Speaker 1: Google's research Labs started a project a few years ago
Speaker 1: that it thought had the potential to slow the impact
Speaker 1: of man made climate change. It was going to make
Speaker 1: fuel from carbon dioxide harvested from seawater. This fuel would
Speaker 1: still release carbon when it was burned, just like oil
Speaker 1: and gas, but because it was made from carbon taken
Speaker 1: from the atmosphere instead of taken from underground deposits, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't end up increasing the overall level of greenhouse gases.
Speaker 1: Our world economy is fueled by awfel fuel still, and
Speaker 1: they have a lot of amazing properties that are hard
Speaker 1: to replicate, and so we could make renewable fuels, we
Speaker 1: would the advance substantially as you know, world civilization. That's
Speaker 1: Kathie Hannon who led the project, which Google called fog Horn,
Speaker 1: and the Foghorn team actually did succeed in making fuel
Speaker 1: from seawater, but Google pulled the plug on the project
Speaker 1: anyway in early because it was just too expensive. It
Speaker 1: just didn't look like we would be able to hit
Speaker 1: a price point on a timeline that would justify the
Speaker 1: very large investments that would be required to bring that
Speaker 1: technology to market. Scientists have known for decades that it's
Speaker 1: theoretically possible to suck carbon from air or water and
Speaker 1: turn it into all kinds of products. To date, a
Speaker 1: big problem with carbon removal efforts is that they've been
Speaker 1: too expensive to justify doing on a large scale on
Speaker 1: any practical basis. Three years after fog Horn ended, other
Speaker 1: researchers think they're coming even closer to cracking the code.
Speaker 1: One of them is a tiny company named Prometheus. It's
Speaker 1: not using the exact same technology that Google used for Foghorn,
Speaker 1: but it does see itself picking up where Google left off.
Speaker 1: The company even counts the person who was the technical
Speaker 1: lead on Foghorn as an advisor. But for any of
Speaker 1: this to matter, these new companies are going to have
Speaker 1: to act quickly. Here's Julio Friedman, an expert on carbon
Speaker 1: management at Columbia University. If you're getting into this business
Speaker 1: because you want to help on climate, here on the clock,
Speaker 1: we need to keep in emissions very very quickly. If
Speaker 1: it takes those seventy years to displace the incumbent we
Speaker 1: loose like that, that's not good. A growing number of
Speaker 1: experts now believe that carbon capture technology is a necessary
Speaker 1: part of any plan to confront climate change. The problem
Speaker 1: is moving it out of the laboratory and up to
Speaker 1: the kind of scale that could make a difference at
Speaker 1: a planetary level, and doing it fast enough to avoid
Speaker 1: the potentially disastrous effects of climate change. It's a daunting prospect,
Speaker 1: but there's never been more support from private investors and policymakers.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the rare case where the biggest business
Speaker 1: opportunity is also a chance to save the world. I'm
Speaker 1: Pia Gadkari and I'm Joshua Brewsting. You're listening to Decrypted.
Speaker 1: If you want to know what's hot in the tech
Speaker 1: startup world, there may not be a better place to
Speaker 1: look than why Combinator Demo Day. Twice a year, several
Speaker 1: dozen hand picks startups give two minute pitches to a
Speaker 1: room full of investors, media types, and industry insiders. It's
Speaker 1: a big deal. Y SEE as a tech investment firm
Speaker 1: that's famous for its role launching companies like Airbnb, drop Box,
Speaker 1: and Reddit. Every founder that takes the stage oozes with
Speaker 1: optimism that they're about to hit it big. No one else,
Speaker 1: Because no one else, no one else. It's InCred ten.
Speaker 1: But in recent years y C has also begun testing
Speaker 1: out its own sweeping social projects. It said it was
Speaker 1: going to begin experimenting with the concept of paying people
Speaker 1: a universal basic income. That year, it also said it
Speaker 1: was going to build a city from the ground up.
