovative work, scaling important technologies, or otherwise making waves. 

The list is finally online—you can check out the whole project here. But before you dive in, I’d love to give you a quick peek at a few of the companies on the list and share why we decided to include them. 

Gogoro

What: Gogoro builds scooters, the batteries that power them, and battery-swapping stations to help riders keep the vehicles on the road. Founded in 2011, the company’s operations are focused in Taiwan, though it’s expanding to new locations quickly. 

The scale of Gogoro’s battery-swapping network is pretty astounding: the company runs 13,000 swapping stations in nine countries. Together, those stations enable up to 400,000 battery swaps every day. 

Battery swapping in electric scooters at this scale is interesting enough on its own, but Gogoro’s smart charging system can also help smooth out demand on the grid. The company charges its batteries during off-peak hours and can even help return power to the grid when demand is highest. 

Why: We often cover the push to electrify everything in the context of full-sized vehicles. But in many parts of the world, the electric revolution is zooming in on two wheels. Only about 14% of new passenger vehicle sales worldwide were electric in 2022, according to data from BloombergNEF. For powered two- and three-wheeled vehicles, the share was 49%. 

Taken together, all electric vehicles on the roads worldwide are displacing about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, compared to if all vehicles were still powered by fossil fuels. Two- and three-wheeled vehicles make up about two-thirds of that, displacing just under 1 million barrels of oil each day. 

In short, the market for smaller vehicles powered by batteries is massive, and Gogoro has established itself as a major player with an innovative way to get more people driving electric. 

Ørsted

What: Ørsted is a key player in renewable energy, particularly in Europe. The company had installed 15.1 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity worldwide as of 2022, and it plans to triple that by 2030. 

Ørsted has been especially central to developing new offshore wind power. The company operates wind farms in Denmark, Germany, and the UK and plans to expand to new markets, including the US. 

Offshore wind tends to be more expensive than both land-based wind power and solar, but it could still play a central role in powering coastal communities. In the US, nearly 80% of electricity demand occurs in coastal states or near the Great Lakes, places where offshore wind could help meet demand. Offshore winds are often stronger and tend to be more consistent than winds on land, providing a more constant electricity supply than solar, for example. 

Why: Ørsted is a great example of a company we included because of its work in scaling existing technologies. It has invested in commercial-scale offshore wind projects and helped expand the supply chains needed to support them. In addition, Ørsted is pushing into new technologies, like fuels that can be made using renewable electricity.

I’m also fascinated by the pivot Ørsted has made over the past 15 years. The company used to primarily operate fossil fuel assets; as of 2008, 85% of its heat and power generation came from fossil fuels. Today, renewables make up 91% of the company’s capacity. 

Blue Frontier

What: Blue Frontier is building a new, more efficient air conditioning system by splitting up the work of cooling and reducing humidity.

The device uses materials called desiccants to suck moisture out of the air, reducing humidity. It then uses a technique called evaporative cooling to lower the temperature. (For more on how it works, check out this story.)

Blue Frontier is still in the early stages of building its technology, with two demonstration units running and a few dozen more planned for 2024. But it says its process is up to three times more efficient than a conventional air conditioner and could cut total energy consumption by AC units by 60%.

Why: We wanted to include at least one company on our list working on adaptation technology: something that helps people deal with the conditions brought on by climate change. Air conditioning fits that bill in a warming world. 

Air conditioning is also a sharp double-edged sword: it makes up about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. With rising temperatures and more people getting access to consistent electricity, power demand for AC around the world could triple between 2016 and 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. So more efficient options, including Blue Frontier’s, could be a major boon in efforts to meet electricity demand around the world.

Related Reading

I don’t want to give away too much more of the list, but we’ve covered a few of the other companies here before. See if you can remember or guess based on these hints—and I’ll link to our previous stories about the companies and their new profiles so you can see if you got it right. 

I visited a high-tech facility for a seemingly low-tech product for a summer edition of this newsletter. [Answer]

Smaller versions of this old technology could help bring it new life, as I wrote about earlier this year. [Answer]

This is the subject of a very recent newsletter, and a perpetual dream in energy. [Answer]

Another thing

The future of urban heating might include an underground technology you’ve never heard of. 

Thermal energy networks provide heating and cooling to multiple buildings using water-source heat pumps. They can be powered either with geothermal or waste heat, and several states across the US are planning or installing them. 

