Latest / Simmer Down / Solutions Series: Emily Carter
Transcript
- 0:19Kathleen Biggins: Welcome to C Change Conversations Solutions series, where we explore the issue of climate change and the potential solutions that give us hope that we will be able to manage this risk.
- 0:30Kathleen Biggins: My name is Kathleen Biggins, and I am the president and founder of Sea Change Conversations.
- 0:36Kathleen Biggins: Since 2014, our team has been traveling the country, bringing people together around this issue, helping them understand that climate change will impact the things that all Americans care about.
- 0:50Kathleen Biggins: Our jobs and the economy, our families' health and security, and even global stability.
- 0:57Kathleen Biggins: Today we are going to examine the burgeoning field of carbon utilization or carbon tech.
- 1:05Kathleen Biggins: It involves capturing carbon emissions and transforming them into marketable and useful products.
- 1:12Kathleen Biggins: Like what?
- 1:13Kathleen Biggins: Well, like things like fuels and fertilizer that we currently make from carbon that we mine from underground.
- 1:21Kathleen Biggins: And some companies are even making luxury items from emissions, turning them into diamonds and vodka.
- 1:29Kathleen Biggins: There is no one I'd rather learn from on this topic than Professor Emily Carter.
- 1:34Kathleen Biggins: Professor Carter has too many accomplishments to list here, but I will share a few that are most important to this conversation.
- 1:42Kathleen Biggins: An accomplished scholar in energy research and a former dean of Princeton University School of Engineering, Emily was the founding director of the Princeton Annlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
- 1:56Kathleen Biggins: More recently, she was UCLA's executive vice chancellor and provost.
- 2:02Kathleen Biggins: She was recruited back to Princeton as senior strategic advisor to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where she is heading up an effort to diversify the lab's research into sustainability science beyond fusion energy.
- 2:18Kathleen Biggins: Emily is currently the chair of a congressionally mandated study on carbon utilization.
- 2:24Kathleen Biggins: Emily and I sat down to talk about carbon utilization a few weeks ago.
- 2:30Kathleen Biggins: I started off by asking her why she found it so important to work on climate change.
- 2:39Emily Carter: I think it's existential.
- 2:41Emily Carter: You know, not for me, but for our children and grandchildren.
- 2:46Emily Carter: I think that if we don't seize this moment to take responsibility for what we now know to be true, and how it's harming the planet, and how it will continue to harm the planet for many decades and perhaps centuries, hopefully not, then I can only imagine that our children and grandchildren will be looking at us when we're at the end of our lives saying, What were you thinking?
- 3:17Emily Carter: Why didn't you do more?
- 3:19Emily Carter: And I just think it's our responsibility.
- 3:21Emily Carter: So once it became clear to me, I'd say about over 15 years ago, I decided to just reorient all of my research to helping in whatever way I could with my expertise.
- 3:34Kathleen Biggins: So many of my friends asked me, why can't we just adapt to what's coming?
- 3:40Kathleen Biggins: Why do we have to upend our economies and move in this new way?
- 3:44Kathleen Biggins: What do you say when people bring that forward?
- 3:47Emily Carter: I think what is most important to say is that we have to do everything.
- 3:52Emily Carter: We're going to have to adapt because a lot of the warming of the planet and the attendant issues with respect to the climate are baked in now because of over a century of emitting carbon dioxide and other uh planet warming gases to the atmosphere and not you know not realizing, because it was building our civilization that it would be so critical uh to transform off of it.
- 4:19Emily Carter: But so basically I would say to them, yeah, we have to adapt, but that's not going to be enough because otherwise it's going to get much, much worse, and adaptation is not enough.
- 4:32Kathleen Biggins: Let's drill down a bit and look at carbon tech.
- 4:36Kathleen Biggins: How big of a potential solution could it be?
- 4:41Emily Carter: Well, it depends on what you compare it against.
- 4:44Emily Carter: So, in terms of the amount of carbon dioxide that's being emitted every year to the atmosphere, uh, you know, right now we already have more m much more than we than we should have in the atmosphere based on how much has been emitted post-industrial revolution.
- 5:02Emily Carter: And every year we're adding more and more.
