Meet the Solutionists transcript and episode notes - season 3, episode 3

Mark Scott 00:01

This podcast is recorded at the University of Sydney's Camperdown campus on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. They've been discovering and sharing knowledge here for 10s of 1000s of years. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Mark Scott 00:32

We've covered some big topics on the Solutions so far, sleep, our water supply, the impacts of extreme heat. But today, we're tackling the big one we must solve, the climate crisis. Scientists around the world agree that if we don't dramatically reduce our carbon emissions, the planet will become uninhabitable. At the University of Sydney, the Net Zero Institute is trying to do exactly that. The Institute brings together top minds from a wide array of fields to work on solutions to the climate crisis. Professor Deanna D’Alessandro is the Net Zero Institute's director and a chemist working on new materials that will help remove existing carbon from the atmosphere. Deanna, this is a big, important mission today. How did you get here? Where did your interest in science begin?

Deanna D'Alessandro 01:29

Well, I'm a far north Queenslander. Most of our lessons at school were based in the environment. We were always out on the Great Barrier Reef or up in the Daintree Rainforest doing experiments. And I think from that, I really had a deep appreciation of the beauty of the world around us, and probably also the need to conserve it. Funnily enough, when I was in the early years of primary school, our community was running a public speaking competition, and I can remember looking around for a topic that year and walking into my school library and seeing a book that had just been released at the time. I'll give away my age, Mark, but this is the mid the mid 80s, and it was called Hothouse Earth, and it was the first time I learned about this thing called the greenhouse effect. Data was starting to show that actually human intervention had been having some effect on what is actually a really thin, protective blanket around us. And so I can remember reading that book and being really taken aback by that. So I gave a talk that year, I think I was about eight years old, on the greenhouse effect.

Mark Scott 02:32

Give us a report card, how are we tracking on our net zero emissions target? People talk a lot about 2050, and the risk if we don't make targets by 2050, tell us how we're doing.

Deanna D'Alessandro 02:45

So there is lots of data being collected on how we are tracking towards our net zero by 2050 target. The data is showing that we probably need to triple the pace at which we are rolling out renewables. We have an 82% renewable electricity target by 2030 that at the moment we are not on track to meet, but lots of incentivisation that we saw in the recent May federal budget to address what we call, I guess, the big levers of this energy transition, and these include the shift to a more sustainable energy and electrification system. The other big levers are around industry, of course, reducing demand first and foremost, then moving to zero emissions, energy and industry before we use, for example, offsets.

Mark Scott 03:30

Targets are often seen as a good thing. You know, as they say, no use aiming at nothing and hitting it. You know, it motivates, it drives, but this target's become a bit of a political tool as well. Deanna: That's right. Mark: So tell us, what do you think's really standing in our way of reaching the targets, and are you worried at the trajectory of the politics around these issues?

Deanna D'Alessandro 03:55

Well politics is important in the sense that I think the tension and the questioning around what is the right approach is critical, you know, that that's super important. If it gets in the way, then that's a problem. And I think many of us feel there has been, to some extent, a getting in the way of the real problem at hand, and the evidence at hand that is suggesting, well, here's a portfolio of approaches we can use, and at the minute, we have a system where one side believes something different to the other. But in reality, there is no silver bullet here, Mark. There is a portfolio of approaches, and really what might help here is actually having a bipartisan or multi-partisan approach as, and I'm not suggesting that our countries are always doing this better than Australia, I very much appreciate our democratic society, but there is bipartisan and multi-partisan support in other countries around the world, and it's very interesting at what is a huge political tension in the United States. But actually predictions are that because the plan has bipartisan support, in fact, despite the outcome of the upcoming election, they may not see too many changes in the core drive, but I think it's really interesting to reflect on the international situation and countries that are, let's be frank, perhaps a bit more ahead of Australia in their journey. I think we should learn those lessons. What has not gone well, what has gone well, and that's actually benefit to us being perhaps a little earlier in our journey and able to learn from those things.

Mark Scott 05:30

So you've got a chance running our brand new Net Zero Institute here at the University of Sydney. Tell us a little bit about it. What's its mission, and why is the time right for this Institute now?

