Pitch
Get stakeholders unanimous, migrate from fossils create a new WW industry by recycling atmospheric CO2 profitably
Description
Summary
Cop21 might fail because it is not focusing on the appropriate objective, nor using the appropriate method to get to unanimity.
The issue is the NET accumulated CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Does not depend if it is vented today or 100 years ago.
The barriers are that most countries/corporations will consider ecological taxes and emissions objectives as detrimental to their competitivity.
An option to help all stakeholders to unite, is to make them see the potential of a new WW industry: the industry that will help migrate from exploration-production of fossils to the recycling of atmospheric CO2 into carbon chains.
Existing production investments for downstream manufacturing and distribution can still be used.
Since the conversion of CO2 necessitates huge amounts of electricity (wave length in fact) the current oil producing countries can find another source of revenue from their land.
States and governments can face the upcoming energy and raw chemicals crisis that the growth of BRIC countries life style will generate (pressures on prices and on availability with the risks of war)
By investing in developing projects such as NeoCarbons you will meet 3 objectives:
1. ensure a prosperous and peaceful life for next generations
2. combat global warming
3. create a new industry, migrate an old one, create jobs and wealth
What actions do you propose?
Invest in the development of NeoCarbons (or similar) patented equipment which is designed to recycle CO2 into high value chemicals, thus making the process:
1. Highly productive
2. Thus profitable
3. Environmental friendly (land and water usage)
4. Complementary to improvements upstream and downstream in the value chain
European investors can't do it: they don't have the breed of minds that could put a man on the moon within a decade or create Standard Oil or Getty oil or else; neither do they have the industries that will migrate from exploration-production to the new way of delivering Carbon Chains to our energy and chemical industries.
The project to validation of an industrial size prototype (11m3) would last 4 years and cost 5 million (all costs included). It can be separated in 2 phases about same size and duration: prototying, pilot phase.
The project will use the competencies of many of MIT's laboratories, be it materials, chemical engineering, optics to gather the sun's power (PVPs and the likes) and optics to deliver it in a given frequency within a wet environment, biochemical engineering in the development of more productive strains of CO2 capturing / trapping and transforming organisms.
It's the first project which I have seen through my research on solutions that addresses the key parameters for:
1. Industrial application/feasibility in terms of Capex. opex, and also in terms of capacity to take the load: a cement factory releases 25 kg/sec of CO2, only industrially designed equipment can take this load.
2. Productivity per m2 per hour (does not depend on direct sun light, provides many layers of productive volume
3. Profitability
4. Respect of the environment (footprint per kg remediated, value of downtream production)
by optimizing every aspect of the "production" chain, essentially focusing on availability of energy and nutrients, and operating mode, which are the 2 main success factors. Most other projects have failed because they want to use "free" energy. Energy is about 85% of the production costs at today's prices.
Once the pilot is validated what will need to be done is a huge industrial set-up for the production of the active photobioreactors. This will be capital intensive and probably the original inventors will have to step-out at that time and license the patents and equipments to large groups (Air Products, Air Liquide, Vivendi, Shell, Exxon,Lurgi, Babcox etc) and /or countries to install and operate the commercial plants.
The idea of the inventors is then to recycle the license fees in an R&D venture designed to optimize further the value chain elements.
Do you think you can help starting the action by providing the first investments?
If you do think so, we shall be happy to move our own operations close to Cambridge or any other place you would see fit for this.
By:
NeoCarbons