Speaker 1: Y C side projects serve as a barometer of the
Speaker 1: big questions that Silicon Valley is fixated on at any
Speaker 1: one moment in time, and this year, why C said
Speaker 1: it was specifically seeking pictures from startups working to remove
Speaker 1: carbon from the atmosphere. It was overwhelmed with responses. Sixties
Speaker 1: startups applied to the program. It accepted just two of them,
Speaker 1: and one of those was Prometheus. The company was started
Speaker 1: by a guy named Rob McGinnis. A demo day, Rob
Speaker 1: took the stage and told the audience that he had
Speaker 1: built a machine that could make gasoline from thin air,
Speaker 1: and that it could do it at a profit. This
Speaker 1: was an idea with the potential to be the undepenning
Speaker 1: of a huge business and a real force in the
Speaker 1: fight against climate change. It was also pretty audacious coming
Speaker 1: from such a small company. After demo day, I visited
Speaker 1: Rob in his coworking space about two hours south of
Speaker 1: San Francisco, formed a company, and I started building our
Speaker 1: first proaches. Would you say, we it's really just to
Speaker 1: do at this point. Yeah, but I had health. So
Speaker 1: it's like people have been working as if they're going
Speaker 1: to have jobs and now they are. Rob's machine is
Speaker 1: a six ft tall box, three ft on each side.
Speaker 1: It's the size of a real big refrigerator. So you know,
Speaker 1: I had this open and have you looked at it
Speaker 1: since it came back from San Francisco, haven't? Really, this
Speaker 1: is the first unveiling. Everything's still here in the racks.
Speaker 1: That's good, Okay, Um, well that's go through and make
Speaker 1: sure nothing lose. I mean, is this your only one
Speaker 1: at the moment? Yeah, this is so we were really
Speaker 1: nervous loading and unloading it, you know, but it was
Speaker 1: important to have it there for people to be able
Speaker 1: to see what we're talking talking about. So these are
Speaker 1: power supplies. Um. So we opens it up and I
Speaker 1: can see that there's a cooling unit on the top
Speaker 1: and a little screen that shows a video feed from
Speaker 1: what's going on inside the machine. That's just bubbles coming
Speaker 1: out of water, and there's some piping and some wires,
Speaker 1: and then at the bottom there's a little spicket where
Speaker 1: the gas can come out. Rob asked me not to
Speaker 1: take pictures. We don't want people to see kind of
Speaker 1: exactly are piping and instruantation design because, um, you know,
Speaker 1: eventually people will compete doing things that may be similar,
Speaker 1: and we don't want to give anybody any you know, shortcuts.
Speaker 1: The clever thing about Rob's machine is that it ends
Speaker 1: up at exactly the same place that traditional gas companies
Speaker 1: end up. It just starts somewhere different. Traditionally, the process
Speaker 1: of making gas starts with drilling something out of the ground,
Speaker 1: You refine it, you put it in your car, and
Speaker 1: you burn it. This releases carbon into the atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: that's the problem. The more fossil fuels we burn, the
Speaker 1: more the carbon builds up in our atmosphere, and that's
Speaker 1: ultimately contributing to climate change. But if you can use
Speaker 1: the carbon that's already in the air to make your gasoline,
Speaker 1: your carbon footprint can theoretically be zero. You just create
Speaker 1: a circular process that recycles the same carbon over and over,
Speaker 1: and that's what Robs trying to do. What's cool about
Speaker 1: this is it's reverse combustion, right, So when you burn fuel,
Speaker 1: you make water, carbon oxide, and energy in some sort
Speaker 1: of work. Hopefully um and those three things can be
Speaker 1: combined back into um into gasoline, but the byproducts oxygen.
Speaker 1: So this thing is like a little mechanical forest, just
Speaker 1: like trees. Rob's machine would remove carbon dioxide from the air.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are some caveats. The process requires a
Speaker 1: significant amount of energy. If that energy doesn't come from
Speaker 1: renewable sources like wind or solar energy, you'll just end
Speaker 1: up burning carbon to make your carbon neutral fuel, and
Speaker 1: that defeats the whole purpose. It can also be really expensive.
