Ahead of TEDx Gateway’s Climate Countdown Conference, speaker Dr Jennifer Holmgren, a clean energy expert, tells Christy Varghese that we have already reached a point of no return

TEDx Gateway and the Maharashtra government have collaborated for a special edition — TEDx Gateway’s Climate Countdown Conference 2021 on October 31, 2021, 4 pm onwards. This global initiative is a first of its kind virtual event to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis, in an attempt to turn ideas into action.

This year, the event will bring together an array of over 40 speakers from across the world like Aaditya Thackeray (Minister of Tourism, Environment and Protocol, Maharashtra), Dia Mirza (actor and climate change crusader), Rajiv Kumar (economist and current vice-chairman of Niti Aayog), Sumant Sinha (founder, chairman and CEO of Renew Power), Al Gore (Nobel laureate), among others.

Among the others who are scheduled to speak at TEDx Gateway is Dr Jennifer Holmgren, a clean energy expert who views carbon as an opportunity. As the CEO of LanzaTech, she believes that if recycled, it can become a great source of energy to fuel the new world. Prior to LanzaTech, she was the VP and GM of the Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit at UOP LLC, a Honeywell Company.

Under her management, UOP technology became instrumental in producing nearly all of the initial fuels used by commercial airlines and the military for testing and certification of alternative aviation fuel. Today, under Dr Holmgren’s guidance, LanzaTech is working towards deploying carbon capture and reuse facilities globally to make fuels and chemicals from waste carbon.

Read on for excerpts from the interview:

You believe that carbon is an opportunity and can be harnessed as a resource. However, keeping in mind current technology, how long would it take before it becomes a viable alternative to conventional sources of energy?

It is a viable opportunity today. LanzaTech partnered with Unilever and India Glycols to produce laundry pods made from carbon emissions for sale in China and dish soap on sale in South Africa. In Switzerland, you can clean your home with Mibelle cleaning products, now on sale at Migros stores, with both the cleaning solution and packaging made from carbon emissions. We also have bottles for soap and juices made from recycled emissions!

In the next few months, you will be able to wear sports clothes, dresses and fragrances made from carbon waste. And in the United States of America, Europe and the United Kingdom, we are building the infrastructure to produce sustainable aviation fuel to help transform the aviation industry. In the US, in partnership with LanzaJet, we will produce a combined 1 billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel in the by 2030. Technology will continuously evolve, but the reality is that we can produce just about anything from waste emissions.

Your organisation, LanzaTech, endeavours to open carbon capture and reuse facilities across the globe. What are the requirements for seamlessly implementing them globally, and would such technology be realistic in a country like India?

Absolutely! We have created a model we can scale in every region across the globe because we use distributed waste-based feedstocks and can use wastes that are specific to each country. In India, we are doing it with the critical partnerships with organisations like the DBT- IOC Centre for Advanced Bio-Energy Research and Indian Oil Corporation Limited. In addition, we see India as having plentiful waste feedstocks available across multiple sectors and we have partnerships to turn agricultural waste to ethanol and to convert that ethanol into products that our brand customers want. We believe in strong partnerships with governments, academia, and industry. It is together we will make the changes needed.

Across the globe, we need to see stable, technology-neutral policies that incentivise the adoption of carbon capture and utilisation technologies and products.  For such first of-a-kind facilities, technology companies need investment to bring down production costs as plants are built and this is where policy and technology together can provide long term climate solutions. This in turn will support agrarian and industrial supply chains and create good jobs around the world. We are excited to have three projects in development or construction in India today, using refinery emissions and agricultural residues.

Can we reverse climate change using existing technology? If yes, how?

There is a lot of interesting work being done at the Center for Climate Repair in Cambridge under Sir David King. Can we reverse all the damage? I don't know. I know that the task ahead is the challenge of our lives and we need to try everything to bend the carbon curve.  Innovation and new approaches to using carbon, especially atmospheric carbon will help. 

At LanzaTech, we are closing the carbon cycle and creating a pathway to net-zero using cutting-edge synthetic biology, engineering and artificial intelligence and coupling that with a natural process that has been around for centuries involving fermentation. Instead of yeast, we are using microbes that have also been around for years.  So, we can all do our part to use the technology we already have and use a process we are already familiar with, with waste resources currently at our disposal, and create new pathways to preventing further damage.

What steps should the human race implement to make the far-fetched dream of net zero emissions by 2050 a reality?

We really should have the ambition for 2030. 2050 is too late.

People need to be carbon smart and start asking questions about where the carbon in their life comes from. Producers need to look at their supply chains, governments need to look at their policies. We must all rethink carbon and find ways to reuse the carbon that is already above ground. Until we stop extracting new carbon, we are never going to reach that goal.

With climate change slowly heating the earth, how long would it take to reach a point of no return?

Unfortunately, we are at that point already. The science is clear, and the storms, floods, fires, and heat are not warnings, they are part of the reality we now face. Extreme weather events are everywhere and are impacting multiple facets of our lives. The urgency of the climate crisis requires swift and ambitious action to reduce emissions through all possible sustainable pathways. Carbon capture and reuse is a great example of a way we can contribute to the solution. It is through innovation like this that we can prevent any further damage to our planet, but I am afraid that there has been much damage already and people will continue to suffer around the world. We need to act now and we need to act decisively.