Jan 13 2024
What’s next for offshore wind

MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of our series here.

It’s a turbulent time for offshore wind power.

Large groups of turbines installed along coastlines can harness the powerful, consistent winds that blow offshore. Given that 40% of the global population lives within 60 miles of the ocean, offshore wind farms can be a major boon to efforts to clean up the electricity supply around the world. 

But in recent months, projects around the world have been delayed or even canceled as costs have skyrocketed and supply chain disruptions have swelled. These setbacks could spell trouble for efforts to cut the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change.

The coming year and beyond will likely be littered with more delayed and canceled projects, but the industry is also seeing new starts and continuing technological development. The question is whether current troubles are more like a speed bump or a sign that 2024 will see the industry run off the road. Here’s what’s next for offshore wind power.

Speed bumps and setbacks

Wind giant Ørsted cited rising interest rates, high inflation, and supply chain bottlenecks in late October when it canceled its highly anticipated Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 projects. The two projects would have supplied just over 2.2 gigawatts to the New Jersey grid—enough energy to power over a million homes. Ørsted is one of the world’s leading offshore wind developers, and the company was included in MIT Technology Review’s list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch in 2023. 

The shuttered projects are far from the only setback for offshore wind in the US today—over 12 gigawatts’ worth of contracts were either canceled or targeted for renegotiation in 2023, according to analysis by BloombergNEF, an energy research group.

Part of the problem lies in how projects are typically built and financed, says Chelsea Jean-Michel, a wind analyst at BloombergNEF. After securing a place to build a wind farm, a developer sets up contracts to sell the electricity that will be generated by the turbines. That price gets locked in years before the project is finished. For projects getting underway now, contracts were generally negotiated in 2019 or 2020.

A lot has changed in just the past five years. Prices for steel, one of the most important materials in turbine construction, increased by over 50% from January 2019 through the end of 2022 in North America and northern Europe, according to a 2023 report from the American Clean Power Association.

Inflation has also increased the price for other materials, and higher interest rates mean that borrowing money is more expensive too. So now, developers are arguing that the prices they agreed to previously aren’t reasonable anymore.

Economic trouble for the industry is global. The UK’s last auction for offshore wind leases yielded no bidders. In addition, a major project that had been planned for the North Sea was canceled by the developer in July. Japanese developers that had jumped into projects in Taiwan are suddenly pulling out as costs shoot up in that still-developing market.

China stands out in an otherwise struggling landscape. The country is now the world’s largest offshore wind market, accounting for nearly half of installed capacity globally. Quick development and rising competition have actually led to falling prices for some projects there.

Growing pains

While many projects around the world have seen setbacks over the last year, the problems are most concentrated in newer markets, including the US. Problems have continued since the New Jersey cancellations—in the first weeks of 2024, developers of several New York projects asked to renegotiate their contracts, which could delay progress even if those developments end up going ahead.

While over 10% of electricity in the US comes from wind power, the vast majority is generated by land-based turbines. The offshore wind market in the US is at least a decade behind the more established ones in countries like the UK and Denmark, says Walt Musial, chief engineer of offshore wind energy at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

One open question over the next year will be how quickly the industry can increase the capacity to build and install wind turbines in the US. “The supply chain in the US for offshore wind is basically in its infancy. It doesn’t really exist,” Jean-Michel says.

That’s been a problem for some projects, especially when it comes for the ships needed to install wind turbines. One of the reasons Ørsted gave for canceling its New Jersey project was a lack of these vessels.

The troubles have been complicated by a single century-old law, which mandates that only ships built and operated by the US can operate from US ports. Projects in the US have worked around this restriction by operating from European ports and using large US barges offshore, but that can slow construction times significantly, Musial says. 

One of the biggest developments in 2024 could be the completion of a single US-built ship that can help with turbine installation. The ship is under construction in Texas, and Dominion Energy has spent over $600 million on it so far. After delays, it’s scheduled to be completed in late 2024. 

Tax credits are providing extra incentive to build out the offshore wind supply chain in the US. Existing credits for offshore wind projects are being extended and expanded by the Inflation Reduction Act, with as much as 40% available on the cost of building a new wind farm. However, to qualify for the full tax credit, projects will need to use domestically sourced materials. Strengthening the supply chain for those materials will be a long process, and the industry is still trying to adjust to existing conditions. 