Get all the details about how these networks work, and what role they could play in our energy future, in June Kim’s first story for MIT Technology Review. She’s joining our climate tech team for the next six months as a fellow, so be sure to keep your eyes out for more of her work! 

Keeping up with climate  

If you felt like something was missing this summer, it may have been the surprising lack of issues on the US power grid. Even as the country’s energy demand reached an all-time peak, the lights largely stayed on because of higher rates of renewables, good forecasting, and demand response programs. (Vox)

Many subway flood-protection projects are way behind schedule in New York. That news comes after a wild weekend of flooding in the city. (Bloomberg)

California has taken a big step toward making floating offshore wind a reality by committing to purchase huge amounts of electricity from early-stage projects. (Canary Media)
→ Here’s why the state’s wind boom faces huge engineering hurdles. (MIT Technology Review)

Crabs may not be the heroes we deserve, but they’re the ones we need right now. Scientists are working to build a crab army to help rehabilitate coral reefs off Florida’s coast. (Vox)

Mining accounts for as much as 7% of greenhouse gas emissions, but some copper, lithium, and nickel miners are working to power more of their operations with renewables. (Associated Press)

Michigan is seeing a push for solar energy, including projects that combine solar panels with livestock, like sheep, on one piece of land. Local opposition is slowing things down. (Grist)
→ Here’s why so many places are growing interested in these so-called agrivoltaic projects. (MIT Technology Review)

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Oct 7 2023
Video: Leah Stokes on the challenges ahead for the Inflation Reduction Act

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), often dubbed the “Climate Bill,” was signed into law more than a year ago in the US and catalyzed more than $390 billion of investment in the clean energy sector. But what specific changes has it brought about, and what obstacles remain?

Leah Stokes, an environmental policy professor at UC Santa Barbara who frequently advises Democrats on climate legislation, spoke with James Temple, senior editor for climate and energy, about the IRA’s early impact on the energy transition. Stokes acknowledged significant progress in decarbonization efforts but said there is still much work to be done to make sure that the money is spent well and equitably across various energy sectors.

They also spoke about a recent study led by Stokes, revealing that opposition to new wind projects has been more prevalent in whiter and wealthier communities. You can watch the whole conversation below.

Register now for EmTech MIT, our upcoming conference on innovation and emerging tech, happening Nov. 14-15 2023 on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass.

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Oct 5 2023
2023 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Climeworks and its carbon-sucking fans

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

To prevent catastrophic global warming, we must remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in addition to eliminating fossil fuels. Climeworks is pioneering one of the most promising approaches: direct air capture, in which giant machines suck carbon out of the sky.

Intro

More than any other company, Climeworks is putting direct air capture (DAC) on the map.

Climate models indicate that to cap global warming at well below 2 °C over preindustrial levels, we’ll need to remove gigatons, or billions of tons, of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon-scrubbing machines are an attractive option for doing so because they require far less land than natural solutions like reforestation, and you can more reliably measure how much greenhouse gas is sequestered. But today, so-called DAC technology is in its infancy. 

Climeworks is among the first companies to try to commercialize it. Using air collectors that draw carbon in and trap it on specialized filters, Climeworks is building modular and scalable DAC plants powered by renewable energy. In 2017, the company opened the world’s first commercial DAC plant in Switzerland, which sold captured carbon to customers like Coca-Cola. In 2021, Climeworks launched Orca, the first commercial DAC plant to capture carbon and store it permanently underground, in partnership with Carbfix. 

Earlier this year, Climeworks provided the world’s first carbon removal services using DAC to Microsoft, Shopify, and Stripe.

Key indicators

  • Industry: Carbon removal
  • Founded: 2009
  • Headquarters: Zurich, Switzerland
  • Notable fact: Before Climeworks was sending captured carbon underground for storage, the company was using it to grow tomatoes and cucumbers at a greenhouse near the company’s first commercial plant in Hinwil, Switzerland.

Potential for impact

If widely deployed, DAC technology could permanently reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, by pulling gigatons of carbon out of the air and piping it into underground reservoirs where it is incorporated into rocks.

Through its first commercial plants, Climeworks is doing the early learning necessary for DAC to eventually reach gigaton scales. It’s also demonstrating that the DAC process can be climate friendly. Unlike other flavors of DAC, in which fossil fuels are burned to produce the heat needed to release captured CO2 from a liquid solvent so that it can be stored, Climeworks uses a low-temperature approach that runs entirely on renewable energy. 

