Clean Air and Economic Progress: A Profitable Replacement for Petroleum—Graciela Chichilnisky—Global Thermostat

Richard Jacobs: Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius podcast. I have Graciela Chichilnisky. She is the CEO and co-founder of Global Thermostat and she is a professor of economics and statistics at Columbia University. So, welcome Graciela, how are you doing?

Graciela Chichilnisky: Hello.   

Richard Jacobs: So, if you would tell me about your work and what’s the premise of Global Thermostat?  

Graciela Chichilnisky: The premise of Global Thermostat is that the world needs to remove a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere and it is possible to change the economy so that we can do it while creating economic development and jobs. So that is not just a premise but it’s also the mission of Global Thermostat. 

Richard Jacobs: So, is it commonly thought that in order to control our climate and to prevent it from warming, that we have to sacrifice economic activities? 

Graciela Chichilnisky: Yes, in fact, there is a law that was passed in 1997 in Congress in the United States saying that there will be no limitations on emissions in the United States if it has a negative impact on the economy and it was assumed that it does and therefore due to that Byrd Hagel Law that I just mentioned, the United States never participated in the limitations of emissions which had dire consequences for everyone. If you wish, Global Thermostat is standing Byrd Hagel on its head because it’s saying you can actually limit emissions, you can actually decrease the CO2 in the atmosphere and clean the atmosphere while helping the economy and the creation of jobs. So, it really is a real reversal of the Byrd Hagel Law. 

Richard Jacobs: Was it a law or was it just like a postulate? Why would they say you can’t improve the climate without affecting the economy negatively?  

Graciela Chichilnisky: Yeah, it was a law. There was the same date, 1997 that the Kyoto Protocol was passed in Kyoto and the carbon market was created on the basis of limiting emissions and letting nations pay when they went above this limit and receive when they were below the limit. So, that carbon market which in fact, I wrote into the Kyoto Protocol was accepted by 165 nations and it became the first law based on a new market, international law in 2005 and it was very successful. Also, in the year 2020, the nations that ratified that law and followed it decreased their emissions by 20% in the 15 years since 2005. So, they are now emitting 20% less than what they were emitting in 2005 and that includes all of the European Union. However, nations that didn’t use the carbon market which was so successful and including the United States, they actually increased radically their emissions. 

So, you could say that the Byrd Hagel Law was the dividing line between success and failure in removing the catastrophic risk of climate change. 

Richard Jacobs: So, was it like a cap on trade type of law? Did they just set a fixed quota per country on carbon emissions or what was it like?  

Graciela Chichilnisky: No, in the year 1997, for the first time in the history of humankind, the carbon market which you call cap on trade was created. It didn’t exist before then and it was created in the convention of parties of the United Nations in November 1997. So, it didn’t exist until then. In fact, I wrote it, In fact, I designed it and wrote it into the Kyoto Protocol. But the law was in US Congress had a blanket statement, no emission limits if they hurt the economy. There was an assumption that they would hurt the economy and even until now, how many percent of the people you speak with, they believe that limiting emissions is going to be punishing for the economy. What I’m here to say is that Global Thermostat is based on the premise and the mission of exactly the opposite; namely, economic progress that limits emissions and cleans the atmosphere, therefore, as I said, setting the Byrd Hagel Law on its head. 

Richard Jacobs: So, the provisions were that if a country felt that reducing emissions would hinder their economy then they wouldn’t reduce them at all. Is that what it meant? 

Graciela Chichilnisky:  That’s what the law said but the premise that you just described was universally accepted then and it’s universally accepted today, more or less. Everybody believes that limiting emissions hurts the economy. In fact, it can be made to do exactly the opposite. Limiting emissions and in fact, reducing CO2 from the atmosphere altogether can help the economy and it can mean economic progress and more jobs. Am I being clear? 

