Jan 28 2024
The contentious path to a cleaner future

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 world is building solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and other crucial climate technologies faster than ever. As the pace picks up, though, a challenge is looming: we need a whole lot of materials to build it all. 

From cement and steel to nickel and lithium, the ingredient list for the clean energy transition is a long one. And in some cases, getting our hands on all those materials won’t be simple, and the trade-offs are starting to become abundantly clear. 

My colleague James Temple, senior editor for energy here at MIT Technology Review, has spent over a year digging into the building tensions around mining for critical minerals. In a new story published this week, James highlights one community in rural Minnesota and the conflicts over a mining project planned for the nearby area. 

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you check out that article. In the meantime, I got to sit down with James to ask him a few questions about the process of reporting and writing this feature and chat about critical minerals and the energy transition. Here’s some of what we talked about. 

So, what’s the big deal with critical minerals?

To address climate change, “we just need to build an enormous amount of stuff,” James says. And building all of it means a whole lot of demand for materials. 

We might need nearly 20 times more nickel in 2040 than the annual supply in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency. That multiple is 25 times for graphite, and for lithium it’s over 40 times the current figure. 

Even if people agree in the abstract that we need to extract and process the materials needed to build the stuff to address climate change, figuring out where it all should come from is easier said than done. “We came to realize that mining proposals were creating community tensions basically anywhere they appeared in the US,” James says. 

There’s pushback to all sorts of different climate tech projects—we’ve seen very vocal opposition to proposed wind farms, for example. But there seems to be an additional layer to the concerns around mining, James says. Among other reasons, it’s a legacy industry with a particularly checkered past in terms of environmental impact. 

Even as communities raise concerns over new mining projects, “you also saw the companies proposing them stressing the potential benefits to cleantech and climate goals,” James says. This combination of clear potential climate benefits with community concerns was worth exploring, he tells me. 

What does a proposed nickel mine near a small town in Minnesota tell us about conflict over critical minerals?  

The town of Tamarack, Minnesota, has a population of around 70. 

Despite its small size, Tamarack could soon be key to a crucial landmark for climate technology, because Talon Metals wants to build a huge mine outside the town that could dig up as much as 725,000 metric tons of raw ore each year. The primary target is nickel, a metal that’s crucial to building high-performance EV batteries. 

Talon has been very explicit in claiming that this mine would have benefits for the planet, going as far as applying to trademark the term “Green Nickel.” That’s one of the reasons this particular site piqued James’s interest, he says. 

At the same time, local concerns are growing. Drilling could release 2.6 million gallons of water into the mine every day, which Talon plans to pump out and treat before it’s released into nearby wetlands. This part of the plan has caused some of the greatest unease, since local fresh water is crucial to the community’s economy and identity. 

The central tension was abundantly clear on a nearly weeklong trip to Tamarack and the surrounding communities, James tells me. He went to Rice Lake National Wildlife Refuge and learned about native wild rice that grows there and its importance to Indigenous groups. He went to see samples of the ore that Talon dug up and spoke to a geologist about the resources in the region. He also attended community meetings that got a little heated, and even had to contend with some local bees. 

“We’re talking about a story of two different, very precious resources that have created a really difficult-to-address conflict,” he says. “It’s a tension that’s ultimately going to be very hard to resolve.”

There are rarely easy answers when it comes to the massive task of addressing climate change. If you’re interested in getting a better understanding of this complicated web of trade-offs, take the time to read James’s story. You’ll get all the details about why this particular deposit is such a big deal, and hear more about where things are likely to go from here.

And the story doesn’t stop there. James also has another big project out this week, in which he worked to understand how this one mine could unlock billions of dollars in government subsidies. Dig into that here.  

Related reading

Yes, we have enough materials to power the world with clean energy. Mining and processing it all might prove tricky, though.

Here’s how China hopes to secure its supply chain for critical minerals. 

Some companies are looking deep in the ocean for new sources of nickel and other metals crucial to the energy transition. Deep-sea rocks that look like potatoes could hold the key.

Keeping up with climate  

Some truck drivers are falling in love with EVs. Electric trucks are still limited in range, and they make up a small fraction of the trucks on the road, but drivers are starting to see the upside, even as critics say the move to electric is going too fast. (Washington Post)

Gas prices are down in the US, but charging up an EV is still way cheaper. Here’s how cheap gas has to get in every state to compete with EV charging. (Yale Climate Connections)

Old cell phones might provide a much-needed source of rare earth metals. These metals are crucial for motors, including the ones in electric vehicles and wind turbines, and recycling could meet as much as 40% of US demand by 2050. (New York Times)

→ Old personal devices can be a source for other metals, like lithium and cobalt, as I wrote in this story on battery recycling from last year. (MIT Technology Review)

Nobody knows when the next nuclear plant will come online in the US. The former front-runner was a NuScale modular reactor array, but the future of that project is uncertain now. (Canary Media)

Local bans can eliminate nearly 300 single-use plastic bags per person per year, according to a new report. Bottom line: the policies work. (Grist)

→ Think that your plastic is being recycled? Think again. (MIT Technology Review)

Europe will need 34,000 miles (54,000 kilometers) of additional transmission lines to handle the growth in offshore wind power. It could be Europe’s third-biggest energy source by 2050, if infrastructure can keep up. (Bloomberg)

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jan 21 2024
The next generation of nuclear reactors is getting more advanced. Here’s how.

