‘Survival of the fittest’ critical for nature-based

DOUGLAS, Isle of Man, Aug. 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Instead, the sector needs to embrace more natural and holistic methods to sustainably contribute to net-zero in the future, as CCS technologies come back into focus with the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States.

The cost of complexity

Gubbioli issued this call to rethink organic CCS technologies whilst in conversation with Chris Caldwell, entrepreneur and founder of clean-energy firm United Renewables, on an episode of the Conversations in Climate podcast released today.

Discussing the original boom-and-bust in nature-based solutions such as biofuels in the mid-2000’s, Caldwell asked why the world hasn’t ‘gone back’ to the same technologies with more investment in recent years.

Gubbioli answered by stressing the impact of ‘high profile deaths’ – such as green-oil microalgae firm Sapphire Energy – which scared investors away from these firms and technologies. Sapphire used ‘[a] synthetic process… whereby they were taking algae from an ivory and growing it in very artificial static situations… [requiring] massive infrastructure… [and] very expensive full bio-reactors,’ Gubbioli explained. This fragile and high-cost method never recovered from the post-2008 oil price collapse.

Lessons learnt for nature-based CCS

By contrast, Gubbioli believes the sector can become much more resilient if it embraces more grassroots, uncertain production methods.

‘We looked at our failures and we learned from them, and that’s why we moved to very natural processes,’ he explained of Brilliant Planet’s own development journey. Brilliant Planet sequester carbon directly from the atmosphere by growing specific strains of microalgae in open saltwater facilities on the coast of Morocco.

‘We grow our algae by the sea with the local species, and in a natural environment. So, what that means is that the algae naturally is ready to compete with its predators….