Deanna D'Alessandro 05:40

So the Net Zero Institute is really a coalition of research. This is an alliance of sort, if you like, but an alliance here of experts across all of the disciplines of the University. So we have experts from science, engineering, humanities, social sciences, music, politics, arts, coming together to solve and address some of these big challenges and ultimately accelerate this transformation. I actually have said to many people that in 2051, my goodness, I hope we do not need the Net Zero Institute. We should have solved this problem by then. We know it's not going to be quite as easy as that, but our mission is around accelerating towards this transformation to our net zero targets, and doing so responsibly that I think lies at the center of it.

Mark Scott 06:28

You talk about the challenge of getting to these targets and how we're falling short. If you take, for example, something like solar farms, why will a multidisciplinary approach be better than just scientists working on it the way they traditionally have.

Deanna D'Alessandro 06:44

Well, I think we all wish we could solve a problem alone, but these are, as they say, the big, hairy, audacious problems of the time, and the net zero transformation is just that and more, as you throw in the layers of geopolitical complexity and so forth to this whole transformation. But if you just take the example of solar farms, we know that we have to at least triple the rate at which we are rolling out those solar farms. But it's not quite that simple. Consider supply chain challenges in our world. We experience those significantly during the covid years, and they are now plaguing the net zero challenge as well. There are challenges with communities on the front line who are impacted throughout their lifetimes by these projects in their backyard. There are regulatory challenges, new laws that are needed. None of these are an overnight flick of the switch that we wish they were.

Mark Scott 07:42

And on the solar farm expansion, is it a case that the scientists have done their work? We know what to do, but there's a challenge about how we do it.

Deanna D'Alessandro 07:53

I think it's both. So we already have solutions there. Yes, there are issues with those solutions. For example, we are sourcing from particular geographies in the world, and that brings in a whole range of issues. But coupled with that is, and just look to the recent federal budget and the Future Made in Australia Act and this real drive for our country to reinvigorate its manufacturing sector. We have incredible innovation in the solar area. Consider our wonderful colleague, Professor Anita Ho-Baillie, developing these perovskite solar cells, which are multiple times more efficient than the current technology. So this really comes to well, why the Net Zero Institute at the University of Sydney, and as much as there are off the shelf solutions that, let's face it, we need it right here and now. We do not have time to wait. If we have an 82% renewable electricity target, then we need everything we've got. But as well as that, there are going to be solutions that we need well beyond 2050 and a university is a critical place where that innovation happens. It incubates the solutions of the future that may not be supported in any other way, right here and now.

Mark Scott 09:07

So what have you seen that excites you? Is there an example of an innovation or an experiment or a project you think is showing great potential, and how does all that come together in a multidisciplinary way?

Deanna D'Alessandro 09:19

I think I'd say I'm constantly in awe of what I learn, I think every day of the week, almost, around this University, seeing what's happening across all of our faculties. But a really interesting journey we've been on is actually as part of developing our roadmaps for critical minerals and materials, which is one of the frontier problems for Australia, being an incredibly rich producer of critical minerals and materials. So we have incredible work that actually started in the Engineering Faculty. You might realise that every device that we use contains most of the periodic table. In fact, I mean, a mobile phone contains about two thirds of the periodic table. And realistically, many of those elements are becoming very scarce and very rare, and so it's not going to be enough for us to just dig stuff out of the ground anymore. We have to find more creative and innovative ways to get a hold of all of these incredible materials and elements that we're going to need for the technologies of the future. So one of my colleagues is Professor Alejandro Montoya, is working on recycling of e-waste.

Alejandro Montoya 10:28

All right, so here we are in the laboratory. This is the core of the process where we do the magic and we dissolve the electronic waste into solution. I am Alejandro Montoya, an Associate Professor at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. So I'm very happy to take you to my lab so that you can see what we do. My work focuses on advancing technologies that are crucial to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Specifically, my research targets extracting and processing critical minerals from waste, in particular electronic waste. The generation of waste is a big problem in our society. We tend to have a computer, a laptop, an iPad, an iPhone, that we tend to exchange very often, and we don't think in where we are sending this waste. So in 2020 Australia generated around 531 kilotons of electronic waste. That is about 20 kilogram of electronic waste per person. In the electronic waste, there are critical minerals that are important for the energy transition, these copper, cobalt, nickel, platinum, palladium.

Deanna D'Alessandro 12:12

So if you go into Alejandro’s lab, you can almost imagine it's a pilot scale facility, floor to ceiling, where these experiments are taking place. They're crushing the various e-waste resource and using this approach that they've patented and developed. It's called electrochemistry, and it basically uses electrons that can help you to really selectively separate what is a super complex mixture.