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

I’ve got nuclear power on the brain this week. 

The workings of nuclear power plants have always fascinated me. They’re massive, technically complicated, and feel a little bit magic (splitting the atom—what a concept). But I’ve reached new levels of obsession recently, because I’ve spent the past week or so digging into advanced nuclear technology. 

Advanced nuclear is a mushy category that basically includes anything different from the commercial reactors operating now, since those basically all follow the same general formula. And there’s a whole world of possibilities out there. 

I was mostly focused on the version that’s being developed by Kairos Power for a story (which was published today, check it out if you haven’t!). But I went down some rabbit holes on other potential options for future nuclear plants too. So for the newsletter this week, let’s take a peek at the menu of options for advanced nuclear technology today. 

The basics

Before we get into the advanced stuff, let’s recap the basics.

Nuclear power plants generate electricity via fission reactions, where atoms split apart, releasing energy as heat and radiation. Neutrons released during these splits collide with other atoms and split them, creating a chain reaction.

In nuclear power plants today, there are basically two absolutely essential pieces. First, the fuel, which is what feeds the reactions. (Pretty obvious why this one is important.) Second, it’s vital that the chain reactions happen in a controlled manner, or you can get into nuclear meltdown territory. So the other essential piece of a nuclear plant is the cooling system, which keeps the whole thing from getting too hot and causing problems. (There’s also the moderator and a million other pieces, but let’s stick with two so you’re not reading this newsletter all day.)

In the vast majority of reactors on the grid today, these two components follow the same general formula: the fuel is enriched uranium that’s packed into ceramic pellets, loaded into metal pipes, and arranged into the reactor’s core. And the cooling system pumps pressurized water around the reactor to keep the temperature controlled.  

But for a whole host of reasons, companies are starting to work on making changes to this tried-and-true formula. There are roughly 70 companies in the US working on designs for advanced nuclear reactors, with six or seven far enough along to be working with regulators, says Jessica Lovering, cofounder and co-executive director at the Good Energy Collective, a policy research organization that advocates for the use of nuclear energy.

Many of these so-called advanced technologies were invented and even demonstrated over 50 years ago, before the industry converged on the standard water-cooled plant designs. But now there’s renewed interest in getting alternative nuclear reactors up and running. New designs could help improve safety, efficiency, and even cost. 

Coolant

Alternative coolants can improve on safety over water-based designs, since they don’t always need to be kept at high pressures. Many can also reach higher temperatures, which can allow reactors to run more efficiently. 

Molten salt is one leading contender for alternative coolants, used in designs from Kairos Power, Terrestrial Energy, and Moltex Energy. These designs can use less fuel and produce waste that’s easier to manage. 

Other companies are looking to liquid metals, including sodium and lead. There are a few sodium-cooled reactors operating today, mainly in Russia, and the country is also at the forefront in developing lead-cooled reactors. Metal-cooled reactors share many of the potential safety benefits of molten-salt designs. Helium and other gases can also be used to reach higher temperatures than water-cooled systems. X-energy is designing a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor using helium. 

Fuel

Most reactors that use an alternative coolant also use an alternative fuel.  

TRISO, or tri-structural isotropic particle fuel, is one of the most popular options. TRISO particles contain uranium, enclosed in ceramic and carbon-based layers. This keeps the fuel contained, keeping all the products of fission reactions inside and allowing the fuel to resist corrosion and melting. Kairos and X-energy both plan to use TRISO fuel in their reactors. 

Other reactors use HALEU: high-assay low-enriched uranium. Most nuclear fuel used in commercial reactors contains between 3% and 5% uranium-235. HALEU, on the other hand, contains between 5% and 20% uranium-235, allowing reactors to get more power in a smaller space. 

Size

I know I said I’d keep this to two things, but let’s include a bonus category. In addition to changing up the specifics of things like fuel and coolant, many companies are working to build reactors of different (mostly smaller) sizes.

Today, most reactors coming on the grid are massive, in the range of 1,000 or more megawatts—enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes. Building those huge projects takes a long time, and each one requires a bespoke process. Small modular reactors (SMRs) could be easier to build, since the procedure is the same for each one, allowing them to be manufactured in something resembling a huge assembly line. 

NuScale has been one of the leaders in this area—its reactor design uses commercial fuel and water coolant, but the whole thing is scaled down. Things haven’t been going so well for the company in recent months, though: its first project is pretty much dead in the water, and it laid off nearly 30% of its employees in early January. Other companies are still carrying the SMR torch, including many that are also going after alternative fuels and coolants. 

