Entrepreneurial ingenuity our best hope on climate change

As Forum for the Future and the Financial Times announce the winners of the Climate Change Challenge competition, Ed Crooks tells us why entrepreneurs have to be at the forefront of the drive to tackle global warming.

Climate change is an intractable problem partly because those who are most able to tackle it have the least inclination to do so. A planetary-scale crisis demands large-scale solutions: changing the engines in every car in America, or supplying low-carbon electricity to every home in China.

Yet the companies with the resources to meet those vast challenges are unlikely to have the strategic focus to deliver them. The history of innovation shows that it is rarely the large, established companies that come up with revolutionary ideas: they have too much invested in the status quo. Microsoft was born from an idea discarded by IBM.

It is the smaller, more entrepreneurial companies that are always more likely to come up with the most radical ideas. That is why the FT was interested in supporting the Climate Change Challenge [see box below].

Of the ideas that were submitted, many – perhaps most – will fall by the wayside. Even some of the ones with the greatest potential will make only a marginal contribution to the problem.

Nor are we deluded enough to think that an army of entrepreneurs alone can solve the problem. The market, if left to itself, would never take notice of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But a market that puts a fair price on carbon can set off a great wave of creativity in developing ways to cut emissions.

There is evidence all around that the EU’s emissions trading scheme and the UN’s clean development mechanism are doing just that. But those frameworks are clearly not yet sufficient, which is why it is worth making the effort to find and reward ideas that need an extra push.

It is only by supporting these entrepreneurs and countless more like them that the world can unlock the wealth of new ideas that we need: both incremental changes and great transformations. This model has its critics, and it undoubtedly has its weaknesses. But it has one overwhelming virtue: it works with human ingenuity and ambition, rather than against them. Any plan for curbing emissions that does not do that is bound to fail. Catastrophic climate change will be averted this way, or not at all.

 

WINNER

Kyoto Box
Kyoto Energy Ltd, Kenya

Kyoto Box is a cheap, solar cooker for use in rural Africa, whose use could save two tonnes of carbon emissions per family per year.

The $5 cooker uses the greenhouse effect to boil and bake. It consists of two cardboard boxes, one inside the other, with an acrylic cover that lets the sun’s power in and stops it escaping, while doubling as a ‘hob top’.

A layer of straw or newspaper between the boxes provides insulation, while black paint on the interior and foil on the exterior concentrate the heat still further.

The design is so simple that the Kyoto Box can be produced in existing cardboard factories. It has just gone into production in a Nairobi factory that can produce 2.5 million boxes a month. A more durable model is being made from recycled plastic.

Most cooking in rural areas of developing countries is done on woodburning stoves, many of them smoky and inefficient. That means women and children suffer from the effects of years of smoke inhalation, and pressure on dwindling forests due to the constant need for firewood. The Kyoto Box helps solve both problems.

If it’s to take off, it will need something of a cultural shift, as previous solar cookers have struggled to gain widespread popularity. Most people prefer to cook inside their homes (out of reach of the sun’s rays), and at times of the day (early morning and evening) when solar heat isn’t available. If the Kyoto Box could break those engrained patterns, it could be revolutionary.

And there’s no doubt that in some circumstances, solar cookers are a life-saver – where fuelwood or dung is unavailable for example, or where people have been displaced from their homes and forced to live in refugee camps. As wood supplies become ever scarcer, more and more people will find themselves faced with no alternative but to change long-established practices. The Kyoto Box makes it possible to do so.

“This is the simplest idea I could find,” says its inventor, Norwegian Jon Bøhmer. He envisions a network of women distributing thousands of the flat-pack devices from the backs of lorries to families across Africa and the developing world. His hope is that the cooker will be eligible for carbon credits – hence the name Kyoto Box. The 20-30 euros yearly profit per stove would be passed on to the users, meaning the device pays for itself.

“It’s all about scaling up,” sums up Mr Bøhmer. “There’s no point in creating something that can only help a few million people. The needs are universal – everybody needs to cook.” – Hannah Bullock

• Judge’s view: “As well as reducing carbon emissions and deforestation, this cheap and simple idea could save people in developing countries time and money.” – Terry Leahy

Read an extended interview with the winner here.

SHORTLISTED

Deflecktor
ADEF Ltd, USA

Deflecktors are cheap, lightweight fabric covers fitted to lorry wheels, which improve fuel efficiency by reducing drag.