Alejandro Montoya 12:41

At the exit of this unit, what we have is the solution containing the metals that is now dissolved. They have very beautiful colors, from pale green to very dark green or blue, that indicates that there is copper that is being dissolved in the solution. We pass it to another process where we recover the copper, and that copper is pure, it can be sold. In the next 50 years we will need to produce the same amount of copper that we have mined in the last 400 years. So I'm hoping that with my process, we would be able to reduce the amount of metals or materials that are mined from the ground, and at the same time, we could produce the amount of materials that are required for the energy transition.

Deanna D'Alessandro 13:51

Now, there was a big problem, and this actually arose about 12 months ago, when we were starting to formulate a more formal business proposal, actually, for the Net Zero Institute. And Alejandro said to me, how do I make this bankable? Because he can't even get a look in from industry, because they want to dig it out of the ground. That's cheap to do. So how do you make it bankable? So that was actually the start of a discussion with some colleagues at the Business School who are experts in creating business models. And in fact, it turns out there's a whole discipline there who are now working with Alejandra and how you create a business model. But again, it's not quite that simple. So it turns out that we don't actually have regulation in Australia that allows for recycling of particular batteries, particular electronics, for example. So then we developed a relationship with some amazing colleagues and the incredible Professor Penelope Crossley at the Law School. And so now this is actually, you can imagine, it's almost sort of snowballed about 50 colleagues across six faculties of the University. And in about a month's time, we'll present our critical minerals and materials roadmap, that is an expression of just this: how do we solve one of these big, hairy, audacious problems with this multidisciplinary group of people?

Mark Scott 15:16

So you're a chemist and you're really working on carbon capture. So once the carbon is in the atmosphere, you're trying to take it out. Now, I've seen photographs of your work, it looks like you've pitched a whole bunch of tents in the desert to try and do this. Tell us a bit about your work.

Deanna D'Alessandro 15:32

So we create artificial trees, if you like, so our process is called direct air capture. It is a technical process. I'm a materials chemist, and we design materials that selectively separate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. So this is a fully solar powered technology. So if you can imagine a two person tent, then those solar panels that form the, if you like, the struts of that tent are really what powers the whole process, and then underneath, sheathed under that tent like structure, if you like, is all of the action where the chemistry happens. And so with that, we are, if you like, vacuuming the atmosphere. So we use fans, in fact, they're computer fans to draw the air in, our materials very selectively separate that CO2, and then the extracted CO2 is then exhausted. And then we can either sequester that CO2 and store it somewhere, you can make building materials out of it, you can use it to make sustainable aviation fuels, you can use it to grow algae.

Mark Scott 16:40

And what do you need to be able to scale this initiative?

Deanna D'Alessandro 16:42

So the scaling is the challenge. The volume of air that we need to process is enormous. It's say, a 100th or a 1,000th of the concentration, say, of what is emitted from a cement factory or an aluminum smelter or a coal fired power station. So that means that we have to scale the technology. It means that there's a lot of investment that's needed, and for a nascent industry like direct air capture, the way that this is approached internationally is actually through consortia and alliances. So we've seen some of the world's biggest companies, like Microsoft, Google, come together as part of alliances. An example is the Frontier Alliance, which is now a multi-billion dollar global fund that is actually helping to scale these technologies that otherwise would require many, many decades to be able to scale. But it has worked before, and solar is a good example of that.

Mark Scott 17:38

Can the hype or the marketing around new technology drive people to make decisions that really aren't in the environment's best interests? I've heard people say that the most environmentally efficient car you can drive is the is the car you're driving now, because the savings in carbon consumption in a new car is nothing like the carbon consumption in actually building the new car.

Deanna D'Alessandro 18:00

I agree, and some of this is not necessarily anything other than helping with communication and helping people to better understand the options that they have, and helping them to see that there are options that it's not all about, for example, buying an electric vehicle, that actually there are many other things they can do, including behavior change. For example, we have researchers working in our transportation theme of the Net Zero Institute that are actually working on behavior change. They're psychologists, and so it's not just about there being one silver bullet or one ultimate answer. It is about each and every one of us, including our corporations and our governments, figuring out what is the plan, what is the portfolio of approaches that are relevant to their particular context?