- 5:05Emily Carter: And so if you look at uh the estimates in 2050 of where what carbon utilization, particular carbon dioxide utilization, could be in terms of a market, it's going to be of it could take care of about an eighth of the amount of CO2 that is being emitted currently to the atmosphere.
- 5:29Emily Carter: So it's not a solution by itself.
- 5:31Emily Carter: However, it's a set of markets that essentially allow us to say we could take carbon dioxide from various places where it's being emitted, uh power plants, steel plants, cement plants, etc., as well as from the atmosphere, as well as from the oceans, and be able to have that be at least a part of the solution, to be able to produce something other than just storing it, which is another part of the solution, but actually having an economic driver to be able to reuse the carbon or to store it and use it.
- 6:08Kathleen Biggins: Now I've read that you can make a wide range of materials from the captured carbon, things as basic as fertilizer or as even fuels, or as exotic as vodka and even diamonds.
- 6:23Kathleen Biggins: It sounds like alchemy, right?
- 6:25Kathleen Biggins: Taking something and turn it into something useful.
- 6:27Kathleen Biggins: Can you explain it to us in layman's terms the process that enables us to do this?
- 6:32Emily Carter: Sure.
- 6:32Emily Carter: I mean there are there isn't just one process, so first of all, but what you have to know is that carbon dioxide is an incredibly stable molecule, okay?
- 6:43Emily Carter: And so when you want to then turn that into something else, you actually have to input energy and other inputs to convert it chemically to something else.
- 6:55Emily Carter: And so the process of making a fuel or making uh vodka, which is essentially just alcohol, and so making an alcohol, or making uh diamond, as you say, or making carbon fiber and making plastics, uh, or making uh essentially carbonates that can be used in concrete or in all sorts of different building materials.
- 7:21Emily Carter: So there are a number of ways carbon dioxide can be converted.
- 7:26Emily Carter: All of them require uh uh energy and uh other inputs as well.
- 7:34Kathleen Biggins: So many of the things that you just mentioned are currently made from carbon we pull from the earth, right, that we mine today.
- 7:42Kathleen Biggins: Do you envision a time where we could mine emissions from the air instead of pulling it from the ground?
- 7:48Emily Carter: That's one of the of the ideas, absolutely.
- 7:51Emily Carter: And so there's there's a process that is called direct air capture, which is essentially saying, you know, we have over 400 parts per million CO2 in the air right now.
- 8:04Emily Carter: Uh just to give everybody context, it was below 300 parts per million, it was more like 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution, so it's gone up trem tremendously.
- 8:16Emily Carter: Um and so the idea is to come up with ways that you could separate the carbon dioxide from the air.
- 8:23Emily Carter: I think something that is even more promising is actually taking, finding ways to take the carbon dioxide from oceans because the concentration, the amount of carbon dioxide per unit volume is higher in the oceans.
- 8:40Emily Carter: And so it'd be easier to extract potentially from the oceans and then use that as a feedstock rather than pulling carbon out of the ground as coal or or gas or oil.
- 8:53Emily Carter: What I am particularly fond of is the idea that you could take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or from the ocean and store it as a solid.
- 9:03Emily Carter: So store it not just not as carbon dioxide.
- 9:06Emily Carter: We know solid carbon dioxide is dry ice, so it you can have dry ice.
- 9:10Emily Carter: But that, of course, as everyone knows, just evaporates.
- 9:13Emily Carter: But converting it, again, by putting in energy, uh, either electrically or with heat or other other means, um, being able to convert it to, for example, solid carbon, to uh to a carbon fiber, or to, as I said, a mineral carbonate.
- 9:35Emily Carter: That's a way to both take it out of the atmosphere, remove it so that you're reducing the forcing that is leading to climate change, and at the same time producing a product that can be used in our civilization.
- 9:46Kathleen Biggins: Right, that makes sense.
- 9:48Kathleen Biggins: So you're kind of reprising the mantra that we need to clean up our electrical grid and then electrify everything we can and then find alternatives for the things that remain out of the our ability to electrify, is that not right?
- 10:03Emily Carter: That's perfect.
- 10:04Emily Carter: That's exactly that's a beautiful summary.
