Catalyst with Shayle Kann - What climatetech can learn from the oceans

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

So you want to build an offshore wind farm. Are you prepared to manage the marine ecosystem impacts of construction? What about monitoring and protecting underwater electrical cables? Or maybe you want to decarbonize shipping. Do you know how to trace low-carbon fuel through ports or maintain storage tanks in marine environments? How about managing worker safety on the ocean? These are the kinds of questions that crop up at the intersection of climatetech and something called bluetech, the range of technologies that touch the oceans. And this marine-based expertise may prove invaluable to climate solutions.  In this episode, Shayle talks to Alissa Peterson, co-founder and chief executive officer of SeaAhead, an organization that supports and incubates bluetech companies. They survey a range of technologies, covering topics like: Alternative low-carbon fuels for shipping, such as ammonia, methanol and hydrogen Alternative proteins, fisheries and kelp Oceanic carbon removal, such as ocean alkalinity enhancement and sinking kelp to the bottom of the seabed  In the U.S., will big coastal infrastructure, like offshore wind, suffer the same fate as long-distance transmission lines, stalling in an overly strict regulatory environment? Recommended Resources: Canary Media: Zero-emissions cargo shipping catches on in cities and port communities Canary Media: Offshore wind installations surged threefold last year SeaAhead : Innovation in Offshore Wind Reverse Pitch MIT Technology Review: Companies hoping to grow carbon-sucking kelp may be rushing ahead of the science Catalyst is a production of Post Script Media and Canary Media. Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrid Solutions, your comprehensive source for all distributed energy financing. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes financing it easy. Visit scalecapitalsolutions.com to learn more. Catalyst is supported by CohnReznick, a trusted partner for navigating the complex and evolving financial, tax and regulatory landscape of the renewable sector. Visit cohnreznick.com to learn more.

from the studios of PostScript Media and Canary Media. I'm Shale Khan, and this is Catalyst. You can't just look at, say, offshore wind on its own without also looking at fisheries and looking at aquaculture and looking at biodiversity and the scientific community and the ports that are going to get things to the offshore wind farm and you can't look at each of these things individually without understanding how they connect to each other.

It covers 70% of the Earth's surface. It absorbs almost a third of the CO2 released into the atmosphere each year. My wife and I technically got married while floating in it on a large inflatable goose. It's the world's oceans. When utilities need flexible capacity they can count on, they turn to Energy Hub. Energy Hub works with more than 170 utilities, coordinating over 2.5 million devices to manage 3.4 gigawatts of flexibility built for the moments when utilities can't afford uncertainty. Energy Hub builds and operates virtual power plants that utilities actually stake their grid planning on,

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Listen to Critical Capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Shell Khan. I'm a partner at the venture capital firm, Energy Impact Partners. Welcome. So in the category of things that already have, and certainly will, continue to have a huge impact on our climate trajectory, but don't get enough attention from the climate tech community, I'd put oceans near or at the top. Sure, we talk about sea level rise, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. There's a whole category of stuff that often gets bucketed into a separate category called blue tech that partially but doesn't completely overlap with climate tech that I find fascinating. It ranges from how we can use this

vast majority of the Earth's surface to produce energy to how we can use the oceans themselves to create negative emissions. And I'd say that the tide is starting to rise on these solutions, sorry. Anyway, is one of those big, multifaceted categories that deserves its own entire podcast, not just one episode on this one, but let's start with an overview for now and then dig into the details. So for this intro to the overlapping worlds of blue tech and climate tech, we brought on Alyssa Peterson, who is the co-founder and executive director of See Ahead, which is an organization that supports and incubates blue tech companies, many of which have a climate lens. Here's Alyssa. Alyssa, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Excited to talk blue tech,

which we haven't really done before on this podcast, and there's a lot in it. So this is going to be our initial overview, and then I'm sure there will be many depths to plumb, so to speak. But let's start with some definitions. So how do you think about what defines blue tech? And I guess give me a sense of that overall market and sector, because as we'll talk about it, it overlaps with where I spend all my time, which is in climate tech, but they're not perfectly overlapping circles. So what's going on?

