Nuclear Fusion, Bionic Weeds, and Biofabrication: Three New Technologies in the Fight Against Climate Change

Imagine a nuclear reactor that harnesses the power of the sun, genetically engineered plants that suck greenhouse gasses from our atmosphere, and bacteria and fungus that are grown to replace material products. Although they may sound like science fiction, these examples are three of the newest technologies scientists and researchers are developing to fight global climate change. According to the World Economic Forum, Cambridge Center for Study of Existential Risk, the Harvard School of Public Health, and more, climate change is the number one threat facing humanity on a global scale. In the United States, and internationally, major oil, gas, and mining companies are held to loosely regulated standards for environmental protection, and for those living where clean energy is available, it remains the far more expensive energy option. By burning fossil fuels, humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by 47 percent since the industrial revolution began.

Some countries have implemented carbon-emission guidelines with the hopes of mitigating their carbon footprint, each with varying degrees of success. Still, climate scientists are slowly coming to the conclusion that we have passed the window wherein carbon emission reduction alone can reverse climate change. Humanity will have to come up with technology that can actively absorb carbon from our atmosphere in order to halt the effects of climate change.

Livestock also contribute significantly to climate change through methane emission, another greenhouse gas, and mass production of material goods like clothing adds dangerous chemicals and 13 million tons of annual waste to our global pollution problem.

Despite the bleak outlook of climate change and our planet, there remain individuals, teams, and institutions across the globe working to develop new ideas and implement new technologies in the fight against climate change. Here are three new technologies in the energy, agriculture, and fashion industries that are working to counter the negative effects of fossil fuel emissions and material pollution.

Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor

Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a startup company called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and a large team of multi-institute researchers have been developing a fusion research experiment called SPARC over the past two and a half years since their launch in early 2018. Their research works toward an end goal of creating a revolutionary zero-emissions power source. The SPARC compact nuclear fusion reactor will be the first device to achieve a “burning plasma,” which is a self-sustaining fusion reaction that needs no outside power source. The reactor would work like the sun does, by fusing different isotopes of hydrogen together to form helium. 

Timeline

Last Tuesday, Sept. 29, the project team published a series of papers summarizing their progress and detailing the physics basis behind their fusion system; these papers instilled widespread confidence in SPARC’s success across the plasma physics field. Although some progress was slowed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the team hopes to move forward with construction next year, in roughly June 2021. Building the reactor is expected to take 3-4 years. Some scientists, although excited about SPARC’s prospects, are skeptical that the process will move so quickly. The multinational ITER project in France, the world’s largest fusion-power project, has been in the works since 2013 and is expected to begin producing energy through fusion reactions no earlier than 2035.

Impact 

The power sector is one of the largest greenhouse gas contributors in the world. The SPARC compact nuclear fusion reactor will work like a conventional nuclear fission power plant, by splitting atoms. Also similar to a conventional nuclear fission power plant, SPARC will not burn any fossil fuels or emit any greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. What makes the SPARC nuclear fusion reactor stand out is that its fuel, isotopes of hydrogen, is far more abundant than a nuclear fission power plant’s uranium. The SPARC compact nuclear fusion reactor will also generate far less waste than a traditional nuclear power plant, and the waste it does generate will be far less radioactive, making this clean energy less dangerous and more readily accessible than a traditional nuclear power plant. In last Tuesday’s published and peer-reviewed papers, researches gave evidence that the SPARC reactor would produce as much as 10 times the energy it consumes.

Genetically Engineered, Carbon-Storing Plants

Technology

Dr. Joanne Chory and her team at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies are currently working on a project to genetically engineer plants to drastically increase the amount of carbon dioxide that plants can suck out of the air and bury under the earth. Using the flowering roadside weed, Arabidopsis thaliana, Chory utilizes Crispr technology to engineer plants’ roots to grow bigger, to grow deeper, and to produce more Suberin, a naturally occurring substance that allows plants to take in and stabilize carbon. In her TED Talk, Chory notes that she has “come to appreciate the plants as amazing machines that they are, whose job has been, really, to just suck up CO2. And they do it so well, because they’ve been doing it for over 500 million years.” She sees her work as simply optimizing a plant’s natural ability to capture and store carbon.

