Jay Trang

Day 15 Sustainable Innovations | Curious Case of Waste-to-Energy:
I want to start another discussion on another technology I am quite puzzled about - trash-to-energy plants. Sure, incineration of any kind is not ideal, however these plants are far less polluting than landfills, especially when considering methane emissions. Moreover, it takes up less land and it provides a stable power source. And in Europe, these plants are quite common. But in the U.S., not only are they not common, they are actually closing down more of these plants. Why is that? And do we want to open more of these plants? Leave a comment down below.

Sustainable Innovations Day 14 | Battery Recycling:
One area of technology that's emerging yet still needs more support and progress on is battery recycling, particularly for lithium-ion batteries. There are a few forms, but the one I want to focus on here is through the hydrometallurgical, a.k.a. wet chemical, process. Long story short, after crushing batteries into a fine form called black mass, the metal content - lithium, cobalt, etc. - can be recovered through mixing it with liquids (some of which are patented). Many startups are getting support for opening more of these recycling facilities to scale, with some able to receive funding from federal governments, as well as from public and private investments.

Sustainable Innovations Day 13 | Solid Oxide Fuel Cells:
In the AI post I put a few days ago, I mentioned the potential problem of data centers heightening up energy usage to train more AI models. A solution would be to have an on-site renewable energy source to help power the data centers, thus needing to tap less into fossil fuels by way of not using a diesel generator or connecting to a coal-powered plant. Solid oxide fuel cells are starting to emerge as such a solution. One company in particular I have been seeing scaling up their fuel cell operations is Bloom Energy. Unlike with traditional PEM fuel cells, they do not need platinum in their cells. Moreover, they can utilize either natural gas or hydrogen as a fuel source, thereby not needing to wait on hydrogen infrastructure to be built nearby.

Interesting story regarding Bloom Energy; Al Gore got into trouble due to his support with them. One of the investment firms Al Gore serves as a partner in has stake in Bloom Energy. He then proposed using Bloom Energy fuel cells to power Apple's data centers whilst he was serving as a Director of Apple, putting him into trouble for conflict of interest. Rather bold move into trying to deploy renewable energy to scale if you ask me. ;)

Day 12 of Sustainable Innovations:
I initially thought about writing on how PET from water bottles have been repurposed into all sorts of other products like socks and shoelaces. Instead, I want to highlight a non-profit that has been way more ambitious with tackling the plastic pollution problem. I could even make this series of Sustainable Innovations on the actions they have taken because MY GOODNESS I've never seen another organization use almost every trick in the book to improve sustainability! I am talking about the Ocean Cleanup.

Some people may recognize them from the #TeamSeas campaign on YouTube, where several YouTube influencers helped to raise funds to get rid of 30,000,000 pounds of plastic from the ocean, with every $1 removing 1 pound. The Ocean Cleanup does this by deploying "Interceptors" at river streams and basins. The most advanced of these Interceptors have arms that span across a river to catch trash as it's caught by the arms. Conveyors on these arms then funnel the trash into 4 large garbage cans in the middle of the Interceptor ship. Atop the ship are solar panels that run the whole system autonomously. Simpler versions of these Interceptors consist of just wide nets that catches the trash during a storm long enough for local waste management to then collect them soon after. There are even some Interceptors sitting on top of the Pacific Garbage Patch. To date, there are 21 of these Interceptors.

What's even more impressive about The Ocean Cleanup is how much open science they are using to keep the public up-to-date on plastic pollution. Recently, I put a post asking how AI can improve sustainability. They just published a video with their own answer. TL;DW they have cameras that can detect plastic aboard a large array of ships and planes surveying the ocean. They have published this data to the UN's Ocean Decade. They also have an app that allows anyone to photograph plastic pollution in their local areas, allowing anyone to become a citizen scientist with The Ocean Cleanup.

I could go on with how much effort The Ocean Cleanup is doing, but the point is, they really are doing everything they can to tackle plastic pollution. BTW, that #TeamSeas campaign concluded a few months ago, exceeding their goal and reaching over $34 million raised (and even more plastic collected. Keep in mind, as part of some of the filming, some YouTubers also gathered cleanup groups too.)