Still, there are some significant signs of progress for US offshore wind. The nation’s second large-scale offshore wind farm began producing electricity in early January. Several areas of seafloor are expected to go up for auction for new development in 2024, including sites in the central Atlantic and off the coast of Oregon. Sites off the coast of Maine are expected to be offered up the following year. 

But even that forward momentum may not be enough for the nation to meet its offshore wind goals. While the Biden administration has set a target of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity installed by the end of the decade, BloombergNEF’s projection is that the country will likely install around half that, with 16.4 gigawatts of capacity expected by 2030.

Technological transformation

While economic considerations will likely be a limiting factor in offshore wind this year, we’re also going to be on the lookout for technological developments in the industry.

Wind turbines still follow the same blueprint from decades ago, but they are being built bigger and bigger, and that trend is expected to continue. That’s because bigger turbines tend to be more efficient, capturing more energy at a lower cost.

A decade ago, the average offshore wind turbine produced an output of around 4 megawatts. In 2022, that number was just under 8 MW. Now, the major turbine manufacturers are making models in the 15 MW range. These monstrous structures are starting to rival the size of major landmarks, with recent installations nearing the height of the Eiffel Tower.

In 2023, the wind giant Vestas tested a 15 MW model, which earned the distinction of being the world’s most powerful wind turbine. The company received certification for the design at the end of the year, and it will be used in a Danish wind farm that’s expected to begin construction in 2024. 

In addition, we’ll likely see more developments in the technology for floating offshore wind turbines. While most turbines deployed offshore are secured in the seabed floor, some areas, like the west coast of the US, have deep water offshore, making this impossible.

Floating turbines could solve that problem, and several pilot projects are underway around the world, including Hywind Tampen in Norway, which launched in mid-2023, and WindFloat Atlantic in Portugal.

There’s a wide variety of platform designs for floating turbines, including versions resembling camera tripods, broom handles, and tires. It’s possible the industry will start to converge on one in the coming years, since standardization will help bring prices down, says BloombergNEF’s Jean-Michel. But whether that will be enough to continue the growth of this nascent industry will depend on how economic factors shake out. And it’s likely that floating projects will continue to make up less than 5% of offshore wind power installations, even a decade from now. 

The winds of change are blowing for renewable energy around the world. Even with economic uncertainty ahead, offshore wind power will certainly be a technology to watch in 2024.

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Jan 13 2024
Three climate technologies breaking through in 2024

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 upon us, and I can’t get enough. Red-carpet fashion, host drama, heartwarming speeches—I love it all.

I caught the Golden Globes last weekend, and the Grammys and Oscars aren’t far off. But the best awards, in my humble opinion, are the 10 Breakthrough Technologies, MIT Technology Review’s list of the tech that’s changing our world. 

This year’s list dropped on Monday, and I’m delighted to share that not one, not two, but three climate tech items are featured. So for the newsletter this week, let’s take a look at a few of these award-winning technologies you need to know about. (And to honor awards season, I’ll also be assigning them to bonus—and completely unofficial—categories.)

Super-efficient solar cells

Winner: Best Supporting Actor

Solar panels are among the most important, and perhaps the most recognizable, tools to address climate change. But one next-generation solar technology could help solar power get even more efficient, and cheaper: perovskite tandem solar cells. 

Most solar cells use silicon to soak up sunlight and transform it into electricity. But other materials can do this job too, including perovskites, a class of crystalline materials. And because perovskites and silicon absorb different wavelengths of light, the two materials can be stacked like a sandwich to make one super-efficient cell. 

Because of their outstanding support for traditional silicon solar materials, super-efficient perovskite tandem cells are my winner for this year’s Best Supporting Actor award. 

There are definitely barriers to commercializing this technology: perovskites are tricky to manufacture and have historically degraded quickly outside in the elements. But some companies say they’re closer than ever to using the materials to transform commercial solar. Read more about the technology here. 

Enhanced geothermal systems

Winner: Best New Artist

Sucking heat out from the earth is one of the oldest tricks in the book—there’s evidence that humans were using hot springs for heat more than 10,000 years ago. 

We’ve since leveled up, using geothermal energy to produce electricity. But a specific set of factors is needed to harness the energy radiating out of the planet’s core: heat close to the surface, permeable rock, and underground fluid. 

This narrows the potential sites for usable geothermal energy significantly, so a growing number of projects are working to widen access with so-called enhanced geothermal systems. 