And while some companies want to use carbon captured via DAC to pump more oil out of wells (a controversial process known as enhanced oil recovery), Climeworks is permanently storing the greenhouse gas underground.  

Caveats

Still, both high- and low-temperature DAC require large amounts of energy to suck comparatively tiny amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere. This, along with the high up-front cost of building DAC plants, makes the technology expensive. Cost estimates for DAC vary widely, ranging from $200 to more than $1000 per ton of CO2 removed today. Climeworks offered its first customers a sale price of approximately $800 per ton of CO2 removed.

For DAC to reach its full potential, the cost needs to drop significantly. The US government is eyeing a long-term cost target of $100 per ton of CO2 removed, and it’s making investments and offering tax credits to help drive costs down. But a recent study found that even if the industry were operating at gigaton scales, reaching $100 a ton would be very challenging.

When

Climeworks is operating on a small scale today: its Orca plant in Hellisheidi, Iceland, can remove up to 4,000 metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year. But its growth plans are ambitious. Within the next year, it expects to finish construction of its second DAC-plus-storage facility, called Mammoth. Also located in Iceland, Mammoth should have the capacity to pull up to 36,000 metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.

From there, Climeworks plans to go even bigger. By 2030, the company aims to remove more than a million tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. To reach that goal, it plans to launch several commercial DAC projects in the US and other countries in the coming years.

Next steps

To build confidence in its technology, Climeworks must continue to deliver on its early contracts and grow its customer base. The company will likely announce additional carbon deliveries, and more carbon removal contracts, in the coming months and years. In August, the US Department of Energy Funding selected three projects Climeworks is involved with to receive funding under the agency’s Regional DAC Hubs program. Last month, Climeworks announced that it was exploring potential direct air capture and storage projects in Kenya. 

Ultimately, whether Climeworks meets its goals will depend on whether it can offer carbon removal services at a lower cost than companies developing competing DAC technology, and whether the overall costs of DAC can be brought down. Several nations are now offering financial incentives for DAC, but more governmental assistance will be required to reach optimistic cost targets.

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

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Oct 5 2023
2023 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Commonwealth and its compact tokamak

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

Commonwealth Fusion System’s approach to fusion builds on decades of research—and comes after decades of disappointment within the industry. Yes, the company’s first commercial reactor is still nearly 10 years away, but if it works, the climate benefits will be profound.

Intro

Commonwealth Fusion Systems hopes to be the first company to take nuclear fusion from the lab to the market.

A spin-out from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Commonwealth is following a well-trodden design path by using a tokamak—a doughnut-shaped device in which radio waves heat isotopes of hydrogen to above 100 million °C (180 million °F). The resulting plasma is squeezed by a powerful magnetic field until the atoms fuse, releasing a burst of energetic electrons and neutrons.

What sets Commonwealth apart is the compact size of its tokamak. Its prototype SPARC reactor will be 40 times smaller than the international ITER fusion reactor currently being built in France and could come online five years earlier.

Key indicators

  • Industry: Fusion energy
  • Founded: 2018
  • Headquarters: Devens, Massachusetts, USA
  • Notable fact: Commonwealth’s prototype reactor will use 10,000 kilometers (about 6,200 miles) of high-temperature superconductor tape.

Potential for impact

“Electrify everything!” cry climate experts. Electric motors, cars, and heat pumps are inherently more efficient than their oil- and gas-burning brethren. But to get to net zero, the world will need a lot more fossil-fuel-free power stations to produce enough renewable electricity for these systems. Commonwealth’s fusion plants will turn heat from fusion reactions into steam that turns turbines to produce power without generating harmful emissions. 

It’s a sci-fi dream shared by dozens of other startups. Some are following Commonwealth’s footsteps with their own tokamaks, but there are also other promising approaches. Pulsed fusion reactors embrace the instability of fusion reactions and can be made even smaller than tokamaks. At least one of these companies, the well-funded Helion Energy in Everett, Washington, claims it will generate electricity directly from the fusing plasma and hopes to be selling electrons to customers by 2028.

Should Commonwealth (or one of its rivals) succeed, fusion might fulfill the long-promised dream of consistent, carbon-free power with virtually no radioactive waste.

