Two years ago, a Californian startup, Make Sunsets, pumped a few grams of sulfur dioxide into a series of weather balloons and launched them into the stratosphere.
Releasing sulfur into the atmosphere could, in theory, reflect sunlight back into space and help to cool the planet. The idea is part of the wider field of ‘geoengineering’: deliberate efforts to change the planet’s systems in order to slow down the effects of climate change.
Make Sunsets’ move marked the crossing of a controversial line: the ramifications of widespread solar geoengineering are not known, and there’s consensus in the scientific community that field tests should be approached with caution.
Though the company remains a controversial example, attitudes towards the wider geoengineering field have shifted in the two years since Make Sunsets’ test flight. Earlier this year, the UK government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) announced a £57m pot for geoengineering field tests — and some VCs say they’re warming to the idea too.
“Venture capital is meant to be about these crazy bets that drive humanity forward, not about a pizza delivery app that brings my stuff five minutes quicker,” says Madrid-based investor Maex Ament, who previously sold his startup Taulia to SAP before starting his VC firm, Earth.
VC chatter on the topic is on the up, says Ament, who is set to talk about geoengineering at a series of startup events this autumn, including Norrsken Impact Week and The Drop.
“I have had fantastic conversations over the last six months with my LPs about the necessity of the topic, which, a year ago, was difficult,” he says.
Geoengineering
Most proposed geoengineering methods aim to dim the level of sunlight reaching Earth, either by releasing tiny aerosol particles that reflect it back into space, by firing salt water into the clouds to boost their reflectivity, or by unfurling structures in space to block some of the sun’s rays. Others aim to thin clouds to allow more heat to escape.
Proponents say geoengineering methods should be studied because temperatures have already surpassed targets set out by international bodies like the UN.
Critics say geoengineering won’t solve the root causes of climate change and could wreak havoc with the weather. Earlier this year, the European Commission’s scientific advisers called for a halt to geoengineering experiments, saying they presented “highly uncertain” risks.
Aside from Make Sunsets, the other famous names are Israeli startup StarDust — which is working on a novel molecule it says could be more effective than sulfur at reflecting sunlight away from the Earth — and US startup Sequoia-backed Reflect Orbital, which aims to reflect sunlight using mirrors.
The geoengineering space in Europe is nascent. There’s French startup Gama Space, backed by Kima Ventures and Bpifrance, which is working on a solar shade to block some of the sun’s rays. There are also companies working on Arctic geoengineering, such as UK startup Real Ice and Dutch startup Arctic Reflections, which are both working on technologies to thicken sea ice to reflect more sunlight.
The continent’s also home to several hot spots for geoengineering science, notably Cambridge University’s Centre for Climate Repair, which is the largest recipient of the UK government’s geoengineering grants.
The venture case?
Nick David, London-based investor at US VC Starship Ventures, which backed Reflect Orbital, is convinced of the need for geoengineering. That said, the venture case behind the most ambitious projects remains unclear, he says.
“When you’re talking about $20bn to put something a million miles away from Earth that might fail, that’s pretty daunting for an early stage VC that is going to get diluted 20 times,” says David.
Earth’s Ament disagrees. “I think this is a VC case,” he says. Injecting molecules with sunlight reflecting properties would be relatively cheap, Ament says, compared to the cooling benefit it could bring.
“I’m actually not too concerned about who pays for it, if we really want to cool the planet by a degree or two, and Germany pays $500m, the US $1bn, it’s really no money.”
No role for private companies
Venture capital’s role in geoengineering is controversial.
Alistair Duffey, a PhD student at University College London, focused on modelling solar geoengineering, says he envisages the technologies being provided by governments rather than private companies. “I’m very afraid of people trying to commercialise the general premise of this, I think that’s really quite bad.”
“It would be a very bad outcome if there was a private company that was paid per amount of sulfur it stuck in the sky or degrees it cooled, because the incentives wouldn’t align,” says Duffey. A precise amount of sulfur needs to be injected to get optimum cooling — it’s not about the more injected, the better.
That said, Duffey says there could be room for private innovation.
“There are lots of utilities out there, sewage treatment for example, where it’s fundamentally government-directed but some private companies can play a role inside that. If an engineering company is the best at making a particular nozzle, then maybe we would buy that nozzle.”
Angel investor Matt Blythe, who recently led a geoengineering-focused hackathon in London, agrees that the most convincing opportunities are adjacent to the main act.
“What’s most interesting from an investor perspective, is the technologies that are adjacent. If you’re doing aerosol injections, you need to make observations about their effectiveness. What’s interesting is the companies trying to develop platforms or aircraft that can make those observations.”
To work, companies need to have commercial applications aside from geoengineering, Blythe says. Should research get to a level where geoengineering methods were significantly de-risked — and a global consensus on the way to govern it emerged — they could then pivot to geoengineering applications.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/geoengineering-startups-europe/
