13th April. Transition | Fungi

Financing the carbon transition; mushroom homes in space

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#1: Financing the carbon transition

The economist Adam Tooze has an article on his newsletter assessing the cost of getting to net zero in Europe by 2050. It’s based on a close reading of a McKinsey report and a look at some of the assumptions in the technical report produced for the EU Commission.

There’s also a question of political philosophy sitting underneath this inquiry, and a question for futurists:

What does it mean to face up realistically to the challenge of climate change? Under present conditions, what is it realistic to hope for? Not the least mind-blowing thing about climate politics is that we are forced to rely on scientifically founded speculation about the long-distance future. That makes it particularly interesting as a domain for talking about realism.

Obviously decarbonisation represents a huge technological shift, but not one that involves untested technologies. Looking out to 2050, 87% of the necessary emissions cuts could come from technologies that already in the market, or at the very least, exist at the demonstrator stage. At the same time the headline financial numbers are vast—in the tens of trillions of Euros. McKinsey calculates €28 trillion between 2020 and 2050, the EU €28.4 trillion between 2031 and 2050.

Source: McKinsey

But, of course, investment is a flow, not a stock. Current EU GDP is €24 trillion a year, and investment runs at just over 20% of GDP. McKinsey reckons that to fund the transition, the EU needs to invest 5.8% of GDP per year in transition. And much of investment cost of decarbonisation is not new money:

As Joerg Haas has argued, overcoming our addiction to fossil fuels implies stamping on the brake at the same time as hitting the accelerator.

In fact, four-fifths of this can be covered by redirecting money away from the fossil fuels sector. After this, the additional cost of transition investment is of the order of 1-1.5% of GDP. And McKinsey argues that this will be covered. By energy savings from the transition: the cost of getting to net zero is zero.

If this seems a little too good to be true, it probably is. Investment generally has to be justified by a rate of return, or—if there isn’t one—subsidised by someone. At current carbon prices, McKinsey argues, the return on quite a lot of transition investment is hard to identify, especially in the built environment and industry.

It’s also worth noting that Tooze isn’t acting as a McKinsey apologist here: instead he’s reading its report as a performative document on behalf of capital—an opening shot in the transition negotiations, as it were.

One thing that immediately changes the investment assessment, however, is proper carbon pricing. As soon as the carbon price gets to €100/tonne, 80% of this low return investment can be justified by conventional business assessment of returns.

It’s also worth noting that, like other policy analysts, neither McKinsey’s analysis of costs nor that of the EU, assume that there will be no behavioural change. But they have done the sums on what this might add up to:

Less traveling and more sensible use of energy at home could help. So too could a shift away from meat-eating. Any one of those changes would swing the balance a percentage point here or there. According to McKinsey's model, a suite of behavioural changes could reduce EU emissions by 15 per cent, substantially helping to close the gap as far as the hardest to abate sectors are concerned.

It’s a long piece, and there’s a lot more in it. On the downside, vested interests can delay necessary change for longer than anyone else thinks is reasonable, and even diverting investment from the fossil fuels sector may be harder than it should be. But—as a climate change pessimist—I came away from this piece more optimistic than when I started it.

#2: Fungi houses in space

A couple of weeks ago I was writing here about Stella McCartney’s use of fungi in place of leather in a one-off outfit.

Well, whatever Stella McCartney can do, NASA can do better. The agency is exploring how to grow structures out of fungi that can grow habitats rather than having to transport them.

the project envisions a future where human explorers can bring a compact habitat built out of a lightweight material with dormant fungi that will last on long journeys to places like Mars. Upon arrival, by unfolding that basic structure and simply adding water, the fungi will be able to grow around that framework into a fully functional human habitat – all while being safely contained within the habitat to avoid contaminating the Martian environment.

Right now, this feels like proof of concept rather than anything that’s going to happen immediately. But reading the article, NASA has done a lot of the conceptual thinking.

Bricks made of mycelium and other materials as part of the project. Image credit: 2018, Stanford-Brown-RISD iGEM Team

From the point of view of the inhabitants, it needs to be more than a set of walls and a roof. And from the point of the materials, they need to be able to live while they grow—and not afterwards. There’s a complex three-layered structure described which does this. Mycelia is something of a magic bio-material: it might also be help with water filtration and lighting:

Mycelia could be used for water filtration and biomining systems that can extract minerals from wastewater – another project active in Rothschild's lab – as well as bioluminescent lighting, humidity regulation and even self-generating habitats capable of healing themselves. And with about 40% of carbon emissions on Earth coming from construction, there's an ever-increasing need for sustainable and affordable housing here as well.

There’s a 50” promo video as well:

j2t#075

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