Richard Jacobs: Well, what I don’t understand is, in your example earlier, you said that there were certain countries that did really well, they reduced their emissions by at least 20% and they didn’t suffer economic loss. So, what did they do? Did they just simply reduce their emissions? Did they replace them with renewables? How did they do it that they didn’t suffer any economic loss? 

Graciela Chichilnisky: All of the above. There were critical changes in the use of energy and in some cases, it might have hurt their economy a bit but not much. So, the discovery that it is possible to prevent destructive climate change without hurting the economy is real and it was demonstrated by the Kyoto Protocol. But in the year 1997, the law that I mentioned Byrd Hagel that was passed unanimously in Congress both in house and in the senate, was based on the assumption that the opposite was true and even if you talk with anybody in the street today, or in the US government, they will tell you that limiting emissions and the Kyoto Protocol and carbon markets hurt the economy and they are wrong. They are wrong.   

Richard Jacobs: Okay, I understand. So what kind of learnings did we get from the nations that prospered under the cap on trade. What did they do that had the biggest beneficial effect? Was it just that there had to be an effect from additional jobs plus renewables plus a whole bunch of other factors or were there a few factors that really made the biggest difference?   

Graciela Chichilnisky: Countries that adopted the carbon market did not have the technology to remove CO2 from the air and sell it at a profit. So, they could be more or less equal or a little bit worse than before but not much. What Global Thermostat did, which was my design is adopt the mission of creating and implementing commercial technology that removes CO2 from the air in a profitable way. So, if CO2 is removed from the air and it is sold in a trillion-dollar market according to vacancy for this and that market allows to sell the CO2 you take from the air and make a profit. So, now you can actually clean the atmosphere and make money. Just not suffer a loss, you can actually make money out of the process. Examples are yeah, that’s our technology. The technology removes CO2 from the air very inexpensively and the carbon market this time is not necessary for the technology to do that. 

The technology really mines the atmosphere, removes the CO2 from the atmosphere, and uses that CO2 on earth, in the surface of the earth and stabilizes it on earth for commercial purposes such as carbonated beverages like Coca Cola, desalinating water from the ocean like Aqua and Saudi Aramco do. The production of synthetic fuels like synthetic gasoline made from CO2 and from hydrogen which is exactly molecule to molecule identical to gasoline but doesn’t make CO2.  I mentioned these 3 examples because Global Thermostat is making CO2 and selling it for carbonated beverages, for desalinated water, and for clean gasoline already with the companies I already mentioned. So, this is possible and happening. We can actually use the CO2 that we remove from the air in a way that is very similar to the one we use for removing petroleum from under the earth and using it for economic purposes. CO2 replaces petroleum. 

So, CO2 is a very valuable gas that can replace petroleum to produce a lot of goods and services including clean polymers, including bio-fertilizers, including beverages and food, and including, as I said before, desalinated water and synthetic fuels. That is exactly what Global Thermostat does. 

Richard Jacobs: So, is this technology carbon neutral because the carbon dioxide is going to be used and released again later or is it actually carbon negative? 

Graciela Chichilnisky: The technology is carbon negative. The carbon may not be released later, may never be released. For example, let’s say that you produce polymers. These are biodegradable polymers that are biodegradable plastic from CO2. For example, you use it in IKEA furniture. That IKEA furniture is made of air, is made of CO2 from the air and it never goes back to the atmosphere again, it just stays here. So, it’s not carbon neutral, it’s carbon negative; a term that I created initially, years ago, and furthermore I trademarked carbon negative. So, carbon-negative technologies; that’s what we need to do now. Carbon negative technologies, yeah. 

Richard Jacobs: So, what can you say about carbon sequestration or removal from the atmosphere. I know some of it is probably proprietary but do you have to put it on a point source of carbon dioxide emission or do you just have it sit anywhere because I know there is enough carbon in the air or carbon dioxide in the air to make it worthwhile unless it’s near emission of concentrated CO2? 