And what is blue tech and what is the world of blue tech at the moment? So we define Blue Tech as the tech and innovation intersections with the blue economy. And so now we have to define the blue economy. And the blue economy is defined as all of the activities that are happening in or near around the ocean. And so for us, that includes everything from fisheries and aquaculture to global shipping. to offshore energy. In this case, we focus on renewable energy. It also includes the coastal interface, so coastal resilience. And for others, it might include coastal tourism and the defense sector. So there's a lot of industries that are all together that define what happens in the

blue economy. And is the sort of fundamental underpinning of it from a science perspective oceanography and like understanding of what role the oceans play in our ecosystem on earth and that kind of thing? Or what's the, what unifies all of that? It's presumably it's just like these things happen on or beneath the sea. So yes. So it's, it's a little bit geographic, right? And it's a little bit scientific. So it has both of those aspects that go along with it. overarching, 70% of the planet is covered by the ocean. And it often feels like a way for most of us, because we don't spend a lot of time either thinking or being in the ocean, but it covers more than half the planet. And there's a lot of technical and intersecting reasons why you might think about these industries as being related to each other.

But firstly, it's difficult to do things in the water. And so there's some expertise related to how and when and where you do things and the sort of technical capabilities that are required to keep the ocean out of any of the things you might like to put into it so that they don't corrode and otherwise break. Then there's also the users and how they interface with each other. So the ocean's one of these sort of last grade commons areas. And so anytime someone's doing something in the ocean, there are a number of user either conflicts or resolutions or stakeholder engagements that need to happen.

And so for that reason, you can't just look at, say, offshore wind on its own without also looking at fisheries and looking at aquaculture and looking at biodiversity and the scientific community and the ports that are going to get things to the offshore wind farm, and you can't look at each of these things individually without understanding how they connect to each other. That seems like a common thread. I feel like we'll talk about a few times as we get into the details here of anything,

it seems like anything you want to do in the ocean, whether it be produce energy, remove greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere, et cetera, et cetera, those sort of interlocking questions around impacts on marine life, and the ecosystem and the coast sort of come up every time, right? And it also, which strikes me as something that has stymied a lot of development of things in the ocean, sort of consistently it's difficult to get things built, though we've obviously done it.

We've got lots of offshore energy production now, though less wind and more oil. Hopefully the opposite in the future. Right. But that seems like it's a common challenge for blue tech. Is that generally true? And do you feel like that's changing or is it getting in, I guess, either direction? I don't think it's a challenge that's going away. It's mostly learning how to manage those challenges.

So when you look at the need or the desire to say put something in the water, if you're within a country's exclusive economic zone, then, which is about 200 miles from the coastline, and the U.S. has the largest EEZ in the world. So if we're looking at exclusive economic zones in the ocean, then it's up to the individual country to manage how the regulatory framework works for managing user and user conflict in the ocean. But when we get into the deep sea, then it gets a little bit more interesting and exciting from a, you know, intergovernmental perspective. And so we actually think that most of the interesting venture and startup type opportunities are coastal and nature in any case because it's so difficult and time-consuming and expensive and energy intensive to do things that are out in the middle of the ocean anyway. So for the most part, when we are talking about activities related to the ocean, we're talking about things that are in the coastal interface. Interesting. Okay, so we'll come back to some of those. So let's talk about the overlap between blue tech and climate tech. And I think it generally comes in two high-level categories. One being avoiding greenhouse gas emissions by doing something on the coastal interface or in the ocean, and that can be producing energy, reducing the emissions associated with shipping that's already taking place in the ocean and a variety of other things that you could do.

And then there's a more emerging category, but where there's a lot of activity and interest in greenhouse gas emissions removals, CDR, that relates to the ocean as well. So let's take those in order. Starting with the, how do we use the ocean to avoid greenhouse gas emissions? What do you think of as being sort of the biggest category there? So in general, I think one of the key things for us and that I would want to make sure, that your audience knows and to communicate is that this is not nichey. These are enormous industries that we're talking about here and that, you know, between shipping and renewable energy

production and seafood production, like these are big opportunities that we have in front of us. And so if we looked at just the avoidance strategies to start with, global shipping is about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And so there's no reason to believe that we couldn't completely decarbonize the global shipping industry. The catch is how to do that and how to do that affordably. Because about 80% of all of the international trade that we have happens on ocean-going vessels. And so when we think about how we decarbonize that, we have to really think hard about the impacts that might have on global stability and security and food security, especially. And so when we are thinking about short sea shipping, we might be thinking about electrification.

