Before the Industrial Revolution, humans consumed contemporaneous energy from the sun. The plants that people and animals used for food derived their energy from photosynthesis. People burned wood, straw, and dried dung for heat and cooking, all substances that stored solar energy during their lifespans.
This all changed when humans discovered fossil fuels, an energy source that captured and stored eons of solar energy.
Society was freed from the constraint of direct solar input, and this energy abundance fueled unprecedented productivity that transformed human society, bringing advances in economic prosperity, standards of living, literacy and education, medicine, etc. But when these fossil fuels are burned, they release gasses which trap heat in our atmosphere and intensify the greenhouse effect.
Nature provides carbon sinks that naturally absorb CO₂, but burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gasses at a rate hundreds or thousands of times greater than contemporaneous solar energy.
In 1886, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius became the first person to imagine that humanity could change the climate on a global scale when he found that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could warm the planet.
Since then, scientists have raised concerns about the impact human-related emissions could have on the world. But society will not willingly relinquish the standard of living that fossil fuels have enabled.
So, can we engineer our way out of the climate crisis?
To reverse the impacts of climate, we must add less carbon into the air and remove carbon that is already in it. Fero Labs focuses on making industrial manufacturing more efficient, increasing profits while consuming fewer raw materials and producing fewer emissions.
Over the next five to ten years we will see machine learning and AI become the operating system of the world, touching every sector of the economy to guide humans to minimize energy consumption and waste. However, even if we reach zero emissions, we will not have solved our problem.
To reverse climate change's effects, researchers say 33 gigatons of existing greenhouse gases must be removed this year and every year moving forward.
Some of this can come from reforestation, but land is a scarce resource. Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies have proven to be efficient, in that for every 100 tons of CO₂ captured at least 90 tons are removed.
Air-captured CO₂ can also be used as a climate-neutral feedstock for a range of products that require a source of carbon. But they are not yet deployed at scale. DAC only removes 0.01 million tons of CO₂ per year today, so there is a long way to go.
Will we be able to scale up Direct Air Capture in time?
What other solutions can we bring to bear to reverse the effects of climate change?
Book time with me and I'd be happy to share how Fero Labs can drive profits and sustainability at the same time. Together we'll build a sustainable tomorrow.