An enhanced geothermal system is essentially a human-created geothermal energy source. This often involves drilling down into rock and pumping fluid into it to open up fractures. We’ve seen some recent progress in this field from a handful of companies, including Fervo Energy, which started up a massive pilot facility in 2023 (and made our list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch). 

Because of its spirit of reinvention and innovation, enhanced geothermal systems are my pick for this year’s Best New Artist Award. 

Some of the biggest projects coming are still a few years from coming online, and it could be tough to scale construction on these plants in some places. But enhanced geothermal is definitely a field to keep an eye on. Read more in my colleague June Kim’s write-up here. 

Heat pumps

Winner: Lifetime Achievement

Last, but certainly not least, we have the venerable heat pump. These devices, which can cool and heat using electricity, are a personal favorite climate technology of mine. 

Heat pumps are super efficient, sometimes almost seeming to defy the laws of physics. They don’t really break any laws, physical or otherwise, as I outlined in a deep dive into how the technology works last year.

While they’re not exactly new, heat pumps are definitely breaking through in a new way. The technology outsold gas furnaces for the first time in the US last year, and sales have been climbing around the world. Globally, heat pumps have the potential to cut emissions by 500 million metric tons in 2030—as much as pulling all the cars in Europe today off the roads. 

For their long-standing and ongoing contributions to decarbonization, heat pumps are my choice for this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award. 

It’s going to be tough to get heat pumps into all the places they need to go to meet climate goals. For more on all things heat pumps, check out my write-up here. 

Congratulations to all our winners! Be sure to check out the rest of the list. It includes everything from wearable headsets to innovative new CRISPR treatments. 

And if you’d like to weigh in on one more award, you can vote for our reader-chosen 11th breakthrough technology here. The candidates are some of the other items we considered for the list. I don’t want to unfairly influence you, but you know my heart always goes with batteries, so feel free to vote accordingly …  

Related reading

Technology is always changing. Don’t miss our list of the technologies breaking through in 2024.

Perovskites were supposed to change the solar world. What’s the holdup?

This startup showed that its underground wells can be used as a massive battery.

Everything you need to know about the wild world of heat pumps.

Another thing

an Orsted wind turbine off the coast of Block Island

AP PHOTO/JULIA NIKHINSON

It’s been a turbulent time for offshore wind power. Projects are getting delayed and canceled left and right, it seems. 

In 2024, some big moments could determine whether these troubles are more of a bump in the road or a sign of more serious issues. For everything you should watch out for in offshore wind, check out my latest story here.

Keeping up with climate  

It’s officially official—2023 was the hottest year on record, according to the EU’s climate service. Check out the details and some stunning graphics on the record-breaking year. (BBC)

A national lab in California made waves in late 2022 when it achieved a huge milestone for fusion research. You may not know that the facility actually had a massive fusion reactor in the 1980s that never got switched on. (MIT Technology Review)

→ Here’s what’s coming next for fusion research, according to the lab’s current director. (MIT Technology Review)

India is rushing to meet growing demand for electricity, and the country is turning to coal to do it. The government plans to roughly double coal production by 2030. (Bloomberg)

One person’s wastewater is another one’s … heat? New systems can harness the heat in wastewater to heat whole neighborhoods. (BBC)

Norway will open up parts of the Norwegian Sea for seabed mining exploration. The country joins nations including Japan, New Zealand, and Namibia that are considering allowing this new industry to operate in their waters. (New York Times)

→ Seabed mining could be a new source of materials for batteries. But environmentalists are worried about the potential harm. (MIT Technology Review)

Lack of charging infrastructure is a huge barrier to EV adoption. Here are three ways to encourage new chargers in charging deserts. (Canary Media)

Rising temperatures means beavers are moving north—and they’re causing trouble. Specifically, the rodents are creating a feedback loop that’s thawing the ground and disrupting ecosystems. (The Guardian)

Chinese automaker BYD is set to take the world by storm. The company sold more plug-in hybrids and EVs than Tesla did in 2023, and is set to continue its rapid growth this year. (Bloomberg)→ BYD was one of our climate tech companies to watch in 2023. (MIT Technology Review)

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Dec 22 2023
There was some good climate news in 2023. Really.

Bad climate news was everywhere in 2023. 