- 10:06Emily Carter: And you know, uh one of the things I think is is sort of amusing is when people talk about um decarbonizing.
- 10:13Emily Carter: And yes, you can talk about decarbonizing uh electricity, but to say you're going to decarbonize you know the world doesn't make any sense because we're made of carbon.
- 10:25Emily Carter: Uh many things around us are uh our food is is is made of carbon.
- 10:30Emily Carter: I think you mentioned fertilizer, fertilizer is is uh you know has has carbon in it.
- 10:37Emily Carter: And so everything that um you know uh carbon is all around us.
- 10:43Emily Carter: So what we have to do is find ways to produce that those carbon-containing materials that power our world, um, but not by pulling more carbon atoms out of the ground.
- 10:54Kathleen Biggins: So could you describe to me a little bit more on how the physical um transformation happens?
- 11:02Kathleen Biggins: How do you go from a gas to a carbon fiber?
- 11:05Kathleen Biggins: What sort of tools do you use?
- 11:08Emily Carter: So the idea is that you you start again with this with carbon dioxide, very stable molecule that could just be in the air, could be, you can liquefy it, you can make a solid out of it, but it's not not terribly useful, except you could argue carbon diox dry ice is useful, right?
- 11:28Emily Carter: Um I mean there are a few uses for it.
- 11:31Emily Carter: But the but the idea is that you can take carbon dioxide, and for example, you can take electricity that uh runs through an electrode, and that's the source of of energy combined with hydrogen, so you have to have a source of hydrogen, uh, which we should talk about because most hydrogen is produced uh uh how it's produced actually produces carbon dioxide, so that's a problem.
- 11:59Emily Carter: But taking hydrogen and carbon and carbon dioxide, or just carbon dioxide and an acid and uh an electrode and running electricity through it, there are processes by which you can take the carbon dioxide and go to solid carbon.
- 12:18Kathleen Biggins: So I've also heard of using bacteria or organisms to digest the carbon.
- 12:24Emily Carter: Great, yes.
- 12:25Kathleen Biggins: And how does that work?
- 12:26Kathleen Biggins: Is it a similar fashion?
- 12:27Emily Carter: No, it's it's different.
- 12:28Emily Carter: I mean, it's it's similar in the sense that it's converting the carbon dioxide into a a form that uh is is different, that makes carbon-hydrogen bonds, okay?
- 12:38Emily Carter: Car carbon-hydrogen chemical bonds, uh, but it's a completely different uh process.
- 12:45Emily Carter: So that's the beauty of uh of in some sense you can have a whole economy that is built on these competing processes, bringing competing processes to market.
- 12:56Emily Carter: So there are ways in which you can take carbon dioxide and uh and hydrogen or some uh some other uh chemical that acts like like hydrogen does and feed it to microbes and actually produce uh either um well produce so-called reduced carbon, okay, so carbon that makes uh that has carbon-hydrogen bonds.
- 13:23Emily Carter: So it can make alcohols, it can uh it can make uh hydrocarbons, things that essentially can take you eventually, for example, to uh to forming fuels.
- 13:34Emily Carter: Okay, so you can make alcohols, that's that's a way, for example, potentially to make vodka.
- 13:39Emily Carter: Uh or one uh uh promising approach, uh in fact there is a company that is working on uh essentially taking carbon dioxide and microbes and being able to eventually make aviation fuel.
- 13:54Kathleen Biggins: Which is so necessary.
- 13:55Kathleen Biggins: Yes, right.
- 13:56Kathleen Biggins: That would be a big part of the solution because that is currently not able to be done with our our current resources, right?
- 14:04Emily Carter: Well, I think what's key in terms of the aviation fuel application is that unlike land-based vehicles, where my own personal opinion is that they should all be electrified and be powered by electricity that is carbon-free, uh, that it's not clear, except for very small planes, that we will ever really be able to take very large aircraft and electrify them and run them and propel them on batteries.
- 14:35Emily Carter: And so we're going to have a need for liquid aviation fuel and probably also for freight, for shipping, uh, for a very long time to come.
- 14:44Emily Carter: And so we need to have a circular carbon economy to provide that that type of fuel from either from carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide is not the only possibility.