If you’re hungry for more advanced nuclear news, take a look at my story on Kairos Power. You can also check out some of our recent stories from the vault. 

Related reading

Germany shut down the last of its nuclear reactors last year. Here’s a look at the power struggle over nuclear power in the country.

MIT runs a small test reactor on campus, and I got to take a look inside. See how this old reactor could spark new technology.

We were promised smaller nuclear reactors, but so far that promise hasn’t really materialized. What gives?

We named NuScale one of our Climate Tech Companies to Watch in 2023. We’re definitely … watching, given the recent bumps in the road. 

6 full-size perovskite tandem cells in a metal assembly carriage

SWIFT SOLAR

Another thing

Super-efficient solar cells are on our list of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2024. (If you haven’t seen that list, you can find it here!) By sandwiching other materials with traditional silicon, tandem perovskite solar cells could help cut solar costs and generate more electricity. 

But what will it actually take to get next-generation solar technology to the market? Here’s a look at a few of the companies working to make it happen.

Keeping up with climate  

Hertz was billing itself as a leader in renting out electric vehicles (remember that Tom Brady commercial?). Now the company is selling off a third of its EV fleet. (Tech Crunch)

A mountain of clothes accumulated in the desert in Chile. Then it caught fire. This is a fascinating deep dive into the problem of textile waste. (Grist)

New uranium mines will be the first to begin operations in the US in eight years. The mines could help bring more low-carbon nuclear power to the grid, but they’re also drawing sharp criticism. (Inside Climate News)

Researchers at Microsoft and a US national lab used AI to find a new candidate material for batteries. It could eventually be used in batteries to reduce the amount of lithium needed to build them. (The Verge)

→ I talked about this and other science news of the week on Science Friday. Give it a listen! (Science Friday)

Animals are always evolving. A few lucky ones might even be able to do it fast enough to keep up with climate change. (Hakai Magazine)

All that new renewable energy coming onto the grid is helping make a dent in US emissions. Buildout of clean energy cut greenhouse-gas emissions by nearly 2% in 2023. (Canary Media)

The Biden administration will fine oil and gas companies for excess methane emissions. Penalties for emitting this super-powerful greenhouse gas are part of the landmark climate bill passed in 2023. (New York Times)

Texas has had a host of upgrades to its electric grid in the years since a powerful storm devastated the state in 2021. Now experts are watching to see how the grid holds up against cold weather this week. (Washington Post)

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
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)

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 22 2023
2023 is breaking all sorts of climate records 

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

This has been quite the year for climate news, with weather disasters, technological breakthroughs, and policy changes making headlines around the world. There’s an abundance of bad news, but there are also some glimmers of hope, if you know where to look.

It’s a lot to make sense of, so for this last newsletter of 2023, let’s take a look back at the year, and let’s do it in data. A “climate wrapped,” if you will. 

A new record on emissions (again)

Technically, we can’t draw definitive conclusions about 2023 just yet. But it’s pretty evident that we’re on track for yet another record year when it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are expected to hit 36.8 billion metric tons in 2023, according to the Global Carbon Budget report, which was released earlier this month. That’s just over 1% higher than last year’s levels.

Hitting another record high for emissions isn’t the best news. Ideally, this line would be going in the other direction, and quickly. 

The story isn’t the same everywhere, though. The US and Europe, for instance, are actually seeing slight decreases in carbon pollution (though these places are among the highest historical emitters). China and India are seeing emissions growth of around 4% and 8%, respectively. 

But that growth could be slowing down soon, and some analysts say that within the next few years we could be nearing peak emissions (the moment when they turn around and start going down). I’ll believe it when I see it. 

It’s getting hot in here

Not only are we seeing record-high emissions, but 2023 is almost certainly going to be the hottest year on record, too. The year through November averaged just under 1.5 °C (or about 2.6 °F) hotter than preindustrial levels.

The warming is noticeable even compared with the last few decades. November was 0.85 °C warmer than the average November was in the 1990s. 

Wherever you look, from the air to the ocean, the planet is heating up, and these rising temperatures and other changing weather patterns have cascading effects, as we saw firsthand in 2023. 

Sea ice hit new low levels. Historic wildfires in Canada brought oppressive smoke sweeping down the east coast of the US. Thousands died in flooding in Libya, and a years-long drought in the Horn of Africa has left millions facing water and food shortages. Name any type of climate disaster you can think of, and one of those probably broke records, somewhere in the world, in 2023. 

Looking back, I think this year I saw a trend that’s been building for the past couple of years: a growing number of people are being directly and dramatically affected by climate change. It’s pushing awareness that climate change isn’t some theoretical future possibility, but something happening in the present tense.

Money money money

It’s not possible to take a look back at this year without talking about bad news. But there are some positives too, I promise! 

For one thing, this year also saw record investment in clean energy, with global total spending of $1.7 trillion. (Yes trillion, with a “t.”) 