It’s been the hottest year on record, with January through November clocking in at 1.46 °C (2.62 °F) warmer on average than preindustrial temperatures. Meanwhile, emissions from fossil fuels hit a new high—36.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, 1.1% more than in 2022. 

Scientists are loudly warning that the world is running out of time to avoid dangerous warming levels. The picture is grim. But if you know where to look, there are a few bright spots shining through the darkness.

New technologies that can help address climate change, from heat pumps to solar panels to EVs, are coming to the market and getting cheaper. Climate policy is also developing, from incentives to support new technology to rule-making around pollution. And efforts to help the most vulnerable nations adapt to climate change are growing. 

Here are a few of those bright spots that our climate reporters saw in 2023. 

The brakes are off for electric vehicles

There’s been a spate of good news for EVs. We put the “inevitable EV” on our list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies in January, noting that strong policy support and expanding supply chains were combining to vault the technology to new relevance. 

Those trends have largely continued through 2023, and that means good news for climate change, since the transportation sector accounts for nearly 20% of global emissions. 

EVs are on track to make up 15.5% of automotive sales this year, according to BNEF. Between battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, this new growth means there are almost 41 million passenger EVs on the road. China has the largest share of EVs in the world, making up nearly a quarter of the global fleet. 

Batteries to power all those vehicles are becoming more widely available and cheaper. Global manufacturing for lithium-ion batteries increased by over 30% this year. And while prices ticked up slightly last year, they are down again in 2023, representing the largest annual decline since 2018. 

A wide range of policies could help continue the growth of electric vehicles. Some governments are mandating the switch away from fossil-fuel-powered cars—the European Union and United Kingdom both passed policies in 2023 mandating that all new passenger vehicles sold be zero-emissions starting in 2035. Several states in the US have adopted the same policy, with California leading the way last year and more signing on in 2023. 

Incentives are also driving consumers toward EVs. The Inflation Reduction Act in the US serves up a huge menu of tax credits for battery manufacturing, EV manufacturing, and mineral processing. 

While many signs are positive, it’s not all rosy for electric vehicles. Growth in sales slowed between 2022 and 2023, and changing demand has some automakers slowing production for models like the Ford F-150 Lightning. Charging infrastructure isn’t available or reliable enough in most markets, a problem that has become one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption. 

Cars are being sold at a record pace and road emissions are still going up, so EV sales need to accelerate to make a dent in transportation’s climate impact. But EVs’ progress so far seems to be an encouraging story of a new climate-friendly technology becoming a mainstream option. Let’s hope it keeps going in 2024—all gas, no brakes. 

—Casey Crownhart

Countries and companies are cracking down on methane 

Another encouraging development on the otherwise daunting topic of climate change is the growing recognition that cutting methane pollution is one of the most powerful levers we can pull to limit global warming over the coming years. 

Carbon dioxide has long overshadowed methane, since we emit so much more of it. But methane traps about 80 times as much heat over a 20-year period and accounts for at least a quarter of overall warming above our preindustrial past. 

On the other hand, it also breaks down far faster in the atmosphere. Together, those qualities mean that rapid cuts in methane emissions today could deliver an outsize impact on climate change, potentially shaving a quarter-degree off total warming by midcentury. That could easily make the difference between a planet that does or doesn’t tip past 2 °C.

So it was encouraging to finally hear the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency announce, at the recent UN climate conference, that it will soon require oil and gas companies to monitor methane emissions across their pipelines, wells, and facilities and sharply reduce venting, flaring, and leaks. 

As federal regulations go, preventing emissions of a combustible, planet-warming superpolllutant that isn’t even producing anything of economic value is truly about the least we can ask of an industry. But it’s a step forward that promises to eliminate the warming equivalent of about 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2038.

There was other good news on methane at the UN conference as well. A group of major oil and gas companies including BP, Exxon, and Saudi Aramco pledged to cut their methane pollution by at least 80% by 2030. In addition, a handful of additional nations joined an international coalition committed to easing global emissions by 30% this decade, while others stepped up their pledges and funding.

All of this comes on top of growing global efforts to more effectively monitor and report major sources of methane pollution around the globe, and reduce emissions from agriculture and landfills. 

As with every issue when it comes to climate change, none of this is enough, too much of it is voluntary, and complications abound. But these announcements, along with other signs of progress, are slowly adding up to a less grim future, while reminding us all that we’re capable of achieving even more.