Mark Scott 18:49

Let's talk a little bit about the role of business in industry. I mean, the Net Zero Institute works closely with businesses and industries, but some of these are also infamous polluters, how do we feel about working with them, and why do they need to be in the picture of the institute?

Deanna D'Alessandro 19:06

For us, we look very carefully at the transition plans of companies. Obviously, greenwashing is a legislative offense, so we don't associate with companies that clearly are not being truthful about the work that we're doing, but we acknowledge that we're on a journey. Nobody is perfect, including ourselves. We all use unsustainable resources most days of our lives. It's actually difficult not to but we recognise people are on a journey, including some of these big companies. So that we're at the Net Zero Institute, we're working with a number of sectors. Just to give a couple of examples, the mining sector, we have scientists, engineers working with many of these companies in many different ways. And again, as much as these companies have been a part of the problem, I'd also argue they are big levers to pull, and they are very much a part of the solution as well. Another good example is the aviation sector, which contributes an enormous amount of greenhouse gases here in Australia. We’re a large country, many of us use air travel extensively to get around, but it's a real, a real challenge, and we've just seen Air New Zealand, as of two weeks ago, come out and state openly that they will not reach their net zero by 2030 target. So we are already seeing companies who are struggling. So here, for example, at the Net Zero Institute, we're working on ways to develop sustainable aviation fuels. Consider our great colleague, Professor PJ Cullen, developing a new mechanistic process by which you can very energy efficiently produce that jet fuel, that e-kerosene, using much more sustainable processes than are traditionally used. So we very much see it as we are here in partnership with these industries, as much as these industries are part of the problem. Some are early on, some are mid stage. Some are developing really well, and are great exemplars of things being done terrifically. But we're there for the journey, and if we're not, then that's an issue in its own right, because of this incredible 80,000 strong community, of which many are our students who were here to educate and help them develop as critical thinkers. If we're not there working in hand in hand, in partnership with companies who need assistance, need creative solutions, then I'd also argue we're not doing part of our job as educators and as foremost researchers.

Mark Scott 21:44

So do you think we'll reach a stage where everyone recognises what we have to do and the debate will be around how to do it, or do you think there'll still be people out there who basically just do not accept the evidence and do not accept the voice of experts.

Deanna D'Alessandro 22:01

I think the why is increasingly clear. Climate denial is now. The evidence has overwhelmingly demonstrated the problem. The data is showing it, and the islands are going underwater and the ice caps are melting. So I looked to the evidence, as I did all of those decades ago when I first learned about the greenhouse effect and the fact that we were over exploiting the planet. Yes, I think the challenge is in the how. And the ultimate and complex challenge is that the how is not just there's a solution that you can buy off the shelf to do that. It's much more complex than that. And this is really the reason why having a cross-sector and multidisciplinary approach is so important, because no one person can solve this alone.

Mark Scott 22:47

So if we're listening to this, you know, what does it mean for us? What's the individual's role, and what do we need to take away from this discussion?

Deanna D'Alessandro 22:55

Hope, the hope that we are on a journey we are not going to flick a switch overnight. There is no silver bullet here, but there is a lot of good work being done that is taking us forward on that journey. It's going to take a lot to get there, and we all have to be at the table.

Mark Scott 23:22

I'm Mark Scott, Vice Chancellor of the University of Sydney, and Deanna D'Alessandro is Director of the Net Zero Institute here at the University. You also heard from Alejandro Montoya, the Director of Environmental Engineering from our School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. If you want to hear more about the mission to combat climate change, you'll enjoy my discussion with Professor Stuart Kahn about the importance of getting over the yuck factor when drinking recycled water.

Stuart Khan 23:52

All water is recycled. The water that we're drinking now has quite likely been drunk by dinosaurs in the past, and we're drinking cups of purified dinosaur pee right now. Part of the barrier, I think, is not being able to get past the idea that technology can actually solve this, and that we can very competently and very confidently produce water that is very safe to drink and we have a very good understanding of what's in that water.

Mark Scott 24:19

The Solutionist is a podcast from the University of Sydney, produced by Deadset Studios. This episode was recorded at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences media room and our thanks to the technical staff here.

Episode notes

Audio transcript

Production credits and acknowledgement

Net Zero Institute

The Solutionists, with Mark Scott

Net Zero check-up – Will Australia make it?

Episode notes

Audio transcript

Production credits and acknowledgement

Net Zero Institute

Listen now