Speaker 1: I contacted Matt Eisman, who was the technical lead on
Speaker 1: Foghorn for Google. He's advising Robin. I was interested in
Speaker 1: what he had to say about Prometheus. Matt said people
Speaker 1: regularly approach him with ideas for carbon removal companies, seeking
Speaker 1: his endorsement or his advice. Prometheus stood out to Matt
Speaker 1: because of advances Rob had made in material sciences. These
Speaker 1: would allow him to turn carbon into fuel in liquid stage.
Speaker 1: Before then, people have been heating it up and doing
Speaker 1: this in gaseous form. This would mean that Prometheus can
Speaker 1: conduct his process at a lower temperature that requires less power,
Speaker 1: and that makes everything cheaper. Rob's machines can also be
Speaker 1: small enough to be portable, so he could physically move
Speaker 1: them around based on where the power is cheapest at
Speaker 1: any time. In the weeks after Demo Day, Rob said
Speaker 1: he was able to raise all the money he was
Speaker 1: off to and that he'd use it to hire a
Speaker 1: few employees and move the project onto the next phase,
Speaker 1: but he didn't want to say how much he had
Speaker 1: raised or from whom Prometheus is entering a growing carbon
Speaker 1: capture industry, there's a number of stages that companies are
Speaker 1: focused on. There are the companies that want to perfect
Speaker 1: the process of sucking the carbon out of the air
Speaker 1: that's known as direct air carbon capture. Climb Works, Global Thermostat,
Speaker 1: and Carbon Engineering have all been working on that project
Speaker 1: for years. Then there are companies like Opus twelve who
Speaker 1: want to use the technology to make not only fuel,
Speaker 1: but other industrial chemicals like carbon monoxide. And then there's
Speaker 1: another set of businesses that want to use repurposed carbon
Speaker 1: to build alternatives to concrete and other construction materials. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Rob wants to go off to another huge market, which
Speaker 1: is the gasoline market, and he believes that it will
Speaker 1: be possible for him to start producing gasoline at profitable
Speaker 1: rates within a year. He's told us about three dollars
Speaker 1: a gallon at first. Of course, for now he's just
Speaker 1: asking us to take his word for it. We've been building, um,
Speaker 1: both this prototype system and also the economic model that
Speaker 1: we're basing our assumptions on during that And have you
Speaker 1: actually produced any gasoline during that period? No? No, we
Speaker 1: just finished the machine on Friday. But um, there's no
Speaker 1: question it will make fuel because everything in it has
Speaker 1: already been used to do what it's done before, So
Speaker 1: there's no there's no like, no new part in this system.
Speaker 1: It's really just things that have been done but done
Speaker 1: before independently. What most climate scientists agree on is that
Speaker 1: the planet needs more carbon capture. Last fall, the u
Speaker 1: n s Into Governmental Panel on Climate Change said carbon
Speaker 1: removal would be a necessary part of the response to
Speaker 1: the problem. Estimates of how much carbon we need to
Speaker 1: be removing from the atmosphere every year are in the
Speaker 1: range of ten giga tons. That's ten billion tons of carbon,
Speaker 1: or about a quarter of the current annual level of
Speaker 1: global CEO two emissions. That means companies like robs have
Speaker 1: to start having some real successes and real soon. But
Speaker 1: not everyone in albed in. Carbon removal is necessarily building
Speaker 1: new machines. Say that absolutely, thanks for having me. The
Speaker 1: same week I met Rob, I also met with Diego
Speaker 1: sized Gill, the founder of Pachama. That's the other carbon
Speaker 1: removal company that got into y S. Diego didn't have
Speaker 1: a machine to show me. His company makes software that's
Speaker 1: meant to improve carbon offset markets. These are transactions in
Speaker 1: which someone, usually a business that releases a lot of
Speaker 1: carbon into the atmosphere, would pay someone else to remove
Speaker 1: or prevent the release of a similar amount of carbon.