So when you're doing ferries and moving other things around in short distances, electrification is a very real opportunity. When we're talking about getting things across oceans, right, something from Shanghai to LA, then we need to talk about decarbonization a little bit differently because doing that through electrification is just not possible right now and based upon energy density and how far that distance is. And so this is like aviation, but harder because there's not as much money. So it makes it a little pretty tricky, right? And so you could think about using biofuels. There's a lot of folks working on. So drop in biofuels so you don't even have to change.

the equipment, but then they're also looking at the hydrogen economy and how one might use derivatives of hydrogen in order to replace fossil fuels in the shipping industry. You get into ammonia is probably the one that folks talk about the most when we're talking about global shipping. But methanol. Or yeah, or methanol. Ammonia has, of course, got a lot of problems related to toxicity and energy density again. So, It's not solved, I would say. And so there's a lot of folks working on, are there better energy carriers, the two that we were just talking about? Are there, how might we think about maintaining, you know, is there a way to think about shipping a little bit differently, right?

maybe the vessel sizes or other aspects of the vessel can change in order to accommodate these changes in fuel types and sources, right? Because you're going to need them everywhere. And that's one of the trickiest things because vessels don't always know where they're going before they get there, right? So they could be, you know, awaiting knowing that they're going to go to one port versus another, and that fuel that they need needs to be present at the place that they're going. Right, which makes the argument for drop-in fuels as being, like, it's easier to imagine

drop-in biofuels or methanol, which could potentially be drop-in, some other drop-in fuels, sort of getting to scale quickly, whereas stuff like, whether it be electrification or ammonia or some other hydrogen carrier potentially, like you need a bunch of new infrastructure at every relevant port that a ship is going to travel to in order to believe that it's going to scale. So it doesn't mean it's impossible, right? Some ships do do back and forth routes, as I understand it. But certainly if you're trying to imagine what's going to change the face of the shipping industry, you know, something drop in looks a lot easier if you can get there. Absolutely. And then you're thinking about, you know, as you're thinking about avoidance strategies,

Of course, electricity is a large one. And as we're thinking about shipping and we're thinking about offshore renewable energy, which would be mainly offshore wind. At the moment, that's the least, you know, I'd say the most cost-efficient way to do offshore renewable energy. So if we're looking at shipping, and we can also think about how that relates to offshore wind, right? because the capacity factors for offshore wind are much higher than onshore.

You could think about how one might store offshore wind energy differently than using the electricity itself. And so then there's this really nice synergy potential between those two industries and their needs. Yeah, so where are we at an offshore wind today? This is another topic. I mean, we'll probably spend more time at some point in the future, but haven't spent a whole lot of time on this podcast before.

it's a big deal and it's potentially a huge market. What's your sense of the current state of affairs there? It's big, right? This feels if you've been to an offshore wind conference lately, you could feel the energy in the air. It has just a different feel from many of the other conferences that I attend and that I go to because the sector is growing so quickly and so many new people are being brought in from elsewhere.

And so the excitement is sort of palpable in the U.S. East Coast market for what's happening. There's a lot of hurdles to get over, and of course, permitting is the biggest of them. But it looks like some of those for the first large projects are happening now. And so we expect to see some of the first projects getting built over the next couple of years. And, you know, when we look at this space, you know, from a blue tech perspective, we're not focused much on the turbines themselves, right? Like, you know, building turbines is a large company game, right? And so when we look at the interesting areas for innovation in offshore wind,

we're really looking around the edges, right? So we're looking at how does one monitor and protect cables under the water? How does one think about the assisting and supporting biodiversity at the base of turbines? How does one think about mitigating environmental impacts of the construction of the offshore wind farm? How do you think about the construction safety and logistics associated with building an offshore wind farm? So there's a lot of opportunities for innovation around the edges that's not necessarily inventing a 15 megawatt turbine to replace the 12 megawatt turbine that most people, most of the projects are going to use?

