How to transform industrial carbon emissions into building materials

Back in Davos, as the panel discussed decarbonization, Sophia had a moment of realization, which as the youngest person there, would have a key role to play in seeing the world achieve its Paris Agreement goals – reduce. zero emissions by 2050 to limit global warming to 1.5 ° C.

“I was the only person in the room who would still be working in 2050. It was the opposite of the impostor syndrome. I realized that there was absolutely no other voice like me in this room and it is extremely important to have diversity in these spaces. “

Ten months later, Sophia speaks again at the World Economic Forum’s Pioneers of Change Summit and, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has taken a step forward in its zero-emissions race, with key economies’ commitments in recent weeks.

Here, she discusses MCi’s carbon capture and utilization process and why she is a passionate advocate that carbon is a valuable resource.

Since the industrial revolution we have put too much CO2 into the atmosphere. And so we know, based on the IPCC report and many intergovernmental organizations, that we need to reduce our emissions and reach net zero by 2050. But we also know that we will probably have to reduce CO2 from the atmosphere and do something with it. So MCi is developing a technology that transforms CO2 into usable materials.

We use the Earth’s natural process of storing CO2, which is called mineral carbonation or weathering. Dissolved carbon dioxide reacts with the minerals in the rock to produce carbonate, which is stable over a long period of time and can be used in construction. The White Cliffs of Dover in England are an example of the natural atmospheric degradation process of the Earth: over millions of years, CO2 has been absorbed into those cliffs and that is why they are white. We just took that process from millions of years to a matter of hours in an industrial setting.

Our technology is like a black box, where you can feed industrial waste such as steel slag or bottom ash from incinerators, or locally mined minerals, many different minerals and then a flue gas. We don’t actually need pure CO2, but any kind of gas that can go straight out of an exhaust pipe, so we react in our facility and create an output that can be transformed into various things. At the pilot plant in Newcastle, Australia, we build and create carbonate-based products like this cement brick and plasterboard every day.

It’s a whole circular economy where you treat your waste and turn it into new products. Treating CO2 as a resource and embracing carbon capture and use, we think, will lead to more rapid change particularly in sectors that are most difficult to break down. Building business models out of climate change is quite exciting and can lead to changes in emissions faster than waiting for some governments to legislate and waiting for a change in behavior in markets, which is also very important.

Over the past decade, the global environment has really taken off when it comes to renewable energy. Australia is a resource-rich nation, but we have such strong capacity for renewable energy and we only see that the renewable trajectory is so healthy, but there are other sectors that really need decarbonisation options that are not clear. For example, the steel industry, the cement industry, chemicals and transition technologies for hydrogen also need options for CO2.

So we are really looking at this medium-term transition, where we need to quickly decarbonise all sectors, not just energy. And we can do it without a carbon price actually. At our next increase, we are already looking to make a profit and this is quite significant when compared to other ways of dealing with carbon dioxide, such as underground storage and similar technologies.

I have been working with MCi since 2013 and we have developed this technology in trade secret. Seeing many changes within global governments and attitudes towards targets, emissions trading schemes, and other market-based carbon incentives has been downright volatile.

But this year in Davos I attended a panel called “Building a New Carbon Economy”, and we had circular economy titans like Kenneth Rogoff claiming that carbon dioxide is not actually a villain. It can be something that can be used to create many valuable products, not just building materials, but chemical raw materials, fuels and all kinds of things. So it was a real starter gun for technologies like mine.

Many of the world’s largest companies have used Davos to pledge to guarantee net negative emissions. Microsoft, Apple, BHP and Rio Tinto all made a commitment to hit net zero at that stage, and I thought, wow, it’s no longer waiting for people, companies and countries to catch up, now it’s going to be a race. It is a race to see which technologies will help us achieve these ambitious goals. And it’s setting a new standard for what ambition actually is.

Significantly in recent weeks, Japan, China, South Korea have all pledged to reach net zero by 2050 – 50% of world GDP has hit net zero, which is profound. As the world strives to achieve these truly crucial goals, it is time for technologies to align, develop, accelerate, run as fast as possible, to get there. We know we have less than eight years to reach a tipping point, so the next eight years are the most critical in that trajectory.

MCi is very clear that we will be part of a portfolio of important solutions that will help our world to decarbonise. We will help the steel sector, the cement sector, the chemical sector, we will collaborate with direct air capture, to eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere and lock it into safe and inert materials that can help with the built environment.

The market for carbon capture and utilization has been estimated at nearly $ 6 trillion annually and will grow in the future. If we are looking for support for technologies like ours for investment, for political certainty, then it is really useful to have market estimates like that and they are only starting to come out in the next three years. More than half is in construction products.

Business leaders today know that not only do they need to set ambitious climate goals to be market leaders, they need to think about a truly evolved way of looking at emissions. So not just your emissions and your purpose 1 [direct] and scope 2 [indirect] emissions of their business, but also looking at how their supply chain and ecosystem are also decarbonising [scope 3]. And we’re really seeing it with the biggest companies in the world all starting to really look at the decarbonisation of these Scope 3 emissions.

We are really interested in this in Australia, because we are a resource-based nation and have companies like Rio Tinto and BHP that are committed to zero zero by 2050, and really considering their three purpose. So this seems up to the steelmakers when you are an iron ore miner. We need to decarbonise, we need to be ambitious, but you too need to help your entire ecosystem do the right thing and reduce and remove our emissions starting now.

This article is edited by the World Economic Forum.