Why should we care?

Update (19th April, 2021):

Congratulations to both CarbonBuilt and CarbonCure for winning the NRG-COSIA XPRIZE!

They were two of the ten finalist teams coming from the US, Canada, India, China, and UK, competing in the coveted 20 million-dollar NRG-COSIA Carbon XPRIZE running for the last 5 years. They are aspiring to convert trash into treasure, or CO₂ from a problem to an asset. This bodes really well for retaining the Petroleum Advantage.

There are many challenges that emerging technologies face, justified or otherwise, including occasional discouraging reactions. Critics I run into sometimes point out to the enormity of the challenge and inadequacy of any of the current approaches to solve the emissions issue. It’s not difficult to understand their calculation. 38 billion tonnes of CO₂ we emit every year, or any significant portion of it, when converted to useful substances, loses any commodity value associated with the ‘useful product’ to subsidize the de-carbonization costs. All we are left with then is the ‘costs’. How is this XPRIZE or similar other instruments valuable then?

The value of the carbon XPRIZE is both in social as well as in technical realm. On social level, the teams are making a bold declaration that the problem is solvable if thinking minds get going. It is changing the mind set from seeing CO₂ as a problem to seeing it as an asset. It is exciting the imagination of a whole new generation of the school going children, who without this would have only learnt of the ills of petroleum, in a scientifically constructive way to make a brighter future for us all. True, the challenge is enormous. The solution may come soon, it may take a few years, or even a decade, but we cannot write off human capacity to innovate. Technologically speaking our civilization may still be in its puberty. But if a historical character from 19^th century hypothetically appears to briefly live amongst us, we will seem to possess God-like powers to this character. It is all because of a series of un-thinkable technology advancements that have gone into making our way of living today. And it always started with a seed in someone’s imagination with a conviction that ‘it can be done’.

On a much lower and practical level – the technological level, there are also great strides with this XPRIZE challenge. It takes the science of CO₂ fixation from lab space to a practical, field arena. What works in lab doesn’t always translate well in real field situations. As an example, in labs where the idea initially develops, often scientists play with lab-grade pure CO₂. In the real application the flue gas has additional components such as NO_x, SO_x, moisture, nitrogen, and oxygen, among other substances. All these typically act against making the idea work in actual situation. Testing the emerging technologies in the real field scenario is going to make sure the technology is sufficiently advanced to overcome such hurdles, and that is no mean feat!

Grand challenges often bring enabling technologies in their wake, regardless of the degree of success in their stated objectives. Many of the technologies which we currently use even without knowing came out of NASA’s years of work on the space program, even if a common person has very little to do with space exploration. Infra-red ear thermometer, ventricular assist device, LASIK, Cochlear implants, invisible braces, space blankets, anti-ice system, memory foam, are some of the things that we use and were engendered by NASA’s earlier work. I will not be surprised to see similar outcomes from this carbon challenge!

Other places to read more about it:

• from Deborah Jaremko
• Generating even greater innovation