Investment in clean energy has been outpacing investment in fossil fuels for a while now, but the gap is starting to widen, with growing amounts of spending on technologies like solar and wind power and energy storage. In fact, solar power alone attracted more investment than fossil fuels for the first time.

The current state of the climate is pretty grim, and it’s important to take note of that and be realistic about where we are and what still needs to happen. But these bright spots of climate news are around, if you know where to look. 

That’s why the MIT Technology Review climate team put together some of the good news we saw in the climate world this year. You can find out more about what’s giving us hope in our new story here. 

Related reading

While we’re looking back, let’s reminisce about some of our top climate and energy stories of 2023. 

Keeping up with climate  

Fewer EVs will qualify for tax credits soon in the US, as new restrictions kick in on January 1. Tesla’s Model 3 and Ford’s Mustang Mach-E will be among those ruled out, according to the automakers. (New York Times)

New details about a tax credit in last year’s climate bill reveal a surprising winner: thermal energy storage. Qualifying for the credits could help these alternative energy storage methods break into the market. (Canary Media)

→ Here’s why bricks are a hot new energy storage technology. (MIT Technology Review)

Lab-grown-meat companies like Upside Foods have raked in billions of dollars in funding promising healthy, climate-friendly meat without the animals. But so far, there’s not much to show for it, and lots of challenges with scaling ahead. (Bloomberg) 

There’s a huge backlog of clean energy projects waiting to connect to the grid in the US. This delay could put 2030 clean-energy targets out of reach for many states. (Canary Media)

After an emissions scandal, automaker Volkswagen agreed to spend $2 billion funding public EV charging stations. Now, those chargers are unreliable—yes, even more so than other public charging networks. (Washington Post)

By the end of the decade, many batteries will need to have a passport—a digital record of their source materials and history. (Quartz)

Carbon removal has gone from a wild idea to a hot topic. Some scientists think that’s a problem, as companies and governments are using this unproven technology to continue with business as usual rather than making hard cuts to emissions. (E&E News)

→ Here’s why some experts say the world is thinking about carbon removal all wrong. (MIT Technology Review)

Despite overwhelming evidence that climate change is real, some people still fall for conspiracy theories. There’s a whole host of reasons why. (Grist)

→ If you’re looking to broach the subject, here are my tips for talking about climate technology over the holidays. (MIT Technology Review)

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
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)

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
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) 

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 5 2023
Fossil-fuel emissions are over a million times greater than carbon removal efforts

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach a record high by the end of 2023. And a new report shows just how insignificant technologies that pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere are by comparison. 

Worldwide, those emissions are projected to reach 36.8 billion metric tons in 2023, a 1.1% increase from 2022 levels, according to this year’s Global Carbon Budget Report, released today. As delegates gather in Dubai for this year’s UN climate summit, a record-setting year for emissions underscores the need to make dramatic changes, and quickly. 

“There has been great progress in reducing emissions in some countries—however, it just isn’t good enough. We’re drastically off course,” Mike O’Sullivan, a lecturer at the University of Exeter and one of the authors of the report, said via email. 

Europe’s emissions dropped around 7% from last year, while the US saw a 3% reduction. But overall, coal, oil, and natural-gas emissions are all still on the rise, and nations including India and China are still seeing emissions growth. Together, those two nations currently account for nearly 40% of global fossil-fuel emissions, though Western nations including the US are still the greatest historical emitters.

“What we want to see is fossil-fuel emissions decreasing, fast,” said David Ho, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a science advisor at Carbon Direct, a carbon management company, via email. 

However, one technology sometimes touted as a cure-all for the emissions problems has severe limitations, according to the new report: carbon dioxide removal. Carbon removal technologies suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to prevent them from further warming the planet. The UN panel on climate change has called carbon removal an essential component of plans to reach international climate targets of keeping warming at less than 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels. 

The problem is, there’s very little carbon dioxide removal taking place today. Direct air capture and other technological approaches collected and stored only around 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2023. 

That means that, in total, emissions from fossil fuels were millions of times higher than carbon removal levels this year. That ratio shows that it’s “infeasible” for carbon removal technologies to balance out emissions, O’Sullivan says: “We cannot offset our way out of this problem.”

The report also had bad news about nature-based approaches. Efforts to pull carbon out of the atmosphere with methods like reforestation and afforestation (in other words, planting trees) accounted for more emissions removed from the atmosphere than their technological counterparts. However, even those efforts are still being canceled out by current rates of deforestation and other land-use changes.

“The only way to solve this crisis is with major changes to the fossil-fuel industry,” O’Sullivan says. Technologies like carbon removal “only become important if emissions are drastically cut as well.”

There are many tools available to start making more progress on emissions in the near term, as a UN climate report released earlier this year laid out: deploying renewables like wind and solar, preventing deforestation and cutting methane leaks, and increasing energy efficiency are all among the low-cost solutions that could cut emissions in half by 2030.  

Ultimately, carbon removal could also be part of the answer, but there’s a lot of work left to do, Ho says. Now is a good time to study and develop carbon removal technologies, figure out the risks and benefits of different approaches, and determine which ones can be scaled up while avoiding ecological and environmental-justice issues, he adds. 