Speaker 1: So the software Diego is writing might one day allow
Speaker 1: people to pay Prometheus, for example, for the greenhouse gases
Speaker 1: that it eliminates. Remember how Rob had described his machine
Speaker 1: as a kind of mechanical forest. The carbon removal technology
Speaker 1: that most interest Diego are actual forests. You know, we
Speaker 1: need energy breakthroughs too, We need to reduce emissions and
Speaker 1: transition to a low carbon uh energy matrix. All those
Speaker 1: efforts need to be explored. Um. You know, we're just
Speaker 1: starting with with what we think is the easiest and cheapest.
Speaker 1: The more plan, Madris, You know, Diego told me he
Speaker 1: spent his whole career in technology up to this point,
Speaker 1: doing things that he looks back and fields are kind
Speaker 1: of inconsequential. So much of the tech industry has been
Speaker 1: focused on making life convenient around the edges, helping us
Speaker 1: our tackos from our phones or whatever, and Diego thinks
Speaker 1: that this is his chance to do something bigger than that.
Speaker 1: But he also knows that if a real carbon economy emerges,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of money to be made
Speaker 1: as a middleman. I strongly believe that it is an
Speaker 1: amazing economic opportunity as well. Right, it might be the
Speaker 1: economic opportunity of the twenty one century to fix climate change.
Speaker 1: Of course, a lot has to happen for those economics
Speaker 1: to pan out. Most businesses won't start paying for the
Speaker 1: carbon they're a missing until there's a law saying they
Speaker 1: have to. Diego's business really depends on governments taking action
Speaker 1: in order to work. This runs counter to a lot
Speaker 1: of what you've heard from the tech industry in recent years.
Speaker 1: It says that government regulation is often an impediment innovation,
Speaker 1: not its spark, and betting on politicians is always risky.
Speaker 1: But that's not even the only big question hanging over
Speaker 1: this industry. There's something a little strange about just letting
Speaker 1: the biggest climate offenders buy their way out of the problem.
Speaker 1: And with all of these carbon capture technologies. On one hand,
Speaker 1: it's good because we can keep doing things the way
Speaker 1: we always have without adding to the emissions that are
Speaker 1: already in the atmosphere. But critics would say, ultimately we
Speaker 1: have to develop technologies that don't create emissions at all. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is the view that carbon removal technologies are
Speaker 1: a fantasy that allow us to count on some easy
Speaker 1: way out to emerge so that we don't have to
Speaker 1: make the tough decisions that we'd have to make otherwise.
Speaker 1: It's definitely been a part of the discussion around them.
Speaker 1: I asked Julio Freedman about this. He's the Columbia professor
Speaker 1: we heard from at the top of the episode who
Speaker 1: has studied carbon management for nearly two decades, and these
Speaker 1: arguments about moral hazards really don't hold water with him.
Speaker 1: He says, it's unclear what kind of technologies are going
Speaker 1: to work, and so we should really be trying everything.
Speaker 1: The more technologies we try, the greater the chances we
Speaker 1: have of finding something that works. Because so many of
Speaker 1: these ideas are doomed to fail, often for reasons we
Speaker 1: don't quite understand yet, and history has proven repeatedly that
Speaker 1: finding something that's better than fossil fuel is going to
Speaker 1: be really, really hard. So there are many companies that
Speaker 1: have broken their spears on. There are many companies that
Speaker 1: were like, we're going to make something that's going to
Speaker 1: compete with gasolies and their debts, you know, Josh. One
Speaker 1: of the things that has kind of intrigued me most
Speaker 1: is the fact that despite this incredibly urgent need for
Speaker 1: the technology, the market is still in such early phases. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think when you start looking at any new project,
Speaker 1: it's a discovery and you think, wow, people are just
Speaker 1: starting down this road and it's exciting. But one of
Speaker 1: the first things I found out was that the main
Speaker 1: direct air carbon capturing companies have been around for years.