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Listen to Critical Capital Capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I think those are topics we'll spend more time on at some point in the future. I want to get into some of the other non-energy production, non-shipping decarbonization ways you can use the ocean to avoid emissions, one of which is in food world and sort of alternative protein of which there's a million ways to make alternative protein, all of which are emerging, but some of which come out of the ocean, right? So where is there innovation in using the ocean to produce food that avoids emissions? Yeah.

So just a level set, protein from the ocean, whether it's conventional or unconventional, has a much lower carbon footprint than, you know, sort of traditional terrestrial-based sources of animal protein. So if you looked at fish, just sort of, if you looked at, if you just looked at fish, right, you'd see that the carbon footprint of fish is more comparable to many plant-based proteins. So you'd be looking comparable to like soy and nuts and a little less than eggs. So the role that seafood can play is pretty significant if we are careful about how it's done. because moving entirely off seafood is just sort of not realistic, we think, in the near term,

because about a billion people in the world depend on seafood as their primary source of protein. And so, and many of those people are in food insecure regions. Those are things that are, you know, sources of protein that are close to them. And so when we think about this ocean as a source of, of protein and of stability in a sort of long-term, you know, climate-friendly way. We think about how do we improve aquaculture, right? So aquaculture is the largest growth area in the production of seafood. And how do we think about the opportunities for even lower carbon alternatives like seaweed

and shellfish, right, which are the lowest carbon ways that you can produce, you know, food from the ocean? So there's, you know, if we just hone in on seaweed for a minute, because I think that's an area that has gotten, it's gotten a lot of, it's had a lot of growth and it's also gotten a lot of press. And so there's some questions that we've got remaining and open in this area. So if you looked at an operating seaweed farm, you might want to say, no, whether or not it's sequestering carbon in its own right. And that's something that still the science isn't quite in yet on whether or not. a seaweed farm where the seaweed's being used for, you know, either feeding people or making seaweed burgers or other uses, is that seaweed farm part of a carbon cycle where the benefit is that you didn't eat a, you know, a regular beef burger? And so the carbon footprint of what you ate is lower because you replaced the burger with something less intensive. Or is there also a carbon removal benefit just from running this seaweed farm. So that's an area of exploration that's going on right now. There's a couple of startups that are working on it. There's a lot of scientific

organizations that are working on. How do we do the MRV associated with knowing whether or not our seaweed has removed carbon? Then there's... Which relates both to the carbon avoidance and carbon removal stuff because there's a separate category with seaweed, which is growing seaweed to drop it to the bottom of the ocean where hopefully it'll stay for thousands of years and remove carbon, not ultimately get consumed, which probably has an even more difficult MRV challenge. Yeah, and that's an area where more science is also required. And so when we're looking at sequestering carbon by sinking either terrestrial or

ocean-grown biomass. So the core questions, as I see it, are one, are they affecting the ecosystems that are already in those areas? And what effects will it have on the ocean writ large? And so or in those specific areas. So we have to be thoughtful and careful about what impacts we're having as we're looking to reduce, you know, global impacts. We also have to look at what are the local and what are local impacts that we're having on that ecosystem that it's being brought into. And then we also have then the question of is it going to stay? And so how do we know for what period of time and for, and with what certainty the carbon has actually been sequestered? So those are still areas that we don't have all of the data that we would require in order to know those things in order to create verified credits.

And so that's why those haven't those processes aren't in place yet. Okay, so we've sort of naturally shifted into the other category, which is using the ocean to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, of which this is one component, growing kelp or something, or like you said, taking terrestrial biomass and dropping it to the bottom of the ocean, which of which there's a bunch of activity going on. And as you said, sort of a lot of open questions as well around both ecosystem impacts and permanence, which is the question with lots of things in carbon removal world. There's another category that is emerging. I'm interested to get your take on, which is ocean alkalinity enhancement, which is one sort of major category of carbon removal that's receiving a lot of attention. I guess to start, can you define it, explain what ocean alkalinity enhancement is, the sort of the theory behind how it could be a major lever for carbon removal, and then

