In this week’s TL;DR Shorts episode we hear Dr Astro Teller‘s thoughts on climate change. As the co-founder and Captain of Moonshots at X, the Moonshot Factory at Alphabet based in California, USA, it is perhaps no surprise that Astro approaches the challenge of climate change in an holistic manner, calling it a systems problem that can only be overcome with a suite of innovative solutions.
If we consider climate change as the “sea of problems” Astro describes, we need a multipronged, creative approach to tackling it. Astro makes the case for more Moonshots, each focused on one piece of the puzzle – for example rethinking the electric grid, the “largest, most complex, and most expensive machine”, and the infrastructure through which most clean energy solutions will go. X’s Project Tapestry is finding solutions to this very challenge.
Astro also advocates for the need to efficiently produce hydrogen as an alternative fuel. This is a topic close to my own heart as a materials scientist with a research background in materials for artificial photosynthesis and water splitting to generate hydrogen in a cheap, clean manner. X also tried to tackle this as part of Project Foghorn. For me and my former research colleagues, the challenge was maintaining efficiency when the design was scaled-up, while Project Foghorn encountered similar challenges in making the process efficient enough for the hydrogen generated to be a viable alternative to gasoline.
Their project has since been parked, and research funding for hydrogen generation seems to be dwindling over time and, while the number of patents registered over time offer some hope, it seems we are still unable to reproduce the mechanism that plants refined billions of years.
Talking about some of the other ways in which we can overcome climate change, Astro says he would also like to see advances in the sequestration of carbon dioxide from the air and oceans that bring the cost down to less than $100 per tonne, and also find a way of making grid-scale batteries with the capability to support and enable the use of renewable energy, something Project Malta is currently working on.
Astro reminds us of the power of adaptation and the need for creative processes that can rapidly undo the damage we have done to our planet. Describing the abuse of our oceans as a “battery for our bad behaviour”, he hopes that we find a way to regenerate them, before all of humanity is in an irreversible position of risk. Watch the full TL;DR Shorts episode here.
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