Amongst the many variables of climate change, one thing we know with absolute certainty is that there are currently no solutions available that can remove greenhouse gases at scale from the atmosphere.
The quest for scalable solutions is the driving force behind CTRF, underpinned by an expert led and rigorous scientific approach. Our Scientific Advisory Council are key to ensuring the best and brightest ideas are recognised, supported and thoroughly scrutinised.
They are a diverse group of leaders in their respective fields, bringing expertise ranging from biological sciences, ocean and ecosystem functions, engineering technology and commercialisation.
Each year, we bring this group together at a summit event to discuss our research strategy and review projects proposals for funding.
This year we took the opportunity to speak to them about why funding foundational research is so critical.
Dr. Jerry Blackford, Head of Science: Marine Systems Modelling at Plymouth Marine Laboratory has a 32 year career specialising in marine system modelling. He explains why this funding gap is so vital to fill,
“CTRF’s ability to fund that developmental stage of biotech and associated tech is really the essential part of the jigsaw at the moment. There are lots of ideas about what could be successful but these need to be tested rigorously. We need to establish a framework, if they can be scaled up and if they can actually remove carbon from the system for a long time. So CTRF provides an absolutely spot-on service to fund that kind of work that is transitional from the ideas, to does it work at least in the lab context to trials in the field.”
CTRF Founder of Stig Arff explains that from the outset CTRF has focused on scale with the logic that modifying natural processes, such as photosynthesis, could offer a key solution to supercharge greenhouse gas removal. He stresses that understanding and supporting these under-explored areas is vital.
“The avenue that we’re pursuing is utilising what goes on in nature today, which is everything that goes on in the biosphere, and capturing CO2 at gigatonnes per year. There is no other process today that is remotely near that and that’s why we’re taking what exists today, something that works, and enhancing it, turbo charging it and seeing if that can help us achieve the goal, not as the only solution but one of many”
Prof. Louise Horsfall Professor of Sustainable Biotechnology at The University of Edinburgh points out that whilst developments in biotech have been applied to areas such as medicine, it is underexplored in the climate space and compared to some technologies being proposed for greenhouse gas removal, biotech solutions offer huge potential to scale sustainably.
“I think to some extent biotechnology has so much to offer in this area but it’s one of the less developed technologies. Especially with new approaches that have emerged over the last couple of decades, biotechnology has so much to offer in this area. It’s at an earlier stage than some of the more proven technologies but their requirements are quite immense and resource intensive. Biotechnology is wonderful because it’s self-growing so once you have one microbe or one plant that does exactly what you want it to do, it is self-replicating so actually if we can focus on the early stage technology and getting that one component right then that scaling is a lot easier than scaling some of the technologies that have question marks about them.”
All proposals to CTRF go through a thorough rigorous peer review process which takes into account their potential ability to scale, as Prof. David Beerling, Sorby Professor of Natural Sciences, School of Biosciences at University of Sheffield describes,
“One of the great things about CTRF is it submits the proposals to a peer review and committee review which is typical of a research council but then it also requires the applicants to demonstrate a clear pathway for taking the technology forward. So beyond just doing lab experiments, they need to have a pathway for how it would scale, what the costs are, what the commercial implications might be and I think that’s one of the unique selling points for CTRF.”
The urgency of funding to support fundamental research cannot be overstated. Professor Alistair McCormick who is a Professor of Plant Engineering Biology at The University of Edinburgh explains why more support is needed to ensure we have real world solutions that are fit for purpose,
“I just don’t think we have the technologies available at the moment to really draw down the amount of CO2 that we need to. We’re looking at 10 gigatons per year to achieve the goals that we want by 2050 and given the fact that we’re still emitting 40 gigatons annually from factories and industry, we simply don’t have the science, the tools available to combat these emissions at the moment. Other people are building an economy for carbon dioxide removal, which is really important and thinking about things like biochar being an economically valuable product so that we can charge our economies to include carbon removal.
But for the actual tools that we have, whether they come from biology or from chemistry, a lot of basic, fundamental science needs to be invested in to get to the efficiencies that we require to attack the problem. I think for the next few years, investing in both fundamental and applied research is probably one of the most important things that we are going to be doing for our next generations.”
Dr. Surabi Menon, is a leading climate scientist and is VP, Global Intelligence at Climateworks Foundation as well as Chair of CTRF’s Scientific Advisory Council. She is clear that more visionary and bold funders are needed to join CTRF to create momentum and drive innovation and breakthroughs in the research space.
“We know the number of funders in the carbon removal space is fairly limited because these are technologies that will be deployed and achieve success maybe many years later. We need a range of funders who are interested in the near term but also thinking of the long term, and it’s a very small community.
You need to be bold and visionary to think of using biotech with the aim of mimicking natural processes. It’s a new field and an exciting field but it’s a risky place because we’re not pricing carbon yet but once that happens and there’s a carbon market and you get credit for what you sequester in terms of carbon, then it could grow and attract other funding.
So who are the early first movers to help spur that research? That’s the unique role CTRF can play, within the small group of carbon removal funders. Building that research community around that topic is really important to help grow the field and to help the technology or the research go to other geographies because right now it’s confined to a few locations in the world.”