Plastic is a climate change problem. There are ways to fix it.

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

Plastic is a huge problem. There, I found it: the most uncontroversial thing I could possibly say to start a newsletter. 

We’ve all seen the images that illustrate the scale of the challenge facing us with plastic waste: a sea turtle eating a plastic bag, people walking through mountains of bottles, and even illustrations showing the sheer size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 

But there’s an often-overlooked angle to all this that goes beyond the landfill. Plastics are a big, and quickly growing, problem for the climate. They account for about 3.4% of global greenhouse-gas emissions—more than the entire aviation industry. 

I was thinking about this as I read this gripping feature story on plastics by Douglas Main, which was published last week online and is the cover story for our upcoming magazine issue. You should give the story a read for an outlook on the problem, and what it might take to fix it. And for the newsletter this week, let’s dig into how plastic contributes to greenhouse-gas emissions, and where we go from here. 

What’s the deal with plastic and climate change? 

Plastics fall into a class of materials called petrochemicals, meaning they’re made using fossil fuels. The category also includes products like fertilizers and laundry detergents. 

Fossil fuels are used as a feedstock, or starting ingredient, in plastics production, and they are also used for energy to power the manufacturing process. Plastic made up around 6% of global oil demand as of 2014, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. 

That number could get much worse, and fast. Plastic consumption could nearly triple by 2060. Add all that up, and plastics could make up 20% of global oil demand or more by 2050. 

So the growing tidal wave of plastic will be a problem for pollution and for waste management. But all that oil demand could also be a roadblock for our climate goals. 

Let’s back up, though, because if you’re anything like me (always craving the details), you’re probably wondering how, exactly, plastic contributes to climate change. Well, let me count the ways.

• Most plastics are derived from natural gas. Extracting and transporting that natural gas leads to accidental leaks as well as purposeful releases of both carbon dioxide and methane. In the US alone, extracting and transporting natural gas for plastics produces between 12.5 and 13.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

• Processing fossil fuels to make plastic is energy intensive. One particularly energy-intensive step is steam cracking, where furnaces are heated to temperatures up to 1,100 °C (2,000 °F) to break up feedstocks into smaller molecules, which can then be made into plastics. 

• The bulk of plastic’s emissions come from the process of making it and the energy needed to do so. However, burning plastic waste is also a small but growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions.

So where do we go from here? 

Unfortunately, the problem is so pervasive that there’s no one solution. Of all the plastic we make, 72% ends up in landfills or as litter, while 19% is incinerated and, as of 2019, only 9% is recycled. 

An ideal world would probably be one where much more of the plastic that we use can be reused or recycled in an energy-efficient way. 

Some of the solution comes down to structural changes, like setting up robust collection infrastructure for plastics that are easily recycled today. But packaging makes up only about a third of the plastic we use. And while conventional recycling methods can handle Diet Coke bottles and milk jugs, a lot of other plastic is less visible, and less easily recycled. (Think pleather skirts, wet wipes, or umbrellas—and no, you can’t put any of those in a recycling bin.)

New recycling methods could help remove some of the barriers holding back recycling today. These new technologies, like enzymatic and chemical recycling, might make the process more feasible for more products by cutting down the need to clean and sort waste. 

Ultimately, though, policy will likely be the key to tying all this together, since plastic is cheap today—and recycling often isn’t. 

Plastic is everywhere, and the solution to this massive waste problem is … complicated. Read the full feature story from Douglas Main for more. And for more on the problem of plastic, as well as some of the potential solutions, check out some of our reporting from the vault. 

Related reading

Microplastics are everywhere, and we don’t really know what that means for our health, as my colleague Jess Hamzelou outlined in a story last year. 

Chemists are inventing new ways to recycle, including one method that could tackle a mixture of some of the most common single-use plastics. Read more in my story from last year.

Biologists are getting into the game too—Carbios, a French company, wants to use enzymes to chew up plastics. Check out the full story from 2021. 

Keeping up with climate  

Several popular EVs are now cheaper than the average new gas-powered vehicle in the US. It’s a major tipping point for electric transportation. (Canary Media)

Some experts argue that it’s time to put solar-panel waste in context. This is a great graphic comparing the volume of module waste to things like e-waste, plastics, and coal ash. (Inside Climate News)

→ Some companies are working on setting up systems to recycle solar panels today, before more of them reach the end of their lives. (MIT Technology Review)

More than 50 million miles of power lines and other infrastructure need a major upgrade. Aging grids could hold back countries around the world from reaching climate goals. (The Verge)

The US announced seven projects, or “hubs,” as part of a $7 billion program to advance hydrogen fuel. (Washington Post) 

→ Hydrogen could help clean up sectors like heavy industry, but most of the fuel is generated using fossil fuels today. Some activists are skeptical of some of the projects that were chosen for the funding. (The Guardian)

Danish wind giant Ørsted just gave a $100 million guarantee that its project in New Jersey will be online by the end of 2025. How’s that for putting your money where your mouth is? (Electrek)

Energy Vault started out with a disruptive idea: storing energy using cranes and massive blocks. Now the startup has pivoted, and largely sells the batteries it set out to displace. (Canary Media)

→ Here’s why some companies are continuing to look beyond batteries for energy storage. (MIT Technology Review) 

Plastic is a climate change problem. There are ways to fix it.

