8 minute read
SPECIAL REPORT
2022 FORESIGHT:
The Future of Novel Sciences and Technologies that Support a Sustainable Global Economy
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Great innovations occur when technologies collide. Collisions happen when different, disparate technologies suddenly find themselves connected through an enabling connector. Connections manifest due to the forceful function of a dominant question. Connected computation is that enabler, and sustainability is that question.
More and more devices are being computationally connected to create ever-more novel combinations of data, and more and more issues like recycling, healthcare, climate change, and empowered consumerism are being connected via the thread of sustainability. Lux Research asked its analysts and thought leaders what they think of emerging new technologies, the status of existing technologies and potential scenarios that might unfold in 2022.
THE SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION MODEL
CLIMATE TECH Enabling the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions
Your innovation strategy needs to leverage technologies and sectors powering the energy transition as well as figure out how to directly reduce emissions and evolve your business models to reach your enterprise’s sustainability goals.
Focus Areas
• Decarbonising industrial processes • Renewable grid integration • Energy storage • Carbon capture, utilisation and storage • Hydrogen economy • Electric vehicle charging • Synthetic fuels
CIRCULAR TECH Enabling the elimination and remediation of waste
Your innovation strategy needs to have a compelling vision, clear business models and proof that the circular economy practices deliver on their promise of product performance and resource efficiency to build circular supply chains.
Focus Areas
• Plastic waste • Food and agricultural waste • Building and construction waste • Textile circularity • Circular design tools • Tracking and traceability • Synthetic biology • Chemical recycling
CONSUMER TECH Enabling nutrition and wellness for the world’s population
Your innovation strategy needs to strike the right balance between sustainability outcomes (health, safety and transparency) while delivering on performance, cost and ease of access to capitalise on the rapidly evolving needs of the future consumer.
Focus Areas
• Alternative food production systems • Alternative proteins and food ingredients • Nutraceuticals • Microbiome • Digital biomarkers and therapeutics • Digital sales platforms • Personalisation
2021 IN PASSING: HINDSIGHTS AND SIGNPOSTS
CLIMATE TECH Carbon capture becoming a business
Building on Tesla and others selling carbon credits for revenue, Exxon takes the next step in building a first-of-its-kind business around carbon itself, which will further stimulate capture and utilisation technology development.
Signposts
• COP26 accelerates and converges government policymaking around the globe. • The UK announces a 2023 experiment to swap H2 into its NG infrastructure, setting the pace. • Initial windfarms reach their end of life, prompting renewed focus on large-scale recycling technologies.
CIRCULAR TECH Chemicals embrace digital service providers in a bigger way
In a sign of decreased dependency on volumetric sales models, companies like BASF embrace just-in-time sales through partnerships with data and analytics companies, signalling a fundamental shift in overall business strategies.
Signposts
• COP26 drives further carbon policy formation and stimulates technology development. • Stock prices of oil and gas and chemical and materials companies do not bounce back to pre-Covid levels without strong ESG programmes. • Companies add policy, NGO understanding to their techscouting activities.
CONSUMER TECH Cellular meat receives market approval
Intense consumer interest drives rapid market development of alternative proteins. Singapore leads with first market approval of a cell-cultured product. Sustainability concerns by empowered consumers create new perceptions, rapid policy shifts and novel product opportunities.
Signposts
• Global replication of Land O’ Lakes’ TruTerra consortium model of analytics-to-the-acre, solving for yield, profitability and consumer preference. • The US and EU follow Singapore enacting bioengineering policy, including food safety and provenance. • Companies spend more on innovation scouting in response to the increasingly complex environment.
CLIMATE TECH: TOP TECHNOLOGIES FOR 2022
COMPRESSED AIR ENERGY STORAGE Signals and signposts
Market need for cheaper, multiplexed, distributed energy management from surging renewable input energy sources.
Implications
Harbinger of dynamic grid management, renewables and new business models; on-demand energy management is a proxy for the goods and services delivered.
HIGH-TEMPERATURE HEAT PUMPS Signals and signposts
Linking disparate industrial processes together to harness waste heat; heat distribution and management become a monetised service.
Implications
Sustainability drives renewal of mechanical systems with new, connected balance-of-system configurations to drive sustainability.
FLOW BATTERIES Signals and signposts
Intensive academic research; breakthroughs in organic materials; claims of $25/kWh makes flow batteries competitive to lithium.
Implications
Claims of superior cost to lithium and balance of system plus a smaller form factor lead to increased flexible deployments.
