The CarbonBlue World Tour
Lately, it seems like all we’ve been doing is hopping from one climate tech event to the next.
Just to get a sense of the number of events we have lined up, here’s a 3-week slice from our schedule:
Dan, our CEO, recently presented at the OceanVisions 2023 Biennial Summit in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, Iddo, our COO, took part in the Israeli Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology’s online event on carbon capture and storage. In mid-May, we’ll be in Marrakech, taking part in the Aviram Awards finals, alongside four other finalists. This Wednesday, Dan is giving a popular science talk in a Wize event in Tel Aviv. Next week, we’re participating in Ibex’s panel on climate change at the Google Startup Campus.
Apparently, travel, events and conventions are just part of the deal when you’re a climate tech innovator – but while there’s clearly a lot of interest in climate tech and innovation, the reasons for it may not be immediately apparent.
We thought we’d give our two cents on why this is happening, and why it’s happening now.
A New Economy
To reach the IPCC’s 2050 carbon goals and stay under 1.5 degrees of global warming, we’ll need to remove 16 billion tons of CO2 from the environment, every year.
“Okay,” you might say, “16 billion is a big number, but can I get some comparisons for scale?”
Let’s look at two of the largest primary industries in the world to get a better handle on what kind of ramifications 16 billion tons per year may have.
A Sense of Scale
The global cement industry produces 4 billion tons of cement a year, while the global steel industry produces 2 billion tons. Now think of all the satellite industries, professions and infrastructure which support and rely on steel and cement. Think of all the products and services you use daily which rely on steel and cement. Think of all the cement and steel which you encounter whenever you walk downtown to get lunch, start your car to drive from point A to point B, whether it’s in buildings, roads, tools, vehicles, or even consumer goods.
Now think of all the steel and cement that need to be manufactured yearly to support these immense scales – and finally, then think that combined, they make up less than half of the yearly carbon dioxide we’ll need to extract by weight.
A Challenge or an Opportunity?
For most people, the initial reaction to the sheer scale of this undertaking might be frustration, or even worry – but to entrepreneurs, innovators and activists, this is an unbelievable opportunity.
What this means is that over the next 30 years, all of the technology, materials and products we use, from food, through infrastructure, and up to things like textiles and electronics, will have to change to meet our new climate needs.
In fact, the more you think about it, the more difficult it is to imagine an industry or a sector that will remain unaffected by this – and this is before we even begin to consider what we might be able to do with these huge amounts of a versatile raw material like carbon, that will suddenly be available at an unprecedented scale.
Looking to the Future
When we look to the future, what we see is an entirely new, rapidly expanding economy based on a new carbon paradigm – and the entrepreneurs that will manage to get a foothold now will reap the benefits in a relatively short span of time.
When you consider this – it’s easy to see why there’s so much interest in climate tech. Whether you’re an investor, a researcher, an innovator or an activist, shaping the climate tech landscape means shaping the future.