—James Temple

A crucial fund to pay for climate damages launched

While the world scrambles to slow our emissions, it’s becoming ever more clear that the damage from climate change is happening in the present tense, with wildfires, floods, and heat waves making headlines. 

So it was welcome news that this year’s UN climate conference started with a historic milestone for vulnerable countries struggling to deal with these problems. On day one of the talks, the long-anticipated loss and damage fund was officially launched.

Historically, a handful of industrialized nations like the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom have been responsible for much of the emissions that are exacerbating extreme weather events and related disasters. Now, they are (nominally) paying for that legacy.

The purpose of this fund is to help poor and developing countries address the increasing harm from climate disasters. Many of these countries—which have contributed the least amount of emissions—are the most vulnerable to climate impacts and often lack adequate resources to manage them. The funds can help them rebuild in the aftermath of events like drought or floods, and improve a nation’s ability to withstand future catastrophes.

Advocates have been quick to point out that the total amount pledged so far is minuscule compared to the actual need on the ground. They estimate that the current pledge equates to less than 0.2% of the potential economic losses facing developing nations from climate disasters every year.

By the end of COP28 on December 12, countries had collectively committed nearly $800 million. The United Arab Emirates and Germany each pledged $100 million, the United Kingdom offered $75 million, and the United States contributed $17.5 million. 

Those numbers sound big, but a few people have made a sports analogy that puts this all in perspective. On December 9, a baseball player, Shohei Ohtani, signed a $700 million contract with the LA Dodgers. The fact that a worldwide effort to address climate change is even remotely comparable to the amount spent by a sports team on a single athlete should be a global embarrassment.

 “The rich world needs to take a good look at itself and its actions so far,” says Ritu Bharadwaj, a principal researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development.

That being said, the fund is still a step toward equitable climate resilience. Now the focus is on continuing to scale up the commitments and making the funds more accessible to those who need them.

—June Kim

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Dec 15 2023
The two words that pushed international climate talks into overtime

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

The annual UN climate negotiations at COP28 in Dubai have officially come to a close. Delegates scrambled to get a deal together in the early morning hours, and the meetings ended a day past their scheduled conclusion (as these things tend to). 

If you’ve tuned out news from the summit, I don’t really blame you. The quibbles over wording—“urges” vs. “notes” vs. “emphasizes”—can all start to sound like noise. But these talks are the biggest climate event of the year, and there are some details that are worth paying attention to. 

We’ve seen agreements on methane and renewables, and big progress on an international finance deal. And, of course, there was the high-profile fight about fossil fuels. As negotiators wrap up and start their treks home, let’s take a beat to sort through what happened at COP28 and why all these political fights matter for climate action.

What’s the point of these meetings anyway? 

The UN Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings are an annual chance for negotiators from nearly 200 nations to set goals and make plans to address climate change. 

You might be familiar with the outcome of one of these meetings: eight years ago COP21 gave us the Paris Agreement, the international treaty that set a goal to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) over preindustrial levels.

This year’s meeting comes at a crucial time for the Paris Agreement. Part of that treaty requires the world to put together a progress report on climate change, called the global stocktake. It’s supposed to happen every five years, and the first one was scheduled to finish up at this year’s COP. 

What were the big agreements from the meetings? 

1. On the first day of the talks, there was a big announcement about a loss and damage fund. This is money that richer nations put into a pool to help pay for damages caused by climate change in more vulnerable nations. 

You may remember that the creation of this fund was a major topic at last year’s COP27 in Egypt. The urgency was spurred by a collection of climate disasters, including particularly devastating floods in Pakistan in August 2022. 

Now there’s some money going into the account: at least $700 million pledged by wealthy nations.

There are some caveats, of course. The agreement is still short on details, missing anything like financial targets or rules about how nations will put money in. In fact, there’s currently no requirement for wealthy nations to contribute at all, and the pledged money is a fraction of what many scientists say is really needed to pay for the damage caused by climate change. (Some estimates put that number at $100 billion annually.)

2. Over 100 countries pledged to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030. In addition, the US and 20 other countries signed a pledge to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. 

3. Finally, 50 oil and gas companies pledged to virtually eliminate methane leaks from their operations by 2030. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and plugging up accidental leaks from oil and gas production is seen as an easy way to cut climate pollution. 