Fitted onto the eight wheels of a truck andits trailer, the Deflecktor can cut fuel consumption by 2%. It works by covering the wheel holes to reduce turbulence as lorries move at speed.

It has already aroused interest from trucking company Schneider National, which is testing the product on its 15,000-strong fleet. On average, it takes just six months to break even on the $50 Deflecktor outlay.

“I’m coming at this from an economic perspective,” says inventor Jon Fleck. “Quite frankly, carbon emissions aren’t top of the agenda for these companies.”

Fleck designed his first wheel cover 20 years ago, but the product virtually made him bankrupt. Its 50-odd metal components were hard to fit, and its weight cancelled out some of the fuel efficiency gains. It wasn’t until he saw a pop-up laundry basket at a trade fair in Germany that the idea came to him to use fabric and wire instead: “That was the lightbulb moment.”

If all American trucks used the covers, Fleck calculates they would save 460 million gallons of diesel a year.
– Hannah Bullock

• Judge’s view: “I cannot see a world without trucks. This simple idea could make a huge difference.” – Richard Branson		 SHORTLISTED

Evaporatively cooled tiles
Loughborough University, UK

Loughborough University has produced ceiling tiles that can cool rooms with minimal energy use.

Instead of pumping cool air into a room, a false ceiling uses convection to draw warm exhaust air from the room. The air evaporates water held in a wick surface in the tiles, so they cool instantly.

Moreover, they don’t clog and the materials don’t degrade, so there are no significant maintenance costs.

“If you dip your hand into water and blow over it, you instantly feel cooler. Evaporation is a very powerful mechanism,” Dr Harry Salt explains.

Salt and his colleague Professor Dennis Loveday, who have spent ten years working on the invention, say it can replace a traditional air conditioning system in most climates or, if used alongside one, will halve overall energy use.

“If it’s too hot, it’s harder for people to work. Global warming will see increased demand for cooling, and this innovation can provide cooling with minimal energy usage.”

Salt and Loveday hope to have their tiles on the market by 2010.
– Anna Simpson

• Judge’s view: “An innovative design [that will] be well-received by investors in the air conditioning industry.” – Eileen Claussen
SHORTLISTED

The Black Phantom
Carbonscape, New Zealand/UK

The Black Phantom turns biomass into biochar, a form of charcoal that can be added to the soil – or even buried in mines – so ‘locking up’ carbon by removing it permanently from the atmosphere.

The machine, small enough to fit inside a shipping container and be transported virtually anywhere in the world, is “effectively one giant microwave”. It works with raw material as varied as agricultural waste, wood thinnings, even sewage.

The Black Phantom is well placed to cash in on the ‘biochar boom’ predicted by some, not without controversy, to be the next green growth industry.

The machine captures and locks away significantly more carbon than is created by the electricity used to power it, explains Professor Chris Turney, part of the team behind it. And in the future, it may be possible to ‘recycle’ the gases produced and turn them into ‘green electricity’ to power the machine. Biochar schemes supported by carbon finance, Turney believes, “could become a source of income for [farmers in] the developing world, and an incentive for them to plant trees on a cyclical basis,” he says. – Hannah Bullock

• Judge’s view: “Combines nature’s ability to sequester carbon with a high tech solution to make it ‘permanent’.” – Mark Hurd 		SHORTLISTED

Mootral
Neem Biotech, UK

Mootral is a garlic-based feed additive that reduces the methane produced by cows, sheep and other ruminants – a significant greenhouse gas.

It works as a natural antibiotic that limits the growth of bacteria in the ruminant’s stomach. The key ingredient is allicin, a compound derived from garlic, which reduced methane production by 94% in a laboratory test simulating ruminants’ digestive processes. Animal trials are now underway to work out the optimum dosage and frequency.

Methane is a greenhouse gas 22 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Neem estimates that the digestive processes of the world’s herds and flocks are responsible for 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to eat less meat? Perhaps, but as Neem’s Jeremy Stone says, “meat production is huge in terms of business interests and livelihoods. This is a way to cut down on emissions without taxing beef”.

Legislation may speed its adoption. Estonia is already implementing an emissions tax for farmers ‘per ruminant capita’, with Denmark and Ireland chewing over the idea, too.
– Anna Simpson

• Judge’s view: “Very simple, elegant and easy to implement with significant impact.” – Leon Sandler

Read more about the competition here. Read an extended profile of the winner here.

22 April 2009

Ed Crooks

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"History shows us that it's rarely the large, established companies that come up with revolutionary ideas"

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