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‘Forever chemicals,’ or PFAS, are everywhere. With the Environmental Protection Agency setting national limits for forever chemicals in drinking water for the first time this past April, the big question is how to get rid of them.
6K, which has developed an advanced microwave-based plasma process to produce advanced materials that it calls UniMelt with $352 million in venture funding and an additional $134 million in government monies, figures its technology is the answer. The North Andover, Mass.-based startup has been developing the PFAS-fighting use for its technology in stealth for roughly a year, and its existence has not previously been reported.
“We are really good at creating things – we can build battery materials and 3D-printing materials – but we are also good at destruction or remediation, and that’s what this is all about,” Aaron Bent, who was 6K’s CEO during the development and is now an advisor to the company, told Forbes.
The company said it discovered that the extreme heat of 6,000 degrees (thus the company’s name), plus reactive radicals from the microwave and UV light emitted by the plasma, could indeed zap the forever chemicals – in just two seconds.
In August, Saurabh Ullal, who had been 6K’s chief operating officer since 2017 and holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from UC Santa Barbara, took over as CEO. “There are different segments of the market we can impact in terms of PFAS destruction,” he said. “It really comes down to which one do we prioritize and go ahead with.”
The company sees potential in cleaning water, particularly combining its technology with the granular activated carbon that is currently used for that purpose but itself becomes contaminated by the toxic chemicals. It could also be used to clean up firefighting foam that’s a huge problem on military sites and airports nationwide, or to get rid of forever chemicals at semiconductor plants, where their use is a key part of the production process. The UniMelt machines are modular, allowing them to be deployed as one-offs or in a hub-and-spoke system, and work on liquids, gases and solids.
“What makes our technology different is that we have a closed-loop process so there’s no emissions and no liability of losing fluorine in the process,” said JP Majcher, who runs the technology for 6K Pure. With incumbent technologies that have tried to reduce forever chemicals with plasma, he said, “it’s been, ‘yeah it works but it’s too expensive’ or ‘it can’t scale.’”
6K now hopes to sign up its first commercial development partner by yearend. Said Ullal: “We have our net cast wide.”
The Big Read
Adam Neumann’s Climate Company Flowcarbon Is Issuing Crypto Token Refunds
Flowcarbon, the climate tech startup cofounded by WeWork’s Adam Neumann, has been quietly refunding investors after failing for years to launch its “Goddess Nature Token,” Forbes learned.
Since debuting more than two years ago, the startup has struggled to realize its mission of bringing carbon credits onto the blockchain. In 2022, Flowcarbon announced it had raised $70 million in funding from investors like Andreessen Horowitz to create a new token backed 1:1 by carbon credits, certificates that companies typically buy en masse to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. Each credit represents a metric ton of carbon dioxide that has been removed or prevented from entering the atmosphere. Tokenizing them would, in theory, make it easier for anyone to participate in the carbon market, a system that some reports have claimed can do more harm than good.
But in recent weeks, Flowcarbon has been issuing refunds to people who purchased its “Goddess Nature Token” and waited years for a launch that never happened. According to sources who were contacted by the company last month, Flowcarbon cited market conditions and resistance from carbon registries as the reason for returning buyers’ funds instead of continuing to hold them indefinitely. These individuals told Forbes that the company relayed this information over Zoom calls.
Read more here
Hot Topic
Steven Cohen, senior advisor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, on the U.S. election’s impact on environmental policy and the clean energy transition
In the event of a Trump victory this fall will the Biden Administration’s push for clean energy and stricter enforcement of air and water quality regulations be rolled back?
In all likelihood, yes. But you have, for example, here in New York City, local building codes to decarbonize large buildings. We have policies to try to develop renewable energy in place of fossil fuels for our power plants. And that’s true in California as well. So those things will continue. But yeah, [a Trump victory] definitely doesn’t facilitate progress. But believing the federal government is all-powerful when it comes to environmental protection is simply incorrect.
If federal environmental rules are eased or not enforced, isn’t there a risk that many companies will slow or reverse efforts to develop more sustainable practices?
There have been studies showing that companies that pay attention to their environmental impact are also paying attention to other issues in a more sophisticated way – and they’re making more money. This is one of the things I teach about: these factors being integrated into routine management. It’s not to say that we don’t have companies that violate rules all the time, but more and more are integrating these practices just as good management practices.
That will go on regardless of who the president is, regardless of who’s in Congress. The shift to a cleaner, less carbon-intense economy will happen faster if there’s the sort of infrastructure support that we’ve seen under Biden. If [a new administration is] dismantling regulations, it gives the idea that anything goes. So there is a difference. But I wouldn’t overstate its impact. The election has an impact, and it’s important, but it’s not all-determining.
What are some companies integrating these better practices?
Take a company like Land O’Lakes. It uses very advanced technology to limit the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer and water because all those things cost them money. And if they put more on the crop than they need to, not only does it pollute the environment but they waste money. And so we are beginning to see companies starting to internalize environmental values as it relates to their own profits.
One of the largest and fastest adopters of solar power in America is Walmart because they use a lot of energy, have a lot of flat roofs to put solar arrays on and a lot of cash. So they can wait five years to make the money back from solar energy.
So we’re seeing some of these things come into corporate culture as good business practice and good management practice, and that is making some of the regulatory needs less intense than they once were. That’s not to say we don’t need it at all. I’m not arguing that. But there are other forces besides the federal government that are working to try to protect the environment.
What Else We’re Reading
The U.S. is getting its first electric bullet train factory
U.S. clean fuels tax credit likely by the end of the Biden Administration, Agriculture Secretary says
World to set heat record for 2024 after warmest northern summer
Meet the team climbing trees in the Amazon to better understand carbon stores
Climate change makes farming easier in Alaska. Indigenous growers hope to lead the way
Human activity now fuels two-thirds of global methane emissions
Drought is making Sao Paulo’s river emerald green while smoke turns its skies gray
Can we eat beef sustainably?
Investors hope tech for hog poop ponds can solve AI’s water problems
These states tried, and failed, to cut food waste. One succeeded
Gas stoves may soon come with a tobacco-style health warning label in California
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