- 14:55Emily Carter: I mean, you want to talk about carbon utilization.
- 14:57Emily Carter: Carbon dioxide utilization will have to compete with possibly recycled carbon as well as um uh carbon that comes from biomass.
- 15:10Emily Carter: So that's another possibility.
- 15:11Kathleen Biggins: So let me stop you for a moment there, because when you say recycled carbon, in some ways what I think of this is recycled carbon, because you're capturing it out of the air, by the oceans, or from some sort of manufacturing plant.
- 15:22Emily Carter: You're right.
- 15:22Emily Carter: I I that's true.
- 15:23Emily Carter: It is a form that is a form of recycled carbon.
- 15:26Emily Carter: I I agree with you.
- 15:27Emily Carter: What I meant by that is is that there are products that we make.
- 15:31Emily Carter: For example, uh, any plastic is uh essentially made out of carbon.
- 15:38Emily Carter: And it also has hydrogen, but it has a lot of carbon in it.
- 15:42Emily Carter: And so if we can find ways to to, I mean, so another possible carbon source that could lead to fuels or remaking other plastics or remaking other carbon-based materials doesn't have to be carbon dioxide.
- 15:59Emily Carter: It could be leftover uh um agricultural wastes.
- 16:04Emily Carter: You know, it could right.
- 16:06Emily Carter: It could be municipal solid waste, it could be uh it could be leftover plastics.
- 16:12Emily Carter: And there's all sorts of and each one of them will have a different set of processes which make sense in order to convert them to the final product that one wants.
- 16:22Kathleen Biggins: Converting leftover plastic sounds very appealing given the huge crisis we have in that arena as well.
- 16:28Kathleen Biggins: So, what do you say to people who say that carbon capture and utilization is giving oil and gas a free ride?
- 16:36Kathleen Biggins: It's giving them a chance to continue to produce their fossil fuels when we should be spending this kind of uh investigative dollars on other proven techniques or technologies that will enable us to go cleaner, faster.
- 16:51Emily Carter: So, first of all, the companies that are producing these new processes by and large are not the same companies.
- 17:00Emily Carter: These are there are lots of startup companies and and lots of other companies that are uh engaged in this, so it's it I I don't think it is an appropriate um, it's not an appropriate criticism from that perspective.
- 17:16Emily Carter: The other point is that absolutely we have to be doing everything we can to electrify every process that we can, uh our production of energy, our production of steel, our production production of everything that that enables our way of life.
- 17:38Emily Carter: And we need to then be using clean energy, and in my mind, clean clean energy includes nuclear energy.
- 17:46Emily Carter: So it's anything that doesn't emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, we must do that.
- 17:53Emily Carter: And so that part of it is not giving the fossil fuel companies a free ride.
- 17:58Emily Carter: We can use the if we build up enough clean electricity sources and develop these processes that use clean electricity to take carbon dioxide from steel plants, from from you know industrial plants, as well as power plants, as well as the atmosphere, as well as the ocean.
- 18:18Emily Carter: We need to do that no matter what, uh, independent of what the fossil fuel companies are doing.
- 18:24Emily Carter: We need to do it because we need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere anyway.
- 18:28Emily Carter: We need to get to a point, we know we need to get to a point where uh we have to have these processes in place such that we will be able to run our civilization uh through a virtuous cycle.
- 18:44Emily Carter: Uh and the last thing I would say is that I feel very strongly that the fossil fuel companies have tremendous expertise about chemical transformations that we need to partner with them to take advantage of their expertise, the infrastructure that they've already built up, and not start from zero as we transition to this much cleaner economy.
- 19:14Emily Carter: So they need to be our partners, and that will really accelerate the transition.
- 19:21Kathleen Biggins: So, what gives you hope that we will be able to do just that?
- 19:25Kathleen Biggins: What gives you hope when you talk to your kids and your grandkids?
- 19:29Emily Carter: I what gives me hope is the sense that people care and are focused on this problem now in a way that I don't think, at least to the United States, I don't think the the focus has been as intense as as it has, you know, I think things have really changed over the last 10 years that people have seen the impacts of climate change accelerating much faster than we had expected.