None of that is likely to happen fast enough to achieve the progress needed on emissions cuts this decade. In the Global Carbon Budget report, researchers estimate how close we are to sailing past climate limits. The researchers estimate that there’s about 275 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide left to emit before we exceed 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) of warming. At this rate, the world is on track to blow that budget within about seven years, around the end of the decade. 

“We have agency, and nothing is inevitable,” O’Sullivan says. “The world will change and is changing—we just need to speed up.”

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 26 2023
Your guide to talking about climate tech over the holidays

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

Ah, the holidays. Time for good food, quality moments with family, and hard questions about climate change … or is that last one just something that happens to me?

I’m a climate reporter, so at parties I’m often peppered with questions about my job, and more broadly about climate change and climate technology. Sometimes these questions can spark a heated conversation, and I have to admit, I often change the subject or sneak away for a cookie. But all these conversations have shown me that a lot of people have heard confusing things about climate change on cable news or the internet or from their friend in book club, and they want to know more. 

With Thanksgiving and other big holidays coming up, you might find yourself in a similar position. So grab some green bean casserole (made with canned green beans, of course) and let’s dig into a few questions about climate technology that might come up. 

Touchy Climate Topic #1: I’ve heard EVs are worse for the environment than regular cars—the power has to come from somewhere, after all. 

In almost every case today, battery-powered vehicles produce fewer emissions than those with internal-combustion engines. The exact size of those differences does depend on where you are in the world, what is powering the electrical grid, and what sort of vehicle you’re driving in the first place. 

Regional differences can be significant, as catalogued in a 2021 study from the International Council on Clean Transportation. In the US and Europe, an electric car will cut emissions by between 60% and 70% relative to a gas-powered one. In places like China and India, where the grid is powered by a higher fraction of fossil fuels like coal, the savings are lower—20% to 35% in India and 35% to 45% in China. 

Vehicle size matters here too. If you really stack the deck, it’s true that some vehicles with batteries in them can wind up being worse for the planet than some vehicles with combustion engines. Take, for instance, the Hummer EV, a monstrosity that is responsible for 341 grams of carbon dioxide per mile driven. That’s more than a Toyota Corolla running on gasoline (269 grams), according to a 2022 analysis by Quartz research.

One crucial point to remember is that there’s a clear path for EVs to keep getting even better in the future. Batteries are getting more efficient. Recycling efforts are underway (more on this later). And grids around the world are seeing more power coming from low-carbon sources like wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear. That all adds up to EVs that will continue to get cleaner over time. 

Touchy Climate Topic #2: What about all that mining for the materials that make clean tech? Isn’t that going to destroy the planet? 

This one is tough, and there’s a lot of complexity when it comes to all the stuff (yes, that’s the technical term) that we need to address climate change. There are very real environmental and human rights issues around mining of all sorts. 

We’ll need to mine a lot in order to build all the technology required to address climate change: about 43 million metric tons of minerals by 2040 in order to be on track for net-zero goals, according to the International Energy Agency.

The volume of mining is even higher if you take into account that some minerals are present in pretty low concentrations. Take copper, for example—a common material used for everything from transmission lines to EV batteries. Getting one ton of copper can require moving over 500 tons of rock, since sites mined today tend to have concentrations of copper below 1%. 

However, even if you take into account all that waste rock, the energy transition is likely going to involve less mining than the fossil-fuel economy does today. The details will depend on how much recycling we can do, as well as how technologies evolve. If you want more details, I’d highly recommend this stellar analysis from Hannah Ritchie for a comparison.

Any mining can be harmful for the environment and for people living near mines. So it’s still worth paying careful attention to how these projects are progressing, and how we can lighten the burden of new technologies. But climate technology isn’t going to create a brand-new level of mining. 

Touchy Climate Topic # 3: I heard they’re stacking wind turbine blades, solar panels, and EV batteries in landfills. Isn’t the waste from all this “clean” tech going to be a big problem? 

Manufacturers are racing to get more clean energy technologies built and running, which means that in a few decades many will be reaching the end of their useful lives, and we’ll need to figure out what to do with them.

Take solar panels, for example. In 2050, we could see as much as 160 million metric tons of cumulative waste from solar panels. Sounds like a lot—and it is—but there’s a bigger problem. By then we’ll have generated a total of about 1.8 billion metric tons of e-waste, and plastic waste will top 12 billion metric tons. (For other comparisons, check out this Inside Climate News story, and the original article those numbers come from in Nature Physics.)

Overall, waste from climate tech is likely to be a facet of a much more substantial problem. Even so, there are still plenty of good reasons not to just throw old technology into the landfill. Many of the materials needed to make these items are expensive and could be reused to alleviate the need for more mining. 

The good news is, widespread efforts are underway to recycle solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, and even wind turbine blades. So yes, there’s a waste problem looming, but there’s plenty of opportunity to address that now and in the future. 