Graciela Chichilnisky: I would think, normally we can do both. We can remove CO2 from a chimney emission in a factory so I mean actual emission or we can remove the CO2 directly from pure air from the atmosphere. We don’t need a point source and because CO2 is distributed uniformly around the surface or in the atmosphere of the planet then you can actually produce CO2 and remove it from the atmosphere directly anywhere. The process is called direct air capture. It is considered to be the only way that we are ever going to overcome catastrophic climate change according to the United Nations, according to the National Academy for Sciences, and even according to other sources in US security or even the pentagon. 

Direct Air Capture means we clean the air of CO2 and we can do it anywhere because CO2 is distributed uniformly in the atmosphere, it is right now the same concentration in New York as it is in Beijing or Madrid. 

Richard Jacobs: So, what’s the ideal place for these direct air capture machines to be? I would think that marrying them to the point source would be the juiciest place for them to mine the carbon dioxide. Where is it in a very rural area where there is not much going on or what’s ideal?

Graciela Chichilnisky: Actually what this idea is to take it directly from the air because if you take it from a point source, then the best you can do, let’s say, from a chimney is to make the chimney carbon-neutral, right so that it doesn’t make an emission but if you take it from the air, directly from the air, then you can remove the CO2 that is already there and therefore, you have a carbo-negative technology. You can reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere and right now because we emit so much CO2, we delayed so long in adopting the carbon market or the Kyoto Protocol, etc., right now, the only way to prevent catastrophic climate change is by removing massive amounts of CO2 directly from the air. It does not suffice to remove it from a point source because those can only be at best carbo-neutral. We need to be very carbo-negative. We need to remove a lot of CO2 that is already there. Am I being clear?

Richard Jacobs: So, is there an ideal place to place these carbon capture machines like, is it better to have a whole cluster of them in one spot or disperse them uniformly around the world? What’s the ideal? 

Graciela Chichilnisky: Currently we are working with large companies such as Exxon Mobil and with Saudi Aramco and several others on finding out what is the best way to scale up. In other words, to remove 40 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere which is what the United Nations and the US National Academy of Sciences compute that is needed to be removed every year in order to prevent catastrophic climate change. So, we are trying to discover is it better to do in many small plants like we do with windmills that produce electricity in many small units or shall we have a huge facility or a combination of both. We don’t know yet but for example, with Exxon Mobil, we are in the process of a project in which we have signed many agreements and projects to remove one gigaton of CO2, and after we have done that and that’s not tomorrow morning; I will let you know and we can answer the question in more detail. At present, we can build large facilities and many small facilities. Our technology is very modular in both. 

Richard Jacobs: Well, in the local area around the carbon capture device, you would create a deficit of CO2, so what would that do to local plants? What if they are in an environment where there is a deficit of CO2? Will it retard their growth? Could that damage crops? Could that lead to a higher percentage of oxygen and make things more flammable or is it not that drastic?

Graciela Chichilnisky: I guess I was not clear. I am going to say it now for the third time. CO2 distributes very uniformly on the entire atmosphere of the planet. It is the same concentration in New York, in Beijing or in Madrid or in the South Pole or the North Pole, for that matter and it mixes very thoroughly and it distributes uniformly very quickly. So, there is never a deficit of CO2. The CO2 distributes uniformly. If I remove the CO2 from the atmosphere above my building. Once I remove the CO2, the rest of the atmosphere, by nature, for physical reasons obligingly brings a lot of CO2 from the rest of the atmosphere and equates the CO2 concentration above my building and everywhere else very quickly. Am I clear? 

Richard Jacobs: yeah, I guess it’s like spitting in the ocean. It’s such a vast atmosphere around us at all times that any CO2 you pull out of it would immediately be replaced by the surrounding CO2. 