Caveats

Of course, developing and building a first-of-its-kind fusion reactor is no small feat. The SPARC prototype alone will run through most (it not all) of the nearly $2 billion Commonwealth has raised to date.

Nor is its fundamental technology guaranteed. To get its tokamak so small, Commonwealth is using thousands of kilometers of high-temperature superconducting tape to produce 18 immensely powerful electromagnets. Those magnets may not work together as expected, and still require cooling to -200 °C.

No fusion startup—or even research lab—has yet generated more energy from a fusion reactor than what was needed to drive the process. Experiments in December 2022 and July 2023 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved what’s sometimes called scientific net energy gain (or in technical parlance, a Q greater than one). But that calculation doesn’t account for the energy needed to power Livermore’s reactor lasers, so on the whole, the lab’s reactor still produced less energy than what was taken from the electrical grid to run it.

Moving from the symbolic milestone of breakeven to the affordable and repeatable reactions necessary for commercial power production will require another huge technological leap.

When

In 2021 the company announced the demonstration of a 20-Tesla electromagnet—the most powerful of its type ever made. And last December, construction of the SPARC tokamak commenced at Commonwealth’s new headquarters in Devens, Massachusetts, where a manufacturing facility is also taking shape to produce more magnets.

The company says SPARC should generate its first plasma as soon as late 2025, and that model will incorporate 14 of the 17 systems needed for its successor, the ARC fusion power station. If things go according to plan, that ARC reactor could start feeding the grid in the early 2030s.

Next steps

Keep an eye out in early 2026. That’s when Commonwealth wants SPARC to deliver its first Q greater than one, signifying a net energy gain. The company expects SPARC to ultimately have a Q greater than 10, which is the level of performance necessary to offset the reactor’s significant heating and cooling requirements and inefficiencies in the system. Commonwealth’s simulations suggest SPARC could produce up to 100 megawatts of fusion power.

Even as it designs the 200-megawatt ARC reactor, Commonwealth is scouting a location for it. Although the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently clarified regulations that should make it easier to site fusion reactors there, the company is searching worldwide.

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

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Oct 5 2023
2023 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Ørsted and its offshore wind factories

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

Offshore wind power has tremendous potential to help the world meet its climate goals. Former fossil-fuel company Ørsted is leading the charge to unlock that potential by building massive offshore wind farms in Europe and installing some of the first turbines in US waters.

Intro

Clean-energy company Ørsted is helping offshore wind reach the gigawatt scales needed to make a dent in global carbon emissions.

Wind is a key source of renewable power, but densely populated coastlines often lack the physical space and blustery weather needed to take advantage of it. The fiercer and more reliable winds blowing farther offshore are an attractive alternative—yet many countries, facing high costs and slow permitting processes, are struggling to build wind power facilities there.

Ørsted is trying to change that. For more than two decades, the company has propelled the European offshore-wind market forward by investing in commercial-scale projects and the supply chains needed to support them. Today, Ørsted operates industrial-scale offshore wind farms in Denmark, Germany, and the UK, including Europe’s first two gigawatt-scale facilities. The company is now aggressively expanding its presence in the US, with initial large-scale projects in development off New York and New Jersey, as well as in the Asia-Pacific region.

Ørsted is a rare example of an energy company that transitioned its core business from fossil fuels to renewables. In 2008, fossil-fuel plants accounted for 85% of Ørsted’s heat and power generation, while renewable energy accounted for 15%. By 2019, Ørsted had flipped that ratio. Today renewables make up 91% of its energy portfolio. 

Key indicators

  • Industry: Renewable energy
  • Founded: 2006
  • Headquarters: Fredericia, Denmark
  • Notable fact: Ørsted used to be DONG Energy, short for Danish Oil and Natural Gas. To reflect its shift toward renewable power generation, in 2017 the company renamed itself after Hans Christian Ørsted, a Danish physicist who helped discover electromagnetism.

Potential for impact

Ørsted has built more offshore wind farms than any other company in the world. It also operates land-based wind and solar farms, battery storage facilities, and biomass power plants. With ambitious growth plans, the company intends to play a key role in replacing fossil-fuel power plants with renewable energy worldwide.

As of 2022, Ørsted had installed 15.1 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity worldwide—enough to power 12 million US homes. By 2030, it hopes to reach 30 GWs of offshore wind and more than triple its installed renewable energy generation capacity overall. That is the same amount of offshore wind capacity the Biden administration wants to build nationwide by 2030.