In the end, if you’re going to talk about climate tech at your holiday meal, remember that some people are more interested in fighting than in having a conversation, so it’s okay to just change the subject sometimes! If you’re looking for something else to talk about, I’d suggest you bring up the fact that crabs have evolved independently so many times there’s a word for the process. (It’s called carcinization.)

Enjoy your conversations about crabs and/or climate tech, and have some mashed potatoes for me!

Related reading

For more on EVs, and specifically the topic of hybrids, check out this story from last year. And for my somewhat conflicted defense of huge EVs, give this one a read.

On mining, I’d recommend this interview my colleague James Temple did with a Department of Energy official on the importance of critical minerals for clean energy. I’ll also point you to this newsletter I wrote earlier this year busting three myths about mining for clean energy. 

And if you’re curious to read about recycling, here are recent stories I’ve written about recycling wind turbine blades, solar panels, and batteries. 

Another thing

The power grid is getting more complicated, but AI might be able to help. AI could make the grid faster and more resilient in a range of ways, from allowing operators to make faster decisions to making EVs part of the solution. Check out the latest from my colleague June Kim for more!

Keeping up with climate  

New York has purchased 30,000 heat pumps for public housing units. The appliances could help save energy, cut costs, and address climate change, and these and other trials will be key in finding units that work for renters, a common barrier for the technology. (The Verge)

In related news, the US Department of Energy just announced $169 million in federal funding for domestic heat pump manufacturing. (Wired)

→ This is how heat pumps work. (MIT Technology Review)

A $100 billion promise from nearly 15 years ago is still having effects on climate negotiations, including the upcoming UN climate talks. (Grist)

How to get more people into EVs? Pay them to turn in their old gas-guzzlers. New programs in Colorado, Vermont, and California are testing out the approach. (Bloomberg)

Pumping water up and down hills can be a cheap and effective way to store energy. But there’s a growing question about where the water for new storage projects will come from. (Inside Climate News)

Electricity supplies are changing around the world, and these charts reveal how. I loved the world map showing where fossil fuels are declining (the US, most of Europe, Japan) and where they’re still growing. (New York Times)

→ Here’s which countries are most responsible for climate change. (MIT Technology Review)

Eat Just, a maker of vegan eggs and lab-grown meat, is in a tricky financial spot. The company has faced lawsuits and difficulties paying its vendors on time, according to a new investigation. (Wired) 

The country of Portugal produced more than enough renewable electricity to serve all its customers for six straight days earlier this fall. (Canary Media)

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 19 2023
What’s coming next for fusion 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.

We’ve covered the dream of fusion before in this newsletter: the power source could provide consistent energy from widely available fuel without producing radioactive waste. 

But making a fusion power plant a reality will require a huge amount of science and technology progress. Though some milestones have been reached, many are yet to come. At our EmTech MIT event this week, I sat down with Kimberly Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). 

She was at the center of the science news world last year, when researchers from the national lab achieved what’s called net energy gain, finally demonstrating that fusion reactions can generate more energy than is used to start them up. 

During our conversation on stage, I asked her about this moment for fusion research, where the national labs fit in, and where we go from here. 

The moment

In December 2022, a group of scientists sat in a control room that looked like something out of a space mission. They focused 2 million joules of laser energy onto a target about the size of a pea. Hydrogen fuel inside that target began to compress, releasing energy as the atoms inside fused together. 

And this time, more energy came out than what went in—something that had never happened before.

“This was really just a moment of great joy and vindication for all of the thousands of people who have poured their heart and soul into this pursuit over many decades,” Budil told me on stage at the event. 

Many people thought it would never work, she explained—that the lab would never get to the level of precision needed with the lasers, or get the targets perfect enough to house the reaction. “The laser is a miracle, a modern engineering miracle,” she said during her talk. And “the targets are incredible, precision works of art.” 

It’s “very, very hard to make fusion work,” Budil told me. And the moment researchers achieved net energy didn’t represent the finish line, but one milestone in a series of many still to come. 

The aftermath

After the first successful demonstration of net energy gain, “the first priority was to repeat it,” Budil said. “But the next five shots were duds. They really did not work.” 

It seemed to be mostly a problem with the targets, those tiny fuel pellets that the lasers shoot at. The targets need to be virtually perfect, with no defects. Making one takes around seven months from start to finish. 

It wound up taking around six months to repeat the initial success, but over the summer, the lab achieved the highest energy gain to date. The team achieved net energy gain twice more in October. 

There’s still a lot to learn about fusion, and researchers are trying to do just that with these repeated attempts. On stage, Budil ticked through some of the questions they still had: Could the scientists make changes to the targets? Alter the laser pulse shape? Turn the energy up? 

There’s been steady progress on the science and engineering behind fusion energy for decades, Budil said, but new questions always come up as progress gets made. 

I asked her when she thought this energy source might be ready for prime time. “My best guess is that you could have a demo power plant in 20 years,” she told me. Some startups are making bolder claims than that, predicting a decade or less, “but I think the challenges are much more significant than people realized at the beginning. Plasmas are really complicated,” she said. 