CIRCULAR TECH: TOP TECHNOLOGIES FOR 2022
ADVANCED PYROLYSIS Signals and signposts
Increasing focus on improved economics, recovery and restreaming of core materials; watch this and the chemical looping spaces for advances and the addition of electrolysis to the balance of system.
Implications
Part of waste ecosystem platform development driven by circular economy strategy and will drive robotic sorting, balance-of-system efficiencies, and new downstream markets for recovered materials.
PRODUCTION ELECTROCHEMISTRY Signals and signposts
Green hydrogen interest drives electrolysis systems development, creating viable scaled pathways for new electrochemical reactions.
Implications
Accelerated research and discovery targeting replacement of all combustion chemical reactions.
CONSUMER TECH: TOP TECHNOLOGIES FOR 2022
CELL-BASED MEAT Signals and signposts
Singapore’s approval of the world’s first laboratory-grown meat source paves the way for global competition.
Implications
New methods for bioreactor technology and economic growth media required to cost-effectively scale; new policies needed for food safety.
NOVEL SEED TREATMENT Signals and signposts
Continued exponential growth in intellectual property (IP) around non-genetic seed treatments and CRISPR*; partnerships and acquisitions increase as Corteva, BASF and Syngenta invest. * CRISPR is a tool for editing genomes, (it allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function).
Implications
Drive for yield with fewer chemicals propels controlled environment farming using purpose-built seeds per each growth condition.
CELL-FREE BIOSYNTHESIS Signals and signposts
Increased range of created molecules; design on demand.
Implications
Biomanufacturing enables plug and play of enzyme cascades into traditional chemistries to create new synthetic pathways.
The above article is an excerpt from the Lux Research Foresight 2022 Report [November 2021].
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THOUGHT [ECO]NOMY
Kearney Energy Transition Institute [2021]
Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage or CCUS refers to a set of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation, and storage technologies combined to abate CO2 emissions. CO2 is generally captured from large and stationary emissions sources (power or industrial plants), transported in a gaseous or liquefied state by pipelines or ships and stored in geological greeneconomy/report recycle formations or reused to promote carbon circularity. The CO2 capture mainly consists of separating CO2 molecules from flue gases and relies on three technologies: – Absorption and adsorption of the CO2 by a liquid carrier (solvent) or solid carrier (sorbent) and regeneration of the liquid or solid by increasing the temperature or reducing the pressure. – Membranes (metallic, polymeric, or ceramic material) for gas separation, not suitable for post-combustion, most suitable for high pressure and high CO2 concentration. – Cryogenic method using low temperature to liquefy and separate CO2 from other gases. Adsorption and absorption capture is the dominant technology, but membranes and cryogenic capture have great potential. Four capture technologies occur at different steps of the combustion value chain: Post-combustion. CO2 is separated from flue gas after combustion with air and can be retrofitted to power and heavy industrial plants with relatively high costs and energy penalty. This technology is the most broadly used outside oil and gas. Oxy-combustion. Fuel is combusted in pure oxygen instead of air, producing a concentrated CO2 stream in the flue gas, which is almost ready to be transported. Oxy-combustion could be retrofitted to existing plants, though with significant redesign. Pre-combustion. A hydrocarbon fuel source – coal, gas, or biomass – is gasified into shifted syngas (H2 / CO2 mix), from which the CO2 is separated. The H2 is then used to fuel the power plant or to produce chemicals or synthetic fuels. In power generation, the pre-combustion process is more energy efficient than post-combustion but requires new and expensive plant design, such as an integrated gasification combined cycle. Natural gas sweetening. In this mature process, CO2 is separated from raw natural gas at a gas processing plant.
Three options exist to store or reuse captured carbon:
– Passive storage includes underground geological storage in deep saline aquifers or depleted petroleum reservoirs. Underground CO2 injection is achieved by pumping compressed CO2 in fluid phase (super critical) down to the formation through a well, where it remains trapped. Monitoring, verification, and accounting (MVA) is needed before the start (to set the baseline), during the injection, and after closure to ensure the CO2 remains in place. – Beneficially reused involves injecting CO2 into a petroleum reservoir for enhanced oil recovery (CO2 -EOR) or into deep un-mineable coal seams to recover methane (CO2 -ECBM). Many operational CCUS projects in conjunction with CO2 -EOR capture CO2 from natural gas processing rather than power production. – Industry use is used to a lesser extent for greenhouses carbon concentration, mineral carbonation, chemicals, liquid fuel or food processing.
Global Value chain overview and key of CCUS technology development
Outlook of carbon capture development per sector23 44 53 99 Outlook of carbon ultilisation and storage 118 Carbon capture utilisation and storage costs