The companies that signed this pledge, which included ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco, represent 40% of global production. 

Some analysts have pointed out that the pledge will have a pretty limited effect. Most human-caused methane emissions come from agriculture, after all. And accidental methane emissions aren’t the biggest problem fossil-fuel companies cause, by a long shot. The majority of emissions from fossil-fuel companies isn’t from their operations but from their products.

What was holding things up? 

In two words: fossil fuels. 

I wrote in the newsletter a couple of weeks ago about how fossil fuels were going to loom large over these talks, not least because they’re being hosted in the UAE, a nation whose wealth relies heavily on them. The leader of the talks (and head of the UAE’s national oil company) has lived up to that prediction, questioning the scientific reasoning behind the calls to eliminate fossil fuels. 

As delegates worked to put the final agreement together, a sticking point in the debate was how fossil fuels would be represented. Earlier versions of the draft text called for phasing them out. But many nations, including the UAE, objected to this sort of language. And these meetings run by consensus: everybody has to sign off on the final agreement. 

So in the final version, the language was watered down. The pivotal paragraph now calls on parties to take a series of actions, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”  

In a way, this bit is a win, since it’s the first COP agreement that even mentions fossil fuels by name. (The bar is truly on the floor.) 

Ultimately, the exact wording of a COP agreement probably won’t be the thing to spur anybody into real action. Rather, the state of the world’s attitude toward climate change is reflected in this agreement: there’s a growing acknowledgement that something needs to change in our relationship with fossil fuels. But there’s not a wide enough consensus yet on the speed of that change, or what that relationship should look like as we pursue ambitious climate goals. 

Maybe next year. 

Another thing

The carbon removal industry is starting to take off, but some experts are warning that it’s headed in the wrong direction. 

There’s a growing signal that the world may have to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to limit global warming. But in a new essay, two former US Department of Energy staffers argue that the emergence of a for-profit sector could actually spell danger for the technology’s ability to help meaningfully address climate change. 

Get all the details in the latest story from my colleague James Temple.

Keeping up with climate  

Silicon powder could be the key to longer EV range and faster charging. Battery giant Panasonic will use silicon material from US-based startup Sila to build new EV batteries. (Wired)

→ Sila’s material debuted in a much smaller product in 2021. (MIT Technology Review)

Not the potatoes! Heavy rains have been bad news for European potato harvesting, sending prices soaring. Thanks, climate change. (Bloomberg)

Repairing EV batteries can be dangerous and difficult. But some mechanics want to do it anyway to save customers money and keep older EVs on the roads. (Grist)

This startup wants to sprinkle rock dust over farmland for carbon removal. (Wired)

Public (non-Tesla) EV chargers in the US can be unreliable, to put it lightly. Here’s how $7.5 billion in federal funding aims to change that. (Canary Media) 

Two- and three-wheelers are going electric in nations across Asia and Africa. And these small vehicles are having a big impact, making up the majority of reduction in oil demand as transportation goes electric. (New York Times)

→ Gogoro is building a massive network of battery-swappable electric scooters. (MIT Technology Review)

Animal agriculture is a big contributor to climate change, but convincing meat eaters to cut back isn’t easy. If you want to get more people to eat plant-based foods, don’t call them “plant-based.” Much less “vegan.” (Washington Post)

There was one permitted offshore wind farm in progress in the US Great Lakes. Now, the project is on hold. (Inside Climate News)

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Dec 10 2023
How carbon removal technology is like a time machine

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

If you could go back in time, what would you change about your life, or the world?

The idea of giving myself some much-needed advice is appealing (don’t cut your own bangs in high school, seriously). But we can think bigger. What about winding the clock back on the emissions that cause climate change? 

By burning fossil fuels, we’ve released greenhouse gases by the gigaton. There’s a lot we can (and need to) do to slow and eventually stop these planet-warming emissions. But carbon removal technology has a different promise: turning the clock back. 

Well, sort of. Carbon removal can’t literally take us back in time. But this time-machine analogy for thinking about carbon removal—specifically when it comes to the scale that will be needed to make a significant dent in our emissions—is a favorite of climate scientist David Ho, who I spoke to for my latest story. So for the newsletter this week, let’s consider what it might take for carbon removal to take us back far enough in time to reverse our mistakes (emissions-related ones, anyway). 

