By Shana Rappaport, Vice President & Executive Director, VERGE
However you choose to frame it, there’s a new trend emerging — and massive market opportunity unlocking — when it comes to reversing global warming. It’s about both the decarbonization of our economy, atmosphere and oceans, and recarbonization of everything from our soils to products.
Carbon removal, climate-positive modes of production, and other ideas for sucking emissions out of the atmosphere are especially timely topics as global leaders gather in Katowice, Poland for the second week of COP24. There, they seek to develop an implementation plan and rulebook for the Paris Agreement — aligning on strategies and accountability mechanisms to shift our current trajectory from the 3.4 degrees Celsius warming we’re currently tracking to reach, towards a more livable 1.5 degrees C warmer planet. All of these ideas, and more, must be part of the plan.
“Removing carbon from the atmosphere is no longer an option; it’s a necessity,” as the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a nonpartisan research and educational institute focused on policy solutions that accelerate innovation, put it bluntly in a recent report. And there’s momentum building to assess the commercial viability and scalable potential for the solutions — both human-made and nature-based — that will enable that process, as detailed in a recent report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
The role of nature-based solutions in rebalancing the carbon cycle is significant, and a topic we have covered extensively and will continue to do so increasingly.
For today, however, I wanted to offer two snapshots of why the innovation landscape for carbon technologies looks so promising.
The next frontier: ITIF’s founder and president Robert Atkinson unpacked in a recent article the scope and scale of the business opportunity behind what he refers to as “carbon removal technologies.” He touts the emerging market as the next frontier for American innovation, representing a significant economic opportunity globally for those companies and governments that get ahead of the curve.
U.S. companies alone generated $330 billion in revenue from the sales of environmental technologies and services in 2016 — and there’s momentum building around carbon removal technologies as the next major, multi-billion-dollar market opportunity. With policy mechanisms popping up globally to capture or price carbon — across governments, companies and, yes, even by the current U.S. administration — the market is on track to get a welcomed boost in the coming years.
Speaking of innovation, welcome Carbontech Labs: If the term “carbontech” is new to you, that’s because it’s relatively new to the world, too. It was formally introduced by Carbon180, formerly the Center for Carbon Removal — an NGO that brings together business, scientists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the role of carbon. It recently launched the world’s first startup accelerator exclusively for carbontech, which refers to any process, product or service that converts carbon dioxide, bio-methane or biomass into a commodity while creating fewer emissions than the alternatives.
In the interview I conducted with consultant Ryan Kushner for last week’s GreenBiz 350 podcast about his new book, Accelerate This! A Super Not Boring Guide To Startup Accelerators And Clean Energy Entrepreneurship, one message was clear: incubators and accelerators play an invaluable role in growing emerging markets.
That’s why it’s especially exciting that Carbontech Labs isn’t alone. More organizations are jumping on the carbontech acceleration bandwagon, including world-renowned startup accelerator Y Combinator, which launched a new program this year specifically for carbon removal technology entrepreneurs; and even the X Prize, which launched a $20 million Carbon X Prize for breakthrough carbon dioxide conversion technologies.
The growing movement to rebalance the carbon cycle and harness the massive market opportunities in doing so is vast and growing more so by the day. So, as I said, stay tuned for more from us in the coming weeks, months and years as we bring you the latest and greatest trends and technologies for bringing carbon home.