Caveats

Ørsted faces some headwinds, however. Today, the offshore wind industry is under economic pressure from supply chain constraints, inflation, and rising interest rates. Several of Ørsted’s projects—including Hornsea 3, a nearly 3-GW offshore wind farm in the UK, and a planned wind farm off of Long Island, New York—may need additional governmental support to remain viable.

Amid Europe’s energy crisis last year, Ørsted faced another dilemma: pressure to keep burning fossil fuels. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Danish authorities ordered Ørsted to continue or resume operation of three coal- and oil-fired power plants to secure the nation’s electricity supply. As a result, Ørsted was unable to reach its goal of generating 95% of its energy from renewable sources by 2023.

When

Ørsted has about 12 GW of offshore wind capacity installed or under construction. To meet its goal of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030, the company plans to install 2 GW of new capacity annually until 2025 and 3 GW of new capacity annually between 2025 and 2030. 

A pipeline of offshore wind projects in Europe, the US, and the Asia-Pacific region will help Ørsted meet its targets. In addition to Hornsea 3, Ørsted is helping develop a series of gigawatt-scale offshore wind farms in Poland, which are expected online in the mid-2020s. In the US, Ørsted is constructing New York’s first offshore wind farm, which is on track to begin producing power later this year. In Taiwan, the company is building a series of offshore wind farms over the coming years. Once complete, these Taiwanese projects will collectively represent nearly 2 GW of capacity.

Next steps

Through partnerships with other energy developers, Ørsted is taking its first steps toward constructing floating offshore wind turbines, an early-stage technology that could one day allow the industry to move into much deeper waters, including those off the US West Coast. 

The company is also making significant investments in the nascent green-fuels market. Renewably generated hydrogen and other “e-fuels” could help green the fossil fuel-intensive shipping industry, which accounted for nearly 3% of global emissions in 2018. Last year, Ørsted signed a letter of intent to supply the shipping giant Maersk with 300,000 tons of e-methanol a year for a future fleet of low-carbon vessels.

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

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Oct 5 2023
2023 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Fervo Energy and its geothermal power plants

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

Fervo Energy is commercializing a geothermal technology that could significantly expand the regions that could tap into the steady, carbon-free energy source, by creating or widening cracks under the surface to allow water to more easily circulate underground. These enhanced geothermal plants could become an increasingly critical source of clean electricity as grids grow greener, helping to balance out rising levels of fluctuating renewables like wind and solar.

Intro

Fervo Energy is expanding the bounds of where geothermal plants can be built—and what they can do. 

Geothermal power plants work by circulating water through hot rock deep underground, then converting that heat energy into electricity at the surface. But traditionally, it’s only been possible to build economical facilities in regions where developers could drill down to porous, permeable hot rock at relatively low depths. 

The nearly six-year-old Houston, Texas, startup is changing that by using hydraulic fracturing techniques—better known as fracking—to create or widen cracks below the surface, artificially creating the permeability that allows water to easily flow underground. In July, Fervo announced it had successfully completed tests at its pilot plant in northern Nevada, which the company says demonstrated the commercial viability of its technology.

Key indicators

  • Industry: Geothermal energy 
  • Founded: 2017 
  • Headquarters: Houston, Texas, USA
  • Notable fact: Fervo has raised nearly $190 million from Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, DCVC, Capricorn Investment Group, and others.

Potential for impact 

Fervo’s enhanced geothermal approach promises to significantly expand the areas where we could tap into the carbon-free and nearly limitless source of energy beneath our feet. Geothermal offers the added advantage of generating electricity around the clock and calendar, making it an ideal clean source to fill in the gaps as grids increasingly come to rely on fluctuating renewables like solar and wind. 

It could provide a much cheaper or less controversial way of fixing that fundamental challenge in cleaning up the grid than building giant battery plants or adding nuclear power reactors, respectively.

Fervo is developing an additional trick as well, tapping into the particular geological characteristic of enhanced geothermal wells to create systems that can store up energy for extended periods or easily ramp electricity up and down as needed. By pumping water into the wells but not releasing it, the company found it could build up pressure in the system, storing energy that can be used when it’s most needed, much like charging a battery. That could make the company’s future plants even more valuable to grid operators dealing with increasingly erratic and dynamic electricity systems.

