Entering the GreenTech Era: The webinar addressing challenges in GreenTech
Our planet is facing a climate crisis and the race to achieve carbon neutrality is intensifying. Whilst the world is warming and bringing with it a myriad of problems, countries have pledged for climate change action.
Whilst as consumers we can make small changes, to create the systematic change that is required organisations and governments must adopt ground-breaking and innovative technologies, to reduce the global temperature and ensure our planet is liveable for future generations.
Following the release of our latest whitepaper, we invited some of our collaborators to discuss further the innovation, collaboration, accessibility, and adoption of GreenTech in our one-hour webinar.
We were introduced to the webinar by our host and writer of ‘Entering the GreenTech Era’ whitepaper, Jessica Farrow.
James Whitehead, CCO of Solar Water PLC
James kicked off the webinar with an introduction to Solar Water PLC and how they are sustainably solving the global water crisis and combating climate change. Solar Water PLC uses game-changing technology to provide limitless supplies of fresh water. They are achieving this with the first 100% carbon emission-free, environmental-impact mitigating and 100% decentralised, scalable technology solution, that uses only the concentrated power of the sun.
“Climate change is inextricably linked to the global water crisis and the biggest solution to the water crisis is desalination”.
However, James explained how current and traditional desalination solutions need a high level of energy, which comes from burning fossil fuels. Consequently, this emits globally 100m tonnes of Co2 per year which is due to double in the next century.
James spoke about how Solar Water is looking to mitigate these challenges, by developing a new GreenTech energy and desalination system. The desalination plants will convert seawater into freshwater, that can serve a large town, agriculture project or industrial complex.
“We are the solution that will provide exponential change.”
James then went on to talk about the importance of amazing GreenTech to reach the 1.5-degree target. He explained how the position of the UK post-Brexit and on the economic issues, it’s important that the UK is improving its productivity and competitive position on the world stage, which can be achieved through innovation.
“There is a lot more work to be done. It’s essential that we have GreenTech to achieve this.”
He then spoke about how John Kerry had mentioned that this challenge around climate change was only going to get solved with the collaboration of three groups together: GreenTech innovators, private financing, and Governments. James said the GreenTech industry is seeing this collaboration but explained how it needs to be pushed further.
James finalised his talk by explaining how there are a lot of GreenTech innovators in the world. The key areas which will help these innovators succeed and become accessible are if there is a market fit and need, as well as if the cost and price equation is right. Getting added assistance on continuous innovation and value engineering is important to drive prices and costs down for accessibility.
Don Scott, CCO at Power Roll Ltd
Don introduced us to Power Roll and explained how their primary objective is to fundamentally change the economics of the solar PV industry. The product Solar Film is unique, cheap, light, ultra-flexible and has a very low carbon footprint, meaning it can pay back its integrated manufacturer’s carbon footprint in around 40 days.
“Our ambition is to use our technology to disrupt the economics of the solar industry by creating a very low-cost product.”
He explained how an astonishing 750m-8oom people globally, do not have access to reliable electricity. Having access to a low-cost, lightweight, and easy-to-deploy product will be transformational for these people and their communities.
“This is the economic future; it’s not just about saving the planet.”
Don spoke about his personal perspective of Greentech and how collaborative work can create innovation on its own from a Catherine wheel effect. Don spoke about how Power Roll is collaborating with very established and mature industries and augmenting what they do to achieve a different objective.
“The Government could provide a more facilitated role to support these collaborations between innovators and established companies.”
He spoke about the time restraints in the future around reducing Co2 and the effects on the atmosphere and how investment in GreenTech needs to be more ambitious and bolder to achieve fundamental improvement.
Don ended his talk by explaining how the tech they are creating is a lot more versatile and scalable, which will open opportunities for micro implementations of GreenTech that will benefit local communities in ways that hydrocarbons never could.
Karl Farrow, Founder and CEO of CeraPhi Energy
Our final speaker Karl, spoke about how CeraPhi’s mission is to help organisations meet net-zero targets using baseload geothermal solutions.
CeraPhi has created a Patent bank around three key areas; subsurface, surface, deployability and scalability, which have created global scaling challenges for geothermal space in the past. He explained how Ceraphi have developed a technology that repurposes existing assets such as oil and gas wells, to convert and extract the heat to the surface to use for clean energy. Karl went on to explain how they have created a closed-loop advanced geothermal system, a CeraPhiWell Downhole Exchanger and a CeraPhiGen Cascade usage, that works off-grid to enable CeraPhi to provide energy quickly to locations, for power, heat, and cooling.
“Over 50% of our global consumption of energy is used for heat.”
Karl went on to explain how he has always been a climate activist from a young age. He spoke about how climate change is the reason for GreenTech and how everybody is seeing the innovation of GreenTech companies, but it is a process. He spoke about how there are a lot of unknowns and uncertainty but there needs to be a lot more investment to make an impact change and scalable solutions.
“There certainly isn’t enough being done. We are miles away from achieving the objectives of the Paris agreement in 2050. It is not a race; we must carry this on as a long-term gain.”
He spoke about how collaboration across industries and sectors is being seen, but there is a lot more that needs to be done. There is a lot of greenwashing going on within industries and sectors and investors are spending too much time looking at where to put their money, instead of investing in ground-breaking technology. Collaboration across industries and sectors is being seen, but there is a lot more that needs to be done.
“If start-ups don’t get the front-end support to do the small bits, it’s very hard to scale up to do the big bits.”
Karl concluded the webinar with his point on how innovators must be conscious and aware of situations within other countries. Many countries do not have direct access to energy and are reliant on other methods such as generators. This can create difficulties in trying to transition others to more climate-friendly methods.
“What we do has to be sustainable, it’s not one glove or solution that fits everything. We have to create a model that fits each individual case.”
We were delighted to be joined by some of our whitepaper collaborators within this webinar, who are in the midst of creating change with their innovative products.
This webinar discussed the innovation, collaboration, accessibility, and adoption of GreenTech from first-hand experience. Whilst these innovators are putting change into action, it is evident there is a long way to go. If you would like to dive deeper into how we are entering the GreenTech era, download our whitepaper here. Please don’t hesitate to contact us to find out more.