Speaker 1: They're just still very early. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: reminder of how difficult the technological problems are here. I mean,
Speaker 1: Google gave up. There is a real question about can
Speaker 1: you do this in a way that makes any economic sense,
Speaker 1: And even if you do that, then the scale up
Speaker 1: has to be so rapid and so big. That is
Speaker 1: a really daunting problem. In and of itself, and that's
Speaker 1: a technological and a sort of economic problem. I think
Speaker 1: one interesting example of kind of where we are with
Speaker 1: this industry right now is one of the other applications
Speaker 1: that companies have focused on, and that's selling bubbles to
Speaker 1: beverage makers. They need to buy carbon, and so direct
Speaker 1: carbon capture companies have been trying to strike deals with
Speaker 1: these bottling companies to say, hey, we'll sell your bubbles.
Speaker 1: We can do it at close to a reasonable price
Speaker 1: right now for this application, and then they can start
Speaker 1: learning about how maybe they get to some of these
Speaker 1: broader applications. And that's one of the things that's notable
Speaker 1: about Rob's company is that he's actually going off to
Speaker 1: a much bigger, more established market, which is the gasoline market. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Rob is a very convincing proponent of this idea. Obviously
Speaker 1: you have to be. He says, Look, if I can
Speaker 1: make gasoline that's the same as the gasoline that goes
Speaker 1: into your car, then there's already pipes to move that gasoline.
Speaker 1: I don't know if to convince people to buy that gasoline.
Speaker 1: Because there's a commodity market, I can just sell into
Speaker 1: it and will be there as fast as I can grow.
Speaker 1: At the same time, his main competition is going to
Speaker 1: be the big oil companies, and that that's pretty daunting competition. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I asked him about that as well. Obviously he said
Speaker 1: he hopes to work with them at some point. When
Speaker 1: I brought this up with Julio, he said that he
Speaker 1: thought these startups, a logical endpoint for them would be
Speaker 1: to figure out the technology and then be acquired by
Speaker 1: the large gas companies or oil companies, because you're going
Speaker 1: to need such a massive amount of infrastructure investment to
Speaker 1: get these things going, and they just have so many
Speaker 1: resources at their disposal that they might be willing to
Speaker 1: do it. And Rob actually had a number for how
Speaker 1: much he thought it would cost to build out his
Speaker 1: sort of direct air carbon capture gas for the United
Speaker 1: States market, and that was eight hundred billion dollars. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's imagine that you know, whether by acquisition by
Speaker 1: an oil company or through tech investment, Rob's company Prometheus
Speaker 1: is able to kind of succeed and scale up. Do
Speaker 1: you foresee at that point unintended consequences down the road?
Speaker 1: There must be, I mean, it always happens if something
Speaker 1: gets to global scale, there's gonna be negative consequences that
Speaker 1: you haven't out of beforehand. I think some of them
Speaker 1: are kind of obvious already. If you started having fuel
Speaker 1: made this way at such a large scale, that will
Speaker 1: require a massive amount of energy. In some ways, it's
Speaker 1: just converting solar and wind energy into gasoline, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, and that's going to distort those markets,
Speaker 1: or at least impact those markets. Another thing that might
Speaker 1: happen is just the amount of land that some of
Speaker 1: this would require has been something that's been brought up.
Speaker 1: If you need to build wind farms, you know, from
Speaker 1: horizon to horizon, it's going to be a problem. And
Speaker 1: then also with anything that gets to the scale, the
Speaker 1: big problems are you know, yet to be determined. And
Speaker 1: that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: If you're involved with carbon capture technologies, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can write to us at Decrypted
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter at Joshua
Speaker 1: Broosting and I'm at pa Gatkari. And please help us
Speaker 1: spread the word about our show by leaving us a
Speaker 1: race thing or a review wherever you like to listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts. This episode was produced by Pierre Gadkari and
Speaker 1: Lindsay Cratterwell. Our story editor was Anne Vandermay. Thank you
Speaker 1: also to Akio, Emily Busso, and Brad Stone. Francesco Levi
Speaker 1: is a head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.