Ultimately, researchers at the national lab won’t be the ones to build a power plant: that’s the role of the private sector, Budil says. But the researchers plan to keep working as part of the growing ecosystem of fusion. 

Budil counsels a bit of patience as researchers around the world work to reach the next big fusion milestone: “The fusion community is definitely known for its irrational exuberance. My job for the last year has been half to get people excited about big science and public science, and the other half is to manage expectations for fusion energy, because it’s going to be very hard.” 

Related reading

The road to this moment in fusion has been a long one. Check out some of our old magazine covers on the topic, from as early as 1972.  

The dream of fusion power isn’t going away, as I wrote in a newsletter earlier this fall.

The first net energy gain in a fusion reactor was a huge moment, but the ultimate application for energy is still many breakthroughs away.

Helion says its first fusion plant will be online as soon as 2028. Experts are skeptical of this and other ambitious timeline announcements, as my colleague James Temple covered earlier this year.

Keeping up with climate  

The US and China have agreed to work together to ramp up renewables and cut emissions. The agreement comes as President Biden and President Xi Jinping meet in person this week. (New York Times)

The first planned small-scale nuclear plant in the US is officially no more. Startup NuScale canceled plans for the project after it failed to line up enough customers willing to pay the rising cost of electricity. (Wired)

→ We were promised smaller nuclear reactors. Where are they? (MIT Technology Review)

A German flow-battery company, CMBlu, just pulled in $100 million in funding. The money is a big boon for a technology that has long struggled to bring the cost savings it’s promised. (Canary Media)

Car dealerships aren’t ready, or in some cases very willing, to sell electric vehicles. That could undermine progress on cleaning up transportation. (Washington Post)

Electrifying heating systems and other appliances in homes could be a major part of cleaning up emissions attributed to buildings. The problem is, renters might have trouble taking advantage of existing incentives for home electrification. (The Verge)

Exxon Mobil is setting up a facility to produce lithium, a key material for the batteries that power EVs. It’s a new foray for the fossil-fuel giant. (New York Times)

A new wave of startups is working to address the threat of wildfires. The field, increasingly termed “firetech,” can help prevent fires, or detect them once they start. (Canary Media)

Companies are racing to set up massive insect farms. The bugs can provide protein for animal feed, in a method that could help cut emissions from agriculture. (Washington Post)

Floods, heat waves, storms, and fires fueled by climate change are getting worse across the US. The hazards will increase unless greenhouse-gas emissions are cut quickly, according to a new report from the US government. (Bloomberg)

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 12 2023
I tried lab-grown chicken at a Michelin-starred restaurant

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 waiter lifted the lid with a flourish. Inside the gold-detailed ceramic container, on a bed of flower petals, rested a small black plate cradling two bits of chicken. Each was coated with a dark crust (a recado negro tempura, I later learned) and topped with edible flowers and leaves.  

A swanky restaurant in San Francisco isn’t my usual haunt for reporting on climate and energy. But I recently paid a visit to Bar Crenn, a Michelin-starred spot and one of two restaurants in the US currently serving up lab-grown meat. The two morsels on the plate in front of me were what I’d come for: a one-ounce sampling of cultivated chicken, made in the lab by startup Upside Foods. 

Small wisps of what looked like smoke rose from the dish mysteriously. I wondered if this was my imagination playing tricks on me, adding to the theatrics of the moment. I later discovered a small reservoir for dry ice inside the cylinder the meat was brought out in. As I pondered my plate, I wondered if this could be a future staple in my diet, or if the whole thing might turn out to all be smoke and mirrors. 

Lab to table

Cultivated meat, also called cultured or lab-grown meat, is meat made using animal cells—but not animals themselves. Upside Foods, along with another US-based company called Good Meat, got the green light from regulators earlier this year to begin selling cultivated chicken products to consumers.

Both companies chose to roll out their products first in high-end restaurants. Good Meat, a subsidiary of Eat Just, is serving up its chicken in China Chilcano, a DC spot headed up by chef José Andrés. Upside Foods landed its products in Bar Crenn. 

Neither restaurant could be accused of being cheap, but the placement of these products on a commercial menu is still something of a milestone in affordability for cultivated meat. The world’s first lab-grown burger, served in 2013, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. Upside hasn’t shared how much the chicken on my plate cost to grow and serve, but Bar Crenn sells the dish for $45 on an a la carte menu. 

I ordered a few other items, including a pumpkin tart topped with what appeared to be gilded pumpkin seeds and a grilled oyster dish comprising two oyster bellies with smoked cream and pickled tapioca. (Yes, apparently it’s possible to butcher an oyster.)

Bar Crenn removed most meat from its menu in 2018, a decision attributed to “the impact of factory farming on animals and the planet,” according to the restaurant’s website. It does still serve seafood, though (hence, the oyster bellies).