Timeline

Chory has spent the past thirty years working with plants’ molecular biology. By decoding precisely what mechanisms allow a plant to take in and store carbon, Chory has been able to rewrite and replicate nature’s genetic structures. Now, she firmly believes that “our action or inaction in the next 10 years will determine our fate on this planet.”

Although policy and consumers are generally against Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs, Chory emphasizes that the Salk Institute doesn’t introduce any foreign genetic material into its plants, unlike many GMO products. The project’s next steps will be working to change policies regarding some genetically-engineered crops and incentivizing farmers to buy enhanced carbon-sucking seeds.

Impact

The Salk Institute team hopes to replicate their research in wheat, corn, soy, rice, cotton, and canola; these crops currently occupy half the globe’s arable land, and by optimizing their carbon intake, Chory believes we can save the planet. Farmers will reap just as much yield as they do today, and their crops will draw three, even four times more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than they do today.

Biofabrication

Technology

Fashion designer turned biofabrication pioneer, Suzanne Lee, calls biofabrication “the Fourth Industrial Revolution” in her TED Talk. Biofabrication uses living organisms to grow consumer materials instead of processing plants, animals or oil to make products. According to Lee, these products include foams that can replace plastics in footwear, fungi that can replace plastic packaging, and super-strong yarn made from spider-silk protein.

The University of Vienna, Imperial College London, and RMIT University in Australia have recently collaborated on research arguing that a leather-like substance grown from fungi is the best leather substitute with regards to sustainability and cost. Producers can upcycle sawdust to grow sheets of mycelium, which are matted masses of elongated fungal threads. It only takes a few weeks before the mycelium sheet can be physically and chemically treated to produce a material that looks and feels similar to animal leather.

Natsai Audrey Chieza is a designer who hopes to reduce fashion industry pollution. In her TED Talk, “Fashion has a pollution problem — can biology fix it?” she explains how she has used the bacteria Streptomyces coelicolor, which creates a brilliant red-purple color, to dye her materials safely. She grows the bacteria directly onto silk, continually introducing new cells until the entire cloth becomes saturated.

Timeline

In each of the aforementioned cases of biofabrication, researchers and designers are working together to figure out ways to implement what are currently handcrafted methods on a larger scale. Once Chieza’s dye, for example, can be reproduced on an industrial scale, the technology can begin to take over traditional dye methods. Chieza is currently working with Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based biotechnology startup, to scale biology interfaces with her artisanal methods.

Impact

The farming of livestock for leather not only raises ethical issues, it also contributes to deforestation and the emission of greenhouse gasses. The process that turns cowhides into usable leather uses a number of chemicals that can be harmful to the environment. Plastic substitutes for leather are created using fossil fuels and are not biodegradable. Alternately, substitute leather that has been grown from fungus is biodegradable, releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and doesn’t need to be treated by nearly as many chemicals as traditional leather.

Traditional fabric dyes generate chemical runoff and contribute to incredible amounts of water waste. According to Chieza, “most of the ecological harm caused by textile processing occurs at the finishing and the dyeing stage.” Dying fabric by using color-rich bacteria cuts down on water waste and doesn’t necessitate the use of any chemicals whatsoever.

These are just two of the many innovative and wildly creative ways that biofabrication is working to decrease unnecessary waste and pollution within the fashion industry. 

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To learn more about climate change and what you can do individually to mitigate its effect on our planet, check out Novel Hand’s Environment & Sustainability Archive, which includes articles, books, podcasts, movies and documentaries, websites, and other resources to help you explore how you can turn your activism into impact.