Caveats 

Fervo faces some hurdles, however. The company, which has only built a commercial pilot facility so far, still needs to prove that its basic approach and advanced capabilities work effectively, affordably, and consistently on larger scales. It’s likely to require significant changes in electricity market rules for grid operators to properly incentivize and reward the flexibility and storage capabilities the company is developing. And other startups are exploring additional ways of pushing the capabilities of geothermal energy.

Fervo sidesteps the climate fears associated with the term fracking as it’s not using the technique to extract fossil fuels. But enhanced geothermal does raise at least one of the same concerns: the potential to trigger earthquakes. Fervo and some academic experts stress that the sector’s improved designs and standards have reduced the risk that developing and operating such plants can induce seismic events that can be felt.

But public concerns about earthquakes may nonetheless exacerbate the challenge of securing the necessary permits to build the plants.

When

The company has already announced several power purchase agreements for geothermal plants that are slated to put nearly 100 megawatts of clean capacity onto electricity grids in the next few years. Its commercial pilot in Nevada, which will help to power Google’s operations in the state, is set to begin sending electricity to the grid by the end of this year. 

Next steps 

Fervo has also begun drilling a geothermal project in Beaver County, Utah, adjacent to the US Department of Energy’s Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy Initiative. It will supply geothermal power to communities in Southern California and is slated to come online in the second quarter of 2026. 

The company is now exploring ways that geothermal power can be coupled with another emerging climate technology, by providing the clean electricity needed to power facilities that can suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Fervo has secured $2 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to design and engineer a combined geothermal and direct-air-capture plant, and around $3 million from the US Department of Energy to begin preparatory work for a larger direct-air-capture hub in southwestern Utah.

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

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Oct 5 2023
2023 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Twelve and its electrochemical reactor

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

Twelve is converting carbon dioxide emissions into sustainable jet fuel. It recently launched the first commercial-scale production facility for power-to-liquid sustainable aviation fuels in the US. 

Intro

Twelve is commercializing a process that breaks down and reforms carbon dioxide into nearly any chemical that is currently produced by fossil fuels. The company is already using it to make a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) called E-Jet fuel, and is in talks to produce other consumer products, including sunglasses, Mercedes parts, and chemicals used in laundry detergents. 

To do this, Twelve developed a suitcase-sized electrochemical reactor, called O12. The reactor takes in carbon dioxide emitted from waste or captured directly from the air. The reactor then uses a metal catalyst and electricity to split the CO2 and water and recombine the elements into different chemicals. 

In August 2021, Twelve proved that its E-Jet fuel technology works in a pilot project with the US Air Force. 

Key indicators

  • Industry: Chemicals
  • Founded: 2015 
  • Headquarters: Berkeley, California
  • Notable fact: Twelve is named after carbon 12, the most abundant form of the element.

Potential for impact

Twelve’s work could be particularly critical in tackling emissions from aviation, which makes up 2% of global CO2 emissions. 

The vast majority of the industry is still powered by kerosene-based fuel; In the US, for example, less than 0.1 percent of the 17.5 billion gallons of jet fuel used each year comes from sustainable sources. The Biden administration hopes to increase that figure to 3 billion gallons of SAF per year by 2030 (or about 17 percent of all jet fuel used), through a mixture of tax credits and R&D grants included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. 

But much of the current SAF supply is created with biofuel, like animal fat or used cooking oils, which are limited in supply and vary greatly in how much CO2 emissions they actually cut. 

In contrast, Twelve’s E-Jet fuel is an “electrofuel,” synthetically created through a process it calls carbon transformation. Unlike biofuels, there are no limits on the availability of carbon (though there are limitations on the other key ingredient, water), and the process reduces emissions by the same amount every time. 

Beyond the aviation industry, Twelve also hopes to replace chemical ingredients throughout the supply chain of both consumer products and the industrial sector. 

Caveats

Twelve’s initial SAF production capacity of five barrels per day will hardly make a dent in the demand for aviation fuel, especially given the high costs of E-Jet fuel production today. Investments from companies like Microsoft, Shopify, and Alaska Airlines—which see Twelve’s technology as key to reaching their own sustainability goals—are underwriting some production costs and may help the company scale. 

On the other hand, carbon transformation is still an energy-intensive process, and Twelve itself is not yet carbon neutral. Finding enough renewable energy—and water—to power the company’s plants will remain a challenge, at least until the country’s clean energy infrastructure improves. 