what your thoughts are on it with regards to all these things that we've been talking about, sort of ecosystem impact, certainty of impact on carbon removal, open questions, where are we in that universe? So I'll start this by saying that I'm not a geologist, but my understanding of how this works is that you could either call it advanced weathering or alkalinity enhancement. It's at the basis increasing the rate of weathering of either carbonate or silicate rocks,

which then mimics the way that natural geologic sequestration happens. The ocean in general is how the planet manages carbon, right? And so it appears that it has such high potential for sequestering carbon that it's worth exploring more. And so there's a number of really interesting startups that are working on this like Project Vesta and planetary technologies that are all looking at how could you then take, you know, basically ground up olive and rocks. or other carbonate rocks and look at how you would introduce those into the ocean in order to sequester some of the carbon that's already been dissolved into the ocean. And so from Project Festa perspective, they're looking at adding oliveine sand. So you're creating beaches.

So you're essentially doing beach restoration using a material that over time will be absorbed into the ocean and absorb the CO2, or is sort of the carbon that's in the ocean. And then you're looking at, you know, with planetary tech, they have a slightly different way of approaching it, which is a little bit more industrial. But net net, what you're looking at is accelerating the natural geologic process. What we don't know, and that's an area that both of these organizations are working in is, again, permanence. So is the sequestration that they're looking at permanent? How do you measure it? How do you know how much you've actually sequestered, given that there's a lot of unknowns as you're introducing this into the water? And then in addition,

how do we measure and estimate any local impacts that you might have on those ecosystems? And so this is an area that's like both innovation in science as well as innovation in business models. Yeah, as with many of these things, it seems to come back to this, these core sets of questions of like sort of let's make sure we're not messing with the ocean as we do these things and the life within it. Let's make sure we know what it's actually going to do and can we measure it or is it all going to be modeled? And if it's all going to be modeled, then how certain is our science and how precise is there science around it, and then how long is it going to last, basically? And so each of those things for a number of these categories,

whether it be ocean alkalinity enhancement or enhanced weathering, whether it be kelp-syncing, those questions seem cross-cutting to me. And my understanding is there's a lot of work being done on each of them, but they're all sort of gating before any of these things can really scale. Because I mean, I think you made this point, if we were going to really scale this to global, impact from an emissions perspective, you know, the amount of any given one of these that we would be doing is sort of staggering. The amount of kelp we'd be growing and sinking, the amount of

olivine we'd be spreading is an enormous amount, orders and orders of magnitude more than we're doing today. And so before we start getting to that scale, it seems like there's a fair amount of work still to be done. Is your sense that the, I guess, the blue tech community, the coastal community? Is this an exciting area of opportunity for that world? Is there a lot of nervousness? I mean, one of the things that I think about a lot with anything that's coastal related is how difficult it is to get anything permitted. You just look at like, I'm in California, right? And you just look at how hard it's been to get desalination plants built in California. I think we just formally rejected one that's been in the, like the biggest desal plant that's been in the works for

a decade plus or something like that. Like, you know, is this going to end up being in the realm of, I don't know, high voltage transmission on the electric grid, which is clearly we need a lot more of it, but it's extremely difficult to get any more of it built because permitting is nigh impossible? Or do you think that it's actually a more, is there a more optimistic outlook? Well, California is a special place. But it is. It is a special place. But I would say there are a lot of people working on and excited about digging into the, getting the science put together in order to have a, you know, to do these geologic approaches, to understand what's happening in a seaweed farm. Certain things are more difficult to get permitted than others. And it also depends on how close to the coast you are and whether or not that it's therefore visible from,

you know, coastal communities or not. But, you know, there's a group called Ocean Visions that's doing a ton of work right now and putting out, putting a lot of money to work in trying to answer some of these questions around how carbon is sequestered in the ocean so that we can build the models that would allow us to do the work that's needed. And so that's a really interesting, group of funders that's putting, you know, putting their money where their mouth is. They want to see, they want to see how the science works. Now, I guess I didn't really answer your second question, which is like, is this going to be the high voltage transmission of the ocean? And so here's,

here's my understanding of it. So there are certain things that we know are harmful for marine life. And some of those things make it harder to site projects. Right? So we know that ocean noise is harmful for much marine life because that's how they communicate underwater. We know that concentrated brine from desalination plants is not great for the marine life that is surrounded by it. We know that raising the ocean temperature locally by doing once through cooling isn't good for marine life. But there are a lot of opportunities for us to be more thoughtful about how we innovate so that we can reduce the impacts of what we're trying to do on ocean life while still being able to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish. So that's why we work with startups, right?

