Jennifer Holmgren, PhD

Chief Executive Officer
LanzaTech

Join us via Zoom Wednesday, October 18 at 9:00 am.

Innovating for a CarbonSmart Future

If we are to achieve climate goals, we need a systems-level view and solutions that can draw on multiple sources of waste carbon.

Advances in technology and a global momentum to avert the deepening climate crisis have brought us to the cusp of a new industrial era in which recycled carbon will be the feedstock to produce the climate-safe materials and fuels that are today made from oil.

Reaching the global net-zero carbon goals set by recent international agreements requires an all-encompassing approach that includes utilization of industrial waste carbon gas and recycling of solid waste carbon. Commercialized gas fermentation technology is an example of a novel process converting waste carbon emitted from an industrial process (steel production) into a platform molecule (ethanol). This platform ethanol can then be upgraded into consumer products (jet fuel, clothing, plastic bottles, etc.). Once these consumer products have reached the end of their lifetimes and become municipal solid waste (MSW), they can be recycled via gasification/fermentation into new consumer products, completing the carbon circle.

The breadth of gaseous (steel mill, etc.) and solid (MSW, biomass, etc.) carbon sources used to feed carbon recycling processes will be discussed, highlighting the positive impact such an approach can have on land and water use.
A transition from oil refining to “carbon refining” enables us to turn the threat of the climate crisis into an opportunity for industrial rebirth, distributed sustainable production, domestic supply chain security, and economic development in both rural and underrepresented industrial zones.

A carbon refining strategy offers a pathway to re-invigorate these domestic communities with a diversity of green manufacturing jobs that leverage the latest technologies from the energy, chemical and biotech industries.
The only way we will meet our goals, however, is through new approaches to financing and deployment to cross the so-called Valley of Death. We must equally start to embrace distributed systems of production.

This presentation will address the scaling up of carbon recycling technology and what it takes to cross the Valley of Death as an innovator, including how innovations in financing can help turn “impossible” ideas into reality!