When

In July, Twelve broke ground on its first commercial-scale plant to convert CO2 into SAF in Washington state, with the aim of producing 40,000 gallons per year by mid-2024. 

The company also has developed partnerships with a number of companies, including Microsoft, Spotify, Procter and Gamble, and Mercedes-Benz, to see whether it can replace core building blocks of popular products—from auto parts to sunglass lenses—with CO2-made materials. 

Next steps

The Washington plant is just Twelve’s first; the company is in the early stages of planning a larger E-Jet production facility. 

Twelve is also planning the first commercial Alaska Airlines flight powered by its E-Jet fuels, and expects to announce additional airline partnerships soon.

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

Correction: This story was updated to clarify the process that happens at Twelve’s commercial-scale production facility for SAF.

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Oct 5 2023
2023 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: BYD and its affordable EVs

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

By designing a better battery, BYD has pulled ahead in the global electric vehicle race. Its affordable and versatile cars are making EVs far more accessible, and could ultimately help countries including China to dramatically reduce emissions from transportation.

Intro

BYD has come a long way from its early days manufacturing mobile phone batteries and cheap gas cars. Now the top EV producer in the world, BYD produces electric vehicles at affordable prices, making them a practical option for the huge and varied market of Chinese car buyers. BYD also makes electric buses that run in over 70 countries and has dominated the world’s plug-in hybrid market.

The company’s success stems from its technological lead in lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Traditionally, LFP batteries didn’t store as much energy as nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries, which were used in 95% of the electric cars produced a few years ago. BYD’s versions—particularly its signature product, the Blade Battery—solve this problem via a new structure that uses fewer parts and packs more cells into the same space. LFP batteries are also safer and cheaper than NMC batteries. 

Over time, BYD has reshaped the EV supply chain. From mining critical minerals to designing the chips used in cars, BYD does everything in house and sometimes also sells its products to competitors. Even Tesla is now buying batteries from the Shenzhen-based company.

Key indicators

  • Industry: Electric vehicles
  • Founded: 1995
  • Headquarters: Shenzhen, China
  • Notable fact: In August, BYD produced its 5 millionth electric vehicle.

Potential for impact

For the world to transition beyond fossil fuels, it will need a lot of electric vehicles. BYD not only makes electric buses and monorails, but also sells passenger cars at a wide range of prices. The cheapest BYD EV model costs just above $10,000, less than one-third the cost of the cheapest Tesla. And BYD sells plug-in hybrid models for about the same price as similar gas cars.

This variety and affordability is helping BYD spread into many more countries; it’s now selling cars across Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. 

Caveats

BYD risks falling behind in a fiercely competitive industry. Tesla is still the most well-known EV brand around the world. And just within China, there are over a dozen other companies that offer affordable, versatile EVs. 

When it comes to batteries, BYD is in a head-to-head race with another Chinese company, CATL, which makes every type of battery BYD offers and works with traditional auto heavyweights such as Ford, Toyota, and BMW. 

What’s more, BYD is already behind its peers in one important area. Many EV companies are rushing to offer the most advanced autonomous driving functions for customers, and AI isn’t BYD’s strength (though the company recently recruited thousands of software engineers to try to catch up).

Internally, BYD has had difficulty managing production for the past several years. It struggled to deliver on orders in 2021 and reportedly faced an inventory overstock in 2023. 

When

One of the next frontiers of battery tech is sodium-ion batteries, which can cost less, work in more extreme weather, and recharge more quickly. BYD will reportedly start selling cars equipped with them by the end of 2023, and the company has announced a new factory to scale up the production of sodium-ion batteries. 

BYD is also expanding its production capacity overseas, starting with a car factory in Thailand and another in Brazil that are expected to be built by 2024. One or more factories in Europe are also under discussion and could be announced before the end of this year.

Next steps

Having sold its consumer EV models in the European market since 2019, BYD has set ambitious goals for 2030: to sell 800,000 cars in Europe annually, reach 10% of the market share, and become one of the top three EV brands in the region. 

But to succeed in Western markets, BYD needs to overcome the unfavorable reputation of made-in-China products. The company needs to score higher in safety tests, offer better exterior and interior designs, and show that its cars are reliable. BYD also faces geopolitical challenges—including intensifying tensions around battery materials and technologies, and the lack of EV charging infrastructure across the world.

Explore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.

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