I mean, this is what makes what I do exciting and why I like to get up in the morning and help the companies, right? is because offshore wind farms can have negative impacts on marine life, but there are, or on bird life associated in the water, but there are startups that are working on decreasing the potential for bird strike. There are startups working on things like bubble curtains during construction so that the construction noise isn't as harmful. There are startups working on ways to identify marine life in the water so that construction could be, can go on through longer seasons offshore without impacting local species.

So there's a lot of opportunity here. And so that's what I think is exciting and why I think there's that the, why this won't be the high voltage transmission of, you know, corollary is because we just need to be supportive of this group of companies that are trying to solve. you know, solve these impact issues. Yeah, and I'm also hopeful that high-voltage transmission will ultimately not be the high-voltage transmission of high-voltage transmission. Well, we won't hold our breaths, so.

Yeah, that's probably smart. I mean, I guess my last question for you, you sort of started to answer, which is what are the areas that you think are most exciting or that deserve the most attention relative to what they're getting today, like what's most overlooked in the blue economy, or underappreciated, or underfunded, for that matter? Well, I think it's all underfunded. But, you know, in general, there's really, Blue Tech as a theme is really early right now.

And there's really only a handful of funds that are focused on the ocean and ocean innovation. And so what we're starting to see is that there's a raise, I guess, as Sea Ahead, what we're trying to do is raise awareness to grow the, a number of people that see these opportunities, and can assess them. And so there are, what we're starting to see is more generalist funds and adjacent funds, folks that have either a climate focus

or a food focus that are now looking at the ocean as a potential source of deal flow for them and a pipeline. So we're starting to see that. And then, you know, but it's really important, I would say one of the things I think

that's really important is that as early movers that we are picking well and we're doing a good job because, that will affect the folks that are coming behind us, right? We saw, and we all know what Clean Tech 1.0 did, and the difficulties that made for the new climate tech and clean tech funds

because of some of the challenges that happened the first time. And so we want to, I think, one of the things that I think about a lot is how do we set the ground and lay the groundwork so that they're, this doesn't have that same boom bust cycle to it and the same frothiness that we've seen before in the clean tech sector. And so that's something that we need to keep an eye on as we watch it grow and that we're also thinking about business models that have private sector buyers that are solving important key, you know, sort of burning platform challenges and that are venture investable. D.C. All right. Well, I think we covered at the surface level or one meter depth, maybe a bunch of

things that each deserve their own deep dive. I can't not use ocean-related metaphors as I have this conversation. No, it's a challenge of the job. Yeah. It's like when I'm having conversations about mining, I can't stop talking about how I'm going to dig into something. Anyway, there's a lot to follow up on here. So I'm sure we'll have you back and go deeper on one of these or two of at some point in the future. But in the meantime, Alyssa, thanks so much for joining. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Alyssa Peterson is the co-founder and executive director of See Ahead, which is an organization that supports and incubates blue tech companies.

So what did you think? This is a big category with a lot of subcategories that we will spend more time in the future. Tell us which of those you think we should spend more time on or should not or which ones we missed. You can find the show on Twitter at At CatalystPod. You can also find me there. If you like the show, as always, go over to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review. This show is co-production of PostScript Media and Canary Media. You can head over to canarymedia.com for links to today's topics.

And as always, PostScript is supported by Prelude Ventures, a venture capital firm that partners with entrepreneurs to address climate change across a range of sectors, including advanced energy, food and agriculture, transportation and logistics, advanced materials and manufacturing and advanced computing. This episode was produced by Daniel Waldorf, mixing by Greg Vilfrank and Sean Marquand, theme song by Sean Marquand. Our managing producer is Cecily Mesa Martinez. I'm Shail Khan, and this is Catalyst.