The pure industrial revolution has arrived

Open a newspaper, turn on the TV or go online and you will find disturbing headlines about raging wildfires, devastating storms and severe droughts. Climate change is staring us in the face and the evidence is everywhere. What’s harder to see, if you don’t know where to look, is the growing evidence that we are making real progress in combating this phenomenon. That’s why I’m so excited to be coming to London this week for the Breakthrough Energy Summit. This progress is on full display here, and we bring together world leaders, industry executives, innovators and investors to accelerate it.

When we launched Breakthrough Energy in 2015, the Paris Agreement had just been adopted. Almost every country in the world has committed to ambitious emissions cuts to fight climate change. However, it was clear that achieving these goals would require unprecedented investment from the private sector to drive innovation. It would also require extraordinary collaboration across all sectors to bring clean energy ideas from the lab to the market affordably and at scale. This work has been Breakthrough Energy’s mission from day one.

At the first BE Summit in 2022, I shared an update on the cutting-edge concepts and companies we support that address the five main challenges – manufacturing, electricity, agriculture, transportation and buildings – behind the majority of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. This year in London we have much more to share: a portfolio of climate technologies that are no longer just theoretical and promising, but are already proven and ready for market.

That is why this summit is so momentous. In less than a decade, investments have helped turn dark dreams into a series of breakthroughs. Now is the time to invest so that these solutions can scale, deploy and reduce emissions across every sector of the economy.

Manufacturing – 29% of global emissions

Manufacturing—the way we make almost everything—is one of the most difficult sources of emissions to reduce. While the challenges are complex, the pace of progress is incredible and faster than I expected when I started the Breakthrough, especially in cement and steel, which each account for about 10 percent of all global emissions. CarbonCure is pioneering the injection of waste carbon into fresh concrete, which is used to make the final product, cement—making the second most consumed material on Earth much more ecological. Retrofits to existing facilities in over 800 locations around the world have prevented nearly half a million tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Ecocem’s ACT technology for low-emission cement production was recently approved for full commercial use across Europe, and other low-emission concrete solutions have been used in the construction of the Athletes’ Village at the upcoming Paris Summer Olympics. Boston Metal has launched large-scale production of “green” carbon-free steel and now has an operational plant in Brazil.

Electricity – 29% of global emissions

Most experts agree that global electricity demand will triple by 2050. And when it comes to climate change, electrification is a key part of the solution. But only if the electricity is green; otherwise we are simply replacing one emission source with another. Until recently, we didn’t have good options for storing electricity on a large scale, which made it difficult to get the most out of intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Now affordable Form Energy batteries can store that energy for days and make it more reliable. Their West Virginia plant, which is nearing completion, brings more than 750 jobs to a city that recently closed a sheet metal plant. And TS Conductor’s advanced power lines, already commercially deployed, can double the amount of energy transmitted and help maximize the efficiency of our current grid.

Agriculture – 20% of global emissions

What we grow and eat has a huge impact on the climate. But Pivot Bio reduces this impact with microbial products that allow crops to draw nitrogen from the air, giving farmers what they have long wanted: a more reliable and efficient form of fertilizer. Their solutions, which produce less than one percent of synthetic fertilizer emissions and require 1,000 times less water, are already in use on five million acres of land to help farmers increase productivity while eliminating emissions. Rumin8, whose feed supplements have successfully reduced methane emissions from farm animals by over 90 percent while increasing productivity, shows that we can enjoy beef and dairy without the high environmental costs they usually come with. They recently opened a demonstration facility in Australia to demonstrate the commercial viability of their products.

Transport – 15% of global emissions

Electric vehicles are the future, but their batteries are made of a resource that is both finite and difficult to responsibly source. One solution is recycling — and Redwood Materials has found a better way to do it. At its Nevada facility, the metals in recycled batteries are refined and then reused in new batteries, producing 40 to 70 percent fewer emissions than other recycling processes. But recycling alone won’t be enough to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles and electrification more broadly. New supplies will be needed – something KoBold Metals has cracked the code for. They are using artificial intelligence to more reliably find the minerals and metals that will underpin the energy transition, most recently copper in Zambia.

There are still significant technical hurdles to overcome in long-distance and heavy transport, but impressive progress is being made, particularly in aviation and shipping. For example, ZeroAvia develops hydrogen-electric aircraft engines with operations in the UK and US, and their prototype engines are successfully performing in aircraft in early trials.

Buildings – 7% of global emissions

Keeping you warm in the winter and cool in the summer takes a lot of energy, and much of it is wasted on single-pane windows and leaky ducts that leak heat and air conditioning. However, there are new options to help solve these problems. LuxWall has created ultra-insulating window glass that is so efficient that it acts as a wall through which you can see. After years of research and development, their windows roll off the production line at their first commercial factory in Michigan; once installed, the windows will reduce both costs and greenhouse gas emissions. There is also a company called Aeroseal, whose innovative polymer technology finds and plugs air leaks in building envelopes and ducts and is already commercially implemented.

Carbon management

However, to reduce global warming, it will not be enough to stop emitting greenhouse gases in the future. We also need to manage what has already been broadcast. In Arkansas, Graphyte turns plant waste into carbon-capturing bricks and buries them underground; if they sequester 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide by 2025 as planned, it will be the largest carbon dioxide removal project in the world. In California, Heirloom Carbon’s first commercial Direct Air Capture facility in the country uses forty-foot-tall limestone to absorb carbon from the air like a sponge. The pilot plant already removes 1,000 tons per year and plans to expand quickly.

These are just a few of the more than 100 BE-backed companies that have gathered in London this week to showcase their solutions – all facing great challenges, all ready to go and all proving that the Clean Industrial Revolution is here. (For more information on the progress made and what remains to be done, see BE’s latest State of Transformation report.)

Now we need to increase our support and increase investment. Thanks to commitments and capital from governments and industry leaders, we can implement these solutions and ensure their scalability. We can lower the stubborn green fees that make many clean technologies more expensive than their dirty counterparts (and too expensive for widespread adoption). We can keep the flow of innovation flowing. We can get much closer to a future of abundant, affordable clean energy.

Thanks to brilliant minds, big ideas and bold investments, transformative climate technology has arrived. It’s here in London. Breakthrough Energy Summit is where the momentum that has been building since 2015 meets the market. I can’t wait to talk to everyone here about where we’re going. And I can’t wait to see how the connections, partnerships and investments made over the next few days will help this climate technology reach everyone – and help us achieve net zero.