Israel bets on startups to fight the climate crisis – 06/13/2023 – Environment

Israel’s main research center will dedicate much of its efforts over the next ten years to developing new technologies that can be applied quickly to address the climate crisis. The bet of the Weizmann Institute of Sciences, whose researchers have already won six Nobel Prizes to date, is to transfer their discoveries to startups that manage to turn them into products right away.

One of the leaders of the initiative is biophysicist Ron Milo, director of the newly created IES (Institute for Environmental Sustainability) at Weizmann.

On a recent visit to Brazil, Milo told Sheet that he sees no contradiction between the institute’s proposal and the idea that technologies to effectively face the climate emergency and other environmental problems already exist, but are not applied on the necessary scale for political and economic reasons.

“I would say that, in this discussion, we should not fall into the trap of thinking only in terms of black and white, of choosing one thing or another. It is true that we have many paths to solutions that require more political will. Others require behavioral changes and others, ultimately, just require wider adoption and acceptance,” he muses.

“But it’s also true that better solutions, based on breakthrough discoveries, will help when it comes to economic decisions and aligning the interests of everyone involved. So we need both.”

The plan is for IES to act in basic research and technological innovation on seven fronts: renewable energy, food security, green materials, global climate change, environment and health, marine research and biodiversity.

Milo has a foot in more than one of these canoes, so to speak. He and his collaborators were responsible for demonstrating, for example, that the mass of materials artificially produced by humanity throughout its history already exceeded the mass of all living beings on Earth (including human beings, their crops and their domestic animals). .

At the same time, the team led by him has been investigating fundamental aspects of carbon metabolism in plant cells.

Put that way, it doesn’t sound very exciting, but the way that plant organisms handle carbon is the cornerstone of photosynthesis—the process on which nearly all living things on Earth depend, directly or indirectly, for energy and building. their bodies.

A better understanding of photosynthesis could be the key to creating more productive crops and plants capable of taking up more CO2._{two(carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, thus minimizing global warming caused by the gas.}

“One of the things that intrigues us is to know what are the limits of primary productivity [a capacidade de produzir biomassa pela fotossíntese] of plants,” he says.

“It seems that, from what our analyzes and those of other groups around the world indicate, we have not yet reached that threshold. There are several types of efforts on the possibility of storing more carbon in the roots of plants as they grow, for example.”

Another approach is the detailed study of the enzyme (molecule accelerating biochemical reactions) designated by the acronym Rubisco. “It’s like a molecular machine that’s at the heart of the photosynthetic processes that make our food, and we’re trying to understand its properties and how quickly it could work.”

According to him, there is no reason to restrict this type of approach to dry land. For Milo, studies on food of microbial origin, produced from aquatic bacteria that carry out photosynthesis, can also be promising.

“Some estimates show that the resources needed in terms of water and other inputs could be much less than what we spend on conventional crops. I think it is our responsibility not to overlook this potential.”

Incidentally, among the technologies against the environmental crisis that the IES director sees as closer to gaining commercial scale soon is the production of alternative sources of protein capable of reaching larger audiences —a key point, since livestock is a major sources of greenhouse gas production, in addition to encouraging deforestation.

“It will be a combination of science, technology and ways to achieve greater acceptance by the public”, he ponders.

Milo also sees important advances in technologies that allow the storage of energy derived from renewable sources and, just as crucial, in techniques that will allow recycling the components of batteries, power cells and other electronic devices that will be key to the energy transition.

Only then will it be possible to minimize the environmental impacts of using these innovative technologies on a much broader scale than the current one.

For the Weizmann researcher, the seriousness of the current climate emergency means that no type of approach should be completely discarded. This even applies to the so-called geoengineering, in which the idea would be to use technological means to try to reduce the temperature of the planet.

The risks of this strategy are linked to a high probability of unintended effects, which could change, for example, the rainfall pattern in different regions of the globe.

“Unfortunately, at the rate things are going, we may be desperate to fill solutions. So I think it’s important to do basic research on what this kind of approach would entail well in advance. It would help us clearly understand as much the dangers and the potential of something like this soon, before we need to make a decision about it”, he argues.

“Deciding that we’re just not going to think about it could end up creating an even bigger problem.”

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}