Graciela Chichilnisky: Yeah, because of the fact that CO2 concentration is uniform which is a peculiarity of the gas. For example, Sulphur dioxide doesn’t have that property, for example, nitrogen does not have that property. It’s a property unique to CO2 and if you look at other markets, like the SO2 market, Sulphur dioxide, in the Chicago Board of Trade, which was very successful in controlling and eliminating acid rain, they are dealing with a gas that’s not mixed thoroughly, equally everywhere, it is not. So, if I clean the SO2 from the air in New York City, Chicago can be very polluted but that is not the case with CO2.  If I clean it from New York, I’m cleaning it from Chicago at the same time. It equates, the CO2 concentration equates very quickly. It occurs with CO2, it does not occur with SO2, Nitrogen, and other gases. 

This is a peculiarity of CO2 which is actually very valuable because it means that nature is continuously moving CO2 in a way that favors the removal of CO2 because it brings it back to the areas where there is a deficit and you don’t have to do anything or pay for it. It’s a physics property on the atmosphere of the planet and the gases there too. So that is what’s important to know. It’s almost magical but that’s true, that’s what’s happening. 

Richard Jacobs: Okay, very good. What’s the next level of iteration with your carbon capture equipment? What do you want to be able to do that you can’t do just yet or is it good enough that you want to expand in scale?

Graciela Chichilnisky: No, we are not satisfied. We need to do more. At present, we have built 3 plants and the third one, which is commercial is underway to be used by the Coca-Cola company for its bottlers. They have 950 bottles, so they need a lot of those and that’s great and the next step is to produce thousands or tens of thousands of them with large engineering firms, for example, Siemens. So, we are going to be doing that next soon. However, as I said before, this takes care of millions of tons of CO2 but we need to take care of billions. A billion tons of CO2 is called a gigaton. So, the next step and that’s an agreement that we have already signed last year and we are already executing on, we are on the seventh type of that agreement now with Exxon Mobil is to remove a gigaton of CO2. 

That’s not going to happen, as I said, tomorrow morning but we are in the process of increasing from several thousand to several million tons and eventually, a billion tons of CO2 which is what the National Academy of Sciences and with the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change both say must be done and is the only way that we can stop catastrophic climate change now. It is the only way. Planting trees is not fast enough. Nothing is fast enough except removing CO2 from the atmosphere, exactly as I am describing here, must be done. It is the only way to prevent catastrophic climate change. So, what I am telling you is actually quite impressive because it means that a lot of things are needed, a lot of things are useful and certainly planting trees is extremely important for biodiversity and cleaning the ocean is very important for the origin of life in the planet, etc. 

However, the only way we are going to stop catastrophic climate change which is expected this century is by massive removal of CO2, towards the end of the century, it is going to have to be massive. How massive? As I said, it’s going to be in the tens of billions of tons of CO2 that must be removed directly from the air every year. 

Richard Jacobs: So, an estimate would be like 40 gigatons a year removal would keep us at a comfortable level, or would that actually make us go back where it’s in a good way? In terms of CO2, would it reduce CO2 around the world to the point where our climate would improve? 

Graciela Chichilnisky: Yes, 40 gigatons is believed to keep us at the level where we are now or a little bit below that and we are above 400 parts per million and 425 parts per million which are considered to be very soon catastrophic. We are already in that region. So, yes, we need to do that every year to stay just below where we are now. 

Richard Jacobs: Is there enough of a market for the gigatons of carbon or CO2 that would be sequestered? Yeah, you said it can go into drinks, sodas, and a bunch of other places but is there enough of a market for that much CO2? 

Graciela Chichilnisky:  I did not get to give you the complete list and the complete list includes materials that I didn’t mention and that we, at Global Thermostat are not yet selling. I did mention polymer but I didn’t mention cement or something called aggregate which is like cement with stone in it which is the biggest building material used on the planet right now to build roads and buildings etc. Nor did I mention because I didn’t mention everything, carbon fiber which can replace all the metals, for example, aluminum and steel. So, carbon fiber can be made with CO2. Polymers, biodegradable polymers are made of CO2 and aggregate can also be made with CO2 and the market for aggregate is large enough that right now and particularly, during this coming decade where we are, the decade started 2020 can absorb all the CO2 that is needed and bring it down through the air in the atmosphere and solidify so that it is stable on the earth. So, for example, as I said, aggregates and other materials including carbon fibers which are incredibly important in this century. 