Day 11 of Sustainable Innovations | Vertical / Hydroponic Farms:
Agriculture is notorious for needing a lot of water, land, and energy to maintain. Vertical farms can address at least 2 of these concerns - water and land use. As the name suggests, there are ways to grow leafy greens and potentially other crops and fruits vertically rather than horizontally. In fact, some hydroponic farming projects are built in cities, showing just how little land is needed to set up these projects. Since hydroponic farms recirculate most of their own water, they can really help conserve water as well. Unfortunately, energy usage is still rather high as these farms need many systems to run continuously for climate control, lighting, and other sensors. Hopefully, as renewable energy and electronics become more affordable (THANK GOODNESS there's an exemption for tariffs on most of these) and more attention and demand is brought to hydroponic farms, we'll begin to see more of farms pop up!

Day 10 of Sustainable Innovations | RNG Digesters:
For those who just can't get out of the habit of eating beef, there is some good news here! There is a way to capture the methane emitting from cow manure through what are called anaerobic digesters. These digesters then feed into extra processing as the manure gas itself is not pure methane. Once the processing separates other gases and gets a methane content of 95+%, we have biogas that can be distributed into natural gas pipelines. There's a similar process that sits on top of landfills as methane leaks from landfills too. Do keep in mind though, not every farm and landfill has one, so don't feel too guiltless about eating beef and throwing a lot of trash. :^)

Day 9 of Sustainable Innovations | Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GGP):
Before I explain what it is, for the finance people here, do me a favor and look at a company's sustainability report. Some may report their emissions coming from "Scope 1, 2, and 3" emissions. THAT is the Greenhouse Gas Protocol put into action. It's a carbon accounting guideline that companies use to report how much emissions they are emitting at different levels of involvement. Emissions that come directly from their operations from activity such as emissions from a farm get reported into Scope 1. In Scope 2, emissions that comes from energy usage usually comes up. Finally in Scope 3, there are emissions from activities like traveling in an airplane.
For those that have done the carbon footprint activity, there's definitely a shock that can come up from realizing some decisions we make that don't look dirty actually has a large carbon footprint, such as buying new clothes. Companies are starting to recognize this and many of the responsible ones are willing to be transparent in their reporting through standards such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Some have even used these figures to challenge themselves to mitigate emissions at all three levels (Trane Technologies for example).

Today, I decided to check in with a former office staff worker in a student organization I am involved with. She is now working in a Nonprofit hub called OneOC. I found out I could volunteer for several Earth Day events and just signed up for a beach cleaning and a learning event for a local bird species!

Day 8 of Sustainable Innovations (One week down, woot woooot!):
For today's post, I am leaving it open for everyone here to discuss AI's role in sustainability. In the replies, please talk about how AI can help or hurt sustainability efforts.

For my two cents about it, AI isn't a perfect solution, but it's nevertheless an empowering tool. There is the issue of what will power the data centers powering the AI (tomorrow, I am going to talk about one such energy source), but that does not mean in my book that it needs to be discounted as a tool to use to improve sustainability. It's ability to make sense of a lot of complex data very quickly enables decisions to be made that could not be done before. I've been hearing about AI algorithms in finance that can estimate how much carbon is emitted or saved from certain investments, moving us towards true ESG accounting. I myself have found out about publicly-traded sustainable companies that I would have to take several weeks or months to figure out before Perplexity. Now, I can find them more quickly with a good prompt and understand what they do in one day.

One other thing I will say about AI and sustainability. From one of the books I have read for the Ecochallenge, I found out how many countries and programs even in the U.S. have very poor information management and record-keeping procedures. Without good data, forget AI, there's no chance the decision-makers of these organizations can ever make the best-informed decisions to hit their targets. Heck, they won't even have an honest idea if they are hitting their targets or not! For these firms, it would not make sense to build their own AI systems then. They need to get their IT systems down and embrace a culture of true integrity, transparency, and accountability first before even thinking about building their own AI.