- 19:55Emily Carter: The other thing that gives me hope is that when uh you know when people are focused on and are motivated, uh that is what spurs invention.
- 20:08Emily Carter: And the United States is the most entrepreneurial plant uh country on the planet.
- 20:14Emily Carter: And so I firmly believe that you know with the the type of talent that we have here in the United States, we will be able to come up with solutions.
- 20:23Emily Carter: And we have some, but we need many more.
- 20:27Kathleen Biggins: One of the things that that kind of brings forward for me is that it's not always about sacrifice.
- 20:32Kathleen Biggins: A lot of these things, like electric cars, are actually better than a regular car.
- 20:36Kathleen Biggins: They're quicker, they're safer, they're quieter.
- 20:40Kathleen Biggins: Much quieter.
- 20:41Kathleen Biggins: And so it's a win-win.
- 20:43Kathleen Biggins: I think so often this transition is is labeled sacrifice, when in fact, as you said, with human ingenuity, it could be opening new ways, better ways of doing a lot of things that would make our lives even sweeter.
- 20:56Emily Carter: Yeah, I agree.
- 20:56Emily Carter: And I think you know, it's interesting, for a long time people talked about energy conservation, and con the word conservation sounds like sacrifice, as opposed to talking about energy efficiency.
- 21:08Emily Carter: And so again, you know, by switching, for example, to um LED light bulbs, that all you know, actually the light it's it's even brighter, it's nicer now that we have um a more refined LED that is that is uh has you know has sort of warm light, it's I think it's nicer.
- 21:28Emily Carter: And can be dimmed.
- 21:29Emily Carter: That was impossible.
- 21:30Emily Carter: And and can be dimmed so that you you now have something which is just as good or better than the previous product and is 20 times more efficient.
- 21:40Emily Carter: And so the more we can innovate and show that we can I mean it is, it's going to be very important because people are accustomed to a certain quality of life, and so you want to have that quality of life, you want to have more people on the planet having a better quality of life.
- 21:57Emily Carter: So it's incumbent upon us.
- 21:59Emily Carter: To continue to innovate and to come up with uh ways in which we can be as efficient with our energy use while still being able to improve people's quality of life.
- 22:13Kathleen Biggins: And the point of being more efficient translates into saving money.
- 22:17Kathleen Biggins: And I think that's an undersold story in that uh historically moving towards clean energy has always been labeled as so expensive and harming jobs, whereas today that's not really the case.
- 22:30Emily Carter: Absolutely.
- 22:31Emily Carter: So historically it was true.
- 22:34Emily Carter: You know, 40 years ago, photovoltaics solar cells were incredibly expensive.
- 22:39Emily Carter: But now the electricity that comes from solar and wind is at parity in many places.
- 22:46Emily Carter: Uh at parity meaning the same price as if you you uh derived your electricity from coal or natural gas.
- 22:54Emily Carter: It's even cheaper.
- 22:55Emily Carter: And so that, you know, at that point, then it's then it's an obvious economic driver.
- 23:01Emily Carter: And actually that's part of what gives me hope.
- 23:03Emily Carter: Because the fact is something started out very expensive, and but eventually, you know, because of mass production and innovation, um, that didn't just happen in this country, by the way.
- 23:14Emily Carter: China was a big part of that story in terms of mass production of solar cells, uh, really helped drive down the price, and as a result, we're we're now in a position where solar cells are are uh the value proposition is is really compelling.
- 23:32Kathleen Biggins: Yes, I don't think many people realize that China actually outspends us almost two to one in these new technology areas.
- 23:38Emily Carter: I think it's much more than two to one, actually.
- 23:40Emily Carter: Do you?
- 23:41Emily Carter: Oh yeah.
- 23:42Emily Carter: Well, we're in especially in terms of of research and development dollars.
- 23:47Kathleen Biggins: Well to me, it seems like the new policies that have gone through recently, the infrastructure bill, the new inflation reduction act, has really created a new sense of momentum in this arena.
- 24:01Kathleen Biggins: Almost every day I open up the newspaper and they're talking about new jobs created in this arena in Wyoming or in the Southeast, all around.