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

Plastic is a huge problem. There, I found it: the most uncontroversial thing I could possibly say to start a newsletter. 

We’ve all seen the images that illustrate the scale of the challenge facing us with plastic waste: a sea turtle eating a plastic bag, people walking through mountains of bottles, and even illustrations showing the sheer size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 

But there’s an often-overlooked angle to all this that goes beyond the landfill. Plastics are a big, and quickly growing, problem for the climate. They account for about 3.4% of global greenhouse-gas emissions—more than the entire aviation industry. 

I was thinking about this as I read this gripping feature story on plastics by Douglas Main, which was published last week online and is the cover story for our upcoming magazine issue. You should give the story a read for an outlook on the problem, and what it might take to fix it. And for the newsletter this week, let’s dig into how plastic contributes to greenhouse-gas emissions, and where we go from here. 

What’s the deal with plastic and climate change? 

Plastics fall into a class of materials called petrochemicals, meaning they’re made using fossil fuels. The category also includes products like fertilizers and laundry detergents. 

Fossil fuels are used as a feedstock, or starting ingredient, in plastics production, and they are also used for energy to power the manufacturing process. Plastic made up around 6% of global oil demand as of 2014, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. 

That number could get much worse, and fast. Plastic consumption could nearly triple by 2060. Add all that up, and plastics could make up 20% of global oil demand or more by 2050. 

So the growing tidal wave of plastic will be a problem for pollution and for waste management. But all that oil demand could also be a roadblock for our climate goals. 

Let’s back up, though, because if you’re anything like me (always craving the details), you’re probably wondering how, exactly, plastic contributes to climate change. Well, let me count the ways.

• Most plastics are derived from natural gas. Extracting and transporting that natural gas leads to accidental leaks as well as purposeful releases of both carbon dioxide and methane. In the US alone, extracting and transporting natural gas for plastics produces between 12.5 and 13.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

• Processing fossil fuels to make plastic is energy intensive. One particularly energy-intensive step is steam cracking, where furnaces are heated to temperatures up to 1,100 °C (2,000 °F) to break up feedstocks into smaller molecules, which can then be made into plastics. 

• The bulk of plastic’s emissions come from the process of making it and the energy needed to do so. However, burning plastic waste is also a small but growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions.

So where do we go from here? 

Unfortunately, the problem is so pervasive that there’s no one solution. Of all the plastic we make, 72% ends up in landfills or as litter, while 19% is incinerated and, as of 2019, only 9% is recycled. 

An ideal world would probably be one where much more of the plastic that we use can be reused or recycled in an energy-efficient way. 

Some of the solution comes down to structural changes, like setting up robust collection infrastructure for plastics that are easily recycled today. But packaging makes up only about a third of the plastic we use. And while conventional recycling methods can handle Diet Coke bottles and milk jugs, a lot of other plastic is less visible, and less easily recycled. (Think pleather skirts, wet wipes, or umbrellas—and no, you can’t put any of those in a recycling bin.)

New recycling methods could help remove some of the barriers holding back recycling today. These new technologies, like enzymatic and chemical recycling, might make the process more feasible for more products by cutting down the need to clean and sort waste. 

Ultimately, though, policy will likely be the key to tying all this together, since plastic is cheap today—and recycling often isn’t. 

Plastic is everywhere, and the solution to this massive waste problem is … complicated. Read the full feature story from Douglas Main for more. And for more on the problem of plastic, as well as some of the potential solutions, check out some of our reporting from the vault. 

Related reading

Microplastics are everywhere, and we don’t really know what that means for our health, as my colleague Jess Hamzelou outlined in a story last year. 

Chemists are inventing new ways to recycle, including one method that could tackle a mixture of some of the most common single-use plastics. Read more in my story from last year.

Biologists are getting into the game too—Carbios, a French company, wants to use enzymes to chew up plastics. Check out the full story from 2021. 

Keeping up with climate  

Several popular EVs are now cheaper than the average new gas-powered vehicle in the US. It’s a major tipping point for electric transportation. (Canary Media)

Some experts argue that it’s time to put solar-panel waste in context. This is a great graphic comparing the volume of module waste to things like e-waste, plastics, and coal ash. (Inside Climate News)

→ Some companies are working on setting up systems to recycle solar panels today, before more of them reach the end of their lives. (MIT Technology Review)

More than 50 million miles of power lines and other infrastructure need a major upgrade. Aging grids could hold back countries around the world from reaching climate goals. (The Verge)

The US announced seven projects, or “hubs,” as part of a $7 billion program to advance hydrogen fuel. (Washington Post) 

→ Hydrogen could help clean up sectors like heavy industry, but most of the fuel is generated using fossil fuels today. Some activists are skeptical of some of the projects that were chosen for the funding. (The Guardian)

Danish wind giant Ørsted just gave a $100 million guarantee that its project in New Jersey will be online by the end of 2025. How’s that for putting your money where your mouth is? (Electrek)

Energy Vault started out with a disruptive idea: storing energy using cranes and massive blocks. Now the startup has pivoted, and largely sells the batteries it set out to displace. (Canary Media)

→ Here’s why some companies are continuing to look beyond batteries for energy storage. (MIT Technology Review) 

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)

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)