💬 "What Climatetech Can Learn from the Oceans"

Podcast’s Essential Bites:

[4:01] AP: "We define bluetech as the tech and innovation intersections with the blue economy. [...] The blue economy is defined as all of the activities that are happening in or near around the ocean. And so for us, that includes everything from fisheries and aquaculture to global shipping to offshore energy. [...] It also includes the coastal interface, so coastal resilience. And for others, it might include coastal tourism, and the defense sector. So there's a lot of industries that are all together that define what happens in the blue economy."

[10:32] AP: "Global shipping is about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And so there's no reason to believe that we couldn't completely decarbonize the global shipping industry. The catch is how to do that and how to do that affordably, because about 80% of all of the international trade that we have happens on ocean going vessels. [...] When we're thinking about short sea shipping, we might be thinking about electrification."

[11:26] AP: "When we're talking about getting things across oceans, [...] then we need to talk about decarbonisation a little bit differently. [...] There's a lot of folks working on drop-in biofuels, so you don't even have to change the equipment. But then they're also looking at the hydrogen economy and [...] ammonia is probably the one that folks talk about the most when we're talking about global shipping."

[15:35] AP: "The [offshore wind] sector is growing so quickly. [...] When we look at the interesting areas for innovation in offshore wind, [...] we're looking at how one monitors and protects cables under the water? How does one think about assisting and supporting biodiversity at the base of turbines? How does one think about mitigating environmental impacts of the construction of the offshore wind farm? How do you think about the construction safety and logistics associated with building an offshore wind farm?"

[19:20] AP: "Protein from the ocean, whether it's conventional or unconventional, has a much lower carbon footprint than traditional terrestrial based sources of animal protein. [...] The carbon footprint of a fish is more comparable to many plant based proteins, [...] like soy and nuts and a little less than eggs. So the role that seafood can play is pretty significant, if we are careful about how it's done."

[20:07] AP: "Moving entirely off seafood is just [...] not realistic [...] in the near term, because about a billion people in the world depend on seafood as their primary source of protein. And many of those people are in food insecure regions. [...] When we think about the ocean as a source of protein and of stability in a long term, climate friendly way, we think about how do we improve aquaculture? Aquaculture is the largest growth area in the production of seafood. And how do we think about the opportunities for even lower carbon alternatives like seaweed and shellfish, which are the lowest carbon ways that you can produce food from the ocean?"

[33:55] AP: "Bluetech as a theme is really early right now. And there's really only a handful of funds that are focused on the ocean and ocean innovation. [...] What we're starting to see is more generalist funds and adjacent funds, folks that have either a climate focus or food focus that are now looking at the ocean as a potential source of deal flow for them in a pipeline."

Rating: 💧💧💧

Additional Links:
Article: "Zero-emissions cargo shipping catches on in cities and port communities" (Canary Media, 2022)
Article: "Offshore wind installations surged threefold last year" (Canary Media, 2022)