You probably know that all boats are made with carbon fiber. They don’t use any metals and there are many automobiles that are made with carbon fiber. Carbon fiber can replace the metals and just not the market for steel, which is over a trillion dollars a year can be totally replaced from the CO2 that we remove from the air by carbon fiber and I am just giving you, perhaps more examples than you want. 

Richard Jacobs: No, that’s great. So, there are plenty of uses for all the CO2 you can ever capture, it sounds like. So, it’s great. 

Graciela Chichilnisky: There is, maybe not this morning but certainly in the course of this decade, yes. However, we have to deliberately plan the economy to be able to make the economy circular so that we need to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere, bring it down, stabilize it on earth in a way that it doesn’t go back up and creates all the materials and chemicals that we need which are a lot for our growing economy and population. Actually, you can produce proteins from CO2, you can produce meat which is purely based on CO2, I mean it’s a meat stuff 

Richard Jacobs: That’s amazing. 

Graciela Chichilnisky: Yes, so essentially we could take more CO2 from the air and feed the population of the world and also provide water because CO2 is needed for the desalination of water. So, everything I am telling you seems a little bit like science fiction but it’s all real and we better get going and do it because that’s what we need to do. So, you see I have my job cut out for me and our company’s mission and I have to say is incredibly busy to go after that objective that I mentioned, that mission of removing CO2 and producing the CO2 commercially profitably on earth, stabilizing it so it essentially reverses climate change. That is the mission of our company and we are getting there. This year, I mentioned some of our clients which are from the best branch in the world and this year we fell $25 million in revenues and for a small company like ours, that’s very important and we haven’t really started in this game yet. 

So, we expect there will be a lot of work, continue to be a lot of work but we are very encouraged that we are doing something without which human beings probably cannot survive. In other words, the general fear is that climate change is actually the worst existential risk that human beings face now and it exceeds atomic warfare. So, we better do something with that and do it very soon and if what you do is also helpful to the economy and food and water and materials and helps the development of the economy, well then that’s what we should be doing and that’s what I am doing. Even though there are other things I would like to do in my research as a mathematician and an economist and I’m doing it but I feel that this is a number one mission and in fact, a moral obligation. 

Richard Jacobs: Okay, well very good. Graciela, what’s the best way for people to learn more about your work in Global-Thermostat?  

Graciela Chichilnisky: Okay, Global Thermostat has a website. I am told it is a handsome website and I think it is. So, you could go to globalthermostat.com and learn about this and you could also look in, perhaps in Google because we have, what appears to be a significant social media as well as generally speaking, virtual peasants and therefore you can learn a lot by looking at our videos of which we have done many and other people have done it through interviews like the one we are doing, for which we thank you, thank you very much and comments from other people all over the world. We recently got an award from MIT Technology Review that was curated by Bill Gates naming our technology among the Top 10 breakthrough technologies in the world in the year 2019. 

So, it’s recognized that this is a very important technology and that our mission is an important mission. You can read more by looking online but if you have any questions, we’d like to show you our plants, how they work, operating right now, in Silicon Valley or in Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are happy to have visitors and discussions and we have also many private investors that we are very proud of and very grateful for. So contact our firm globalthermostat.com, contact me or anybody else that you have questions for. I think we need to work with everybody. It’s not sufficient to just go in a corner and do it yourself. You have to create a community of people in finding a solution to climate change. 

Richard Jacobs: Well, very good. Graciela, thank you for coming and I appreciate it and it’s amazing to work that you are doing. So, thank you very much.  

Graciela Chichilnisky: Thank you.