The world is on track to hit a new record for carbon dioxide emissions due to fossil fuels, with the global total expected to reach 36.8 billion metric tons this year, according to the newest edition of the Global Carbon Budget Report.

For the first time this year, the report included another total: how much carbon dioxide was sucked out of the atmosphere by carbon removal technologies. In 2023, carbon removal is expected to total around 10,000 metric tons. 

That’s obviously a lot less, but exactly how much less can be hard to grasp, as Ho points out. “I think humans (myself included) have a hard time with orders of magnitude, like the difference between thousands, millions, and billions,” he told me in an email. 

One solution Ho has come up with is putting things in terms of time. It’s something we intuitively have a handle on, which can make big numbers easier to understand. A thousand seconds is around 17 minutes. A million seconds is about 11 days. A billion seconds is nearly 32 years. 

Since time is a bit easier to grasp, when Ho talks about carbon removal, he often invokes the idea of a time machine. “My goal is to help people appreciate the scale of the problem, and put ‘solutions’ into context,” he says. 

Imagine all carbon removal technology as one big time machine, winding the clock back on emissions. If the world is emitting just under 40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in a year, how far back in time could this year’s total carbon removal take us? Right now, the answer is somewhere around 10 seconds. 

We eventually need to reach net-zero emissions if we’re going to avoid the worst effects of climate change. And it’s pretty clear that 10 seconds is a pretty far cry from being enough to zero out a year’s worth of emissions. There are two things we’d need to do for this time machine to be more effective: scale up carbon removal technology, and drastically scale back emissions. 

It’ll take time, and likely a lot of it, to get carbon removal technology to a point where it’s a more effective time machine. There are technical, logistical, and economic challenges to figure out. And early projects, like the Climeworks direct-air-capture plant in Iceland, are still getting their footing.

“It’s going to take many years to make significant progress, so we should start now,” Ho says. And while we figure all that out, it’s a good time to focus on decarbonization, he adds. Slashing our emissions is possible with tools we already have on the table. Doing so will make it a bit more feasible for carbon removal technologies to eventually play a significant role in cleaning up our emissions. 

If you’re curious to learn more, including how big a dent larger projects might make, check out David Ho’s article from earlier this year in Nature. You can also take a look back at some of our recent coverage of carbon removal below. 

Related reading

Carbon removal tech is vacuuming up significantly less than one-millionth of our fossil-fuel emissions. Get all the details in my latest story.

Startup Climeworks has been one of the major actors in putting direct air capture on the map. We put the company on our list of 15 businesses to watch in climate tech this year.

The US Department of Energy is committing big money to carbon removal. Earlier this year, the agency announced over $1 billion in funding for the technology, as my colleague James Temple covered.

Another thing

Around a decade ago, a huge wave of startups working on energy and climate-related technologies failed. This surge and crash in what’s often called cleantech 1.0 holds many lessons for innovators today. 

Now, as interest and funding in climate and energy technology companies again is surging, what should we take away from the previous generation of startups? My colleague David Rotman took a careful look for his latest story. Give it a read!

Keeping up with climate  

The University of California system is basically done with carbon offsets. While paying to balance out your own emissions sounds like a good deal, there are a host of problems with the practice. (MIT Technology Review)

Generating an image using AI can require as much energy as fully charging a smartphone. Smaller models doing other tasks (like generating text) can be significantly less energy intensive. (MIT Technology Review)

COP28 is in full swing. Here’s a quick roundup of a few of the headlines that have caught my eye so far. (If you need a catch-up on what’s happening at the UN climate talks and why fossil fuels are center stage, check out my story from last week here.) 

  • The head of the conference has been criticized for his comments about fossil fuels. (Vox)
  • Over 20 countries pledged to triple the world’s nuclear energy by 2050. (Canary Media)
  • Nations committed over $400 million in funding to help vulnerable nations pay for climate damages. These are the first pledges to the loss and damage fund, created at last year’s talks. (NPR)

A rule change in California slashed the value of rooftop solar panels six months ago. New sales are (predictably) down since the change. (Canary Media)

The Salton Sea is a salt lake in California. It contains a fascinating ecosystem, and apparently a whole lot of lithium. There might be 18 million metric tons of the metal under the main lake, the equivalent of nearly 400 million EV batteries. (LA Times) 

Congress set aside $7.5 billion for EV chargers. But there hasn’t been a single one installed with the money yet. (Politico) 

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