- 24:08Kathleen Biggins: And it's almost as if the genie is out of the bottle.
- 24:12Kathleen Biggins: Do you see it the same way?
- 24:13Kathleen Biggins: Do you feel like there is so much momentum moving us forward that we can't go back?
- 24:19Emily Carter: Well, I think we can always go back.
- 24:21Emily Carter: I hope we don't go back.
- 24:22Emily Carter: Uh it all depends on the investments and the the policies that that happen in Washington, DC in terms of what happens in the United States.
- 24:32Emily Carter: Uh it would be nice if if there could be some more certainty about uh long-term investments.
- 24:42Emily Carter: And that's not something that the United States has has always been the best at.
- 24:47Emily Carter: Uh and if if we could have more certainty, I think you would then draw in more private investment too, um, because policies matter.
- 24:57Emily Carter: And so one thing I will say is that is that uh the Biden administration certainly has been the first administration to be tremendously focused on this.
- 25:09Emily Carter: In fact, it's uh a very large reason why I decided that it that I needed to get back to working on sustainability science full-time, because I felt that this is the moment where there's an opportunity to really contribute to making sure that the right kinds of investments are made.
- 25:30Emily Carter: And so I think that the focus is there.
- 25:35Emily Carter: I think the many of the investments make a lot of sense and uh and the policies make a lot of sense.
- 25:43Emily Carter: There still is a lot of research and development that needs to be done to get to the point where these are going to be practical, practical solutions.
- 25:53Emily Carter: So I personally would have liked to have seen a bit more investment in the research and development side, especially or at least flexibility given to the to the agencies that are being given these large sums of money to uh to deploy, because you know, there are two ways to to advance technologies.
- 26:22Emily Carter: Uh one is research and development that then leads eventually to pilot plants and then building full-stage plants on something.
- 26:30Emily Carter: Another is is learning by doing.
- 26:32Emily Carter: So let's just go, we go with what we have, we take it off the shelf, and we uh we try it out, right?
- 26:39Emily Carter: And that can also bring the price down.
- 26:41Emily Carter: And and I and what I would say is that the emphasis of a lot of the policies have been in the latter camp, and I just hope there's enough on the shelf that it makes sense to be um to be doing that right now.
- 26:54Emily Carter: Spoken like a scientist.
- 26:56Emily Carter: Yes, that's true.
- 26:57Emily Carter: And you know, people could potentially say, oh, it's just because she wants uh research dollars for her own research, but that's not true at all.
- 27:06Emily Carter: That's not what this is about.
- 27:07Emily Carter: I mean, that's not been my that's not my focus right now.
- 27:10Emily Carter: My focus is making sure we get to the optimal set of solutions.
- 27:14Emily Carter: One thing that has been true for a very long time is bipartisan support for research and development, for scientific research and development.
- 27:23Emily Carter: And that that's been key to the innovations that this country has produced.
- 27:27Emily Carter: Absolutely.
- 27:28Emily Carter: And I think there has been bipartisan support for the infrastructure uh investments, absolutely.
- 27:34Emily Carter: But what I mean when I said when I was attributing it to the Biden administration is simply that they're the ones that are they're making these proposals uh, you know, in terms of how much to invest.
- 27:45Emily Carter: And of course they're working with Congress, and of course it wouldn't get anywhere if Congress didn't approve it.
- 27:50Emily Carter: So, yes, absolutely.
- 27:51Emily Carter: But by I would say that the Biden administration's been in the lead on um on making these proposals coming out of the Department of Energy.
- 28:00Kathleen Biggins: Emily, that was so interesting.
- 28:02Kathleen Biggins: I am so sorry that we've run out of time and we have to call it to a close.
- 28:07Emily Carter: Well, thank you.
- 28:08Kathleen Biggins: My guest here today is Professor Emily Carter, a world expert on carbon utilization.
- 28:14Kathleen Biggins: And I am Kathleen Biggins, and this is Sea Change Conversation Solutions series.
- 28:20Kathleen Biggins: Thank you for joining us, and please follow us on social media or at our website, www.seychangeconversations.org.
- 28:28Kathleen Biggins: Thanks for joining us, and we hope to see you next time.