So Upside’s chicken is the only land-based meat available on the menu. It’s only served on a limited basis, though. Reservations are available once each month for a special Upside Foods night, and they sell out fast.

a hand holding the cultivated chicken piece up for the camera to see the texture

CASEY CROWNHART

Tucking in

After I snapped a few photos, it was time to dig in. While we were given silverware, the servers encouraged us to pick up the chicken pieces with our fingers. The flavor was savory, a bit smoky from the burnt chili aioli. It was tough to discern, with all the seasonings, sauces, and greens on top, but I thought I detected a somewhat chicken-ish flavor too. 

More than the taste, I was intrigued by the texture. This is often what I find isn’t quite right in alternative meats—if you’ve ever tried a plant-based burger like the one from Impossible Foods, you might have had the experience of a slightly softer product than one made with conventional meat. I noticed the same thing when I tried a burger made with part plant-based and part cultivated ingredients earlier this year. 

And Upside Foods has taken on a difficult task where texture is concerned, aiming to make not a chicken nugget, burger, or other blended product, but a whole-cut chicken filet. 

Whole-cut meat like chicken breast or steak is made of complicated structures of protein and fat that form as muscles grow and work. That’s hard to replicate, which is why we see so many alternative-meat companies going after things like burgers or chicken nuggets. 

But Upside wanted its first offering to be a lab-grown chicken filet. And the result is at least partway there, at least in my opinion. Cutting into the Bar Crenn tasting portion showed some fibrous-looking structure. And while the bites I slowly chewed and considered were still softer than a chicken breast, they were definitely more chicken-like than other alternatives I’ve tried. 

Washing up

The thing is, just because lab-grown meat has reached a few plates doesn’t mean it’ll make it to everyone anytime soon. 

One of the biggest challenges facing the industry is scaling up production: growing huge amounts of products in massive reactors. Upside has started work to get to these large scales. It has a pilot facility built in California, which it says has the capacity to produce 50,000 pounds of meat per year.

But for the products I tasted, things are much more small-scale right now. The Upside Foods products served at Bar Crenn are grown in small two-liter vessels, according to the company. A recent deep dive about the process from Wired described it as producing meat “almost by hand,” in a labor-intensive set of steps. 

Part of the difficulty is the decision to make a whole-cut product. In a blog post from September, Upside CEO Uma Valeti said, “We know that the whole-cut filet won’t be our first mass-market product.” The company will be working to scale easier-to-produce options over the next several years. So it’s not clear when, if ever, the chicken I tried will be widely available. 

I’ll be talking with Valeti about the road ahead for the company and the rest of the industry in a panel discussion next week at EmTech MIT, our signature event covering technology in business. We’ll also be joined by Shannon Cosentino-Roush, chief strategy officer for Finless Foods, another startup working to bring new versions of meat—in this case tuna—to our plates. 

There’s still time to register to join us on MIT’s campus or online, and we’ve got a special discount for newsletter readers at this link. Hope to see you there! 

Related reading

A green light from regulators is just the beginning. Read more about the milestone and what’s coming next for Upside Foods and Good Meat in this news story from earlier this year.

For more details on my first lab-grown meat tasting, check out this newsletter.

Finally, I took a close look at the data on just how much lab-grown meat could help climate change. It basically all comes down to scale.

Another thing

If you missed the last few editions of this newsletter, you should go back and give them a read! While I was away for a couple weeks, my colleagues on the climate desk took on some fascinating topics. 

June Kim, our editorial fellow, dug into the potential for heat batteries and shared some news from startup Antora Energy in her first appearance in The Spark. And James Temple, our senior editor for energy, took the opportunity to dive into one of his favorite topics, carbon offsets. What are you waiting for? Go read them! 

Keeping up with climate  

This startup took its electric plane from Vermont to Florida. Here’s what it might mean for the future of flight. (New York Times)

→ The runway for battery-powered planes might still be a long one. (MIT Technology Review)

There’s been lots of talk over the last few weeks about a slowdown in EV sales from legacy automakers like Ford and GM. Battery makers are grateful for the reprieve. (E&E News)

Meanwhile, the industry is still waiting for more details on EV tax credits, specifically related to China’s involvement in the supply chain. It’s a niche bit of rule-making that could have massive implications for the affordability of electric vehicles in the US. (Politico)

The US offshore wind industry is facing a moment of reckoning as rising costs and stalled supply chains put projects in jeopardy. (Canary Media)

Climate-change-fueled droughts and rising temperatures are messing with the fish, too. Smallmouth bass could soon wreak havoc on native fish in the Grand Canyon. (High Country News)

I loved this column on 10 controversial food truths from Tamar Haspel. (Washington Post)

→ Number five reminded me of this story that my colleague James Temple wrote a few years ago, which points out that unfortunately, organic farming is actually worse for climate change than the conventional route. (MIT Technology Review)

Hoboken, New Jersey, is something of a success story when it comes to managing flooding. But it’s nearly impossible to prepare for every storm. (New York Times)

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments