No Carbon Left Behind
Imagine a world where every carbon atom produced through human activity was captured and recycled... that's right, every single one
In our first Biofutures scenario I’m going to sketch the outline of a world where no carbon is left behind, a world where carbon is treated like a soldier in the 75th Ranger Regiment behind enemy lines.
I would like to begin by acknowledging Abhishaike Mahajan and Asimov Press for inspiring this essay’s structure. Abhishaike’s Models of Life is a stunning and awe inspiring cyberbio forecast.
A zero release world
The news announcement began, “a two kilogram carbon spill was detected by satellite over the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, the ship identified as responsible has been impounded in port pending an investigation, clean up crews are sourcing forty-two times the atmospheric equivalent to pay the mandatory carbon penalties.”
Each morning across every city in the world, people wake to pristine air quality. Smells that were common in the pre-industrial era have begun to return to city-scapes, colours are more vibrant, the night sky more visible, and asthma attack rates are on a continuous decline. The concept of carbon cycling is ingrained into every aspect of the economy. Capture, storage and valorisation are now the critical infrastructure of mature carbon cycling economies. No one opens a history book and wishes they lived during a previous era. In short, life is pretty great.
How did we get here?
2030
Global regulation, public opinion and technology converged in a political wave totally unforeseen by legacy incumbents. Fixed-points of carbon waste moved to capture and recycle back into the economy.1 Every year biomanufacturing efficiency improved and the trend was coined “Moore's Green Law”. A boon of productivity acceleration emerged from a technological arms race to cycle fixed-point carbon from energy infrastructure, refineries, and manufacturing.
Natural gas and oil pipelines were transformed into gas and liquid energy webs. Input and output points spread across supra-national networks creating an internet-of-energy. Each 1kg packet of energy was tracked in a blockchain digital mirror.
Bespoke Artificial Intelligence agents balanced pressure throughout these energy webs based on predictions of decentralised supply and demand. Cryptocurrency markets became the new carboncurrency (C2). C2 divorced carbon markets from the swings and roundabouts of foreign exchange. This enabled completely new types of forwards, futures, options, swaps and complex derivatives to be globally exchanged based on recycled carbon. Gold lost its safe haven status to carbon.
The certification, regulation and accounting requirements of the carbon cycling economy created new blockbuster industries. Employees of gas distribution incumbents left in droves to win financial backing for the ‘new energy’ startups.
Floating-point carbon waste, such as aviation and shipping, began to incorporate a minimum 50% drop-in mix generated from fixed-point carbon waste sources. A school of displacement economics grew up and seeded the global management consultancy firms. Every aspect of economic growth came to be seen as intrinsically valuable if, and only if, it displaced more carbon than it generated.
2040
The first carbon packet minted in the oldest C2 currency reached its 20th reuse cycle. News reports celebrated globally, but the young influencers of the day bemoaned the lack of carbon deposition regulations. Fixed-point and floating-point carbon waste was now mandated for 100% reuse.2 Major aviation players sold green tickets at a price premium on flights that used Atmos(TM) certified fuels based on atmospheric capture.
Deposition regulations came into being. At first fixed-point sources were required to deposit 1% of carbon as soil. Unremediated mines became sites of renewed economic activity as concentrated pelletised carbon solids were returned to the earth. The more advanced economies began introducing carbon cycling limits. C2 packets could only be cycled through the energy web 10 times before they needed to be deposited via a certified pathway.
Deposition requirements increased by 1% per year up to 20% of the final point-based yield. Legacy carbon cycling incumbents lobbied governments globally saying the carbon tax would bankrupt business. New players installed mega scale atmospheric capture and network injection to backfill the global capacity shortfall. They couldn’t build fast enough and faced ongoing funding issues due to a change in international accounting standards for carbon tracing in manufacturing activity. Influencers of all ages talked about the carbon capacity cliff. C2 markets entered a period of prolonged volatility.
2050
The last legacy marine and aviation assets built prior to the carbon cycling revolution began to be decommissioned. 100% of long-haul trucking now captured their emissions into tanks that sat alongside their gen-4 liquid fuels, which were renowned for superior energy density, performance, and gaseous waste portability. Floating-point wheeled offtake (trucks and cars) was returned during refueling. Domestic biomanufacturing became the new home brew. Houses and apartments installed green waste fermentation systems that returned gas and liquid to their local service stations. Many service stations that had ripped out their liquid fuel infrastructure for fast charging began reinstalling carbon aggregation tanks to pool small deposits from their local areas. Almost everyone had a personal carbon account and sold back their waste carbon to the grid. Everything was transacted through C2 markets and the first mover fintech firms that controlled these markets were globally dominant. C2 spot prices continued to climb and consumers reaped unexpected benefits from having direct selling rights at the micro scale. New pipeline infrastructure was rolled out around the world. The vision of an internet-of-carbon was championed by the World Economic Forum. The internet-of-energy was seen as ‘so last decade’.
The International Association of Carbon Accounting released carbon cycle forecasts showing the negative carbon economy had begun. A few outlandish influencers debated what would happen as negative atmospheric offtake accelerated. Pop songs were written about carbon deposition and the environmental depravities of earlier generations. A few poorly cited academic publications projected human civilisation was unsustainably drawing down atmospheric carbon. They forecast the carbon balance would invert in two decades.
Forward thinking hedge funds began vicious M&A battles over the planet's carbon sinks. Superannuation funds cottoned on, captured by skyrocketing values for the unremediated mines filled with carbon enriched pellets and soils. Carbon bond markets tipped and oil and gas fields became economic again despite being bound in enough regulation to tie the moon in paper. Obviously it would be carbon offset paper, and the International Association of Carbon Accounting could advise you (for a fee) on how to claim that offset against tax.
2060
Humanity spiraled towards a carbon crunch. There wasn’t enough biomass to fuel the incessant appetite of civilisation - even when every molecule was accounted for in a monumental carbon cycle.
Satellites begin surveying the asteroid belt and mining companies began opening mega ventures pulling carbon from Earth’s crust and mantle. The era of extraction 2.0 began. Geoeconomics surged as nations were forced to once again find more and more carbon in the geographies they controlled and across the global commons. Floating platform cities were built over oceanic deserts and saltwater-optimised biomass was farmed on a colossal scale. Autonomous mining ships were assembled on the moon for multi-year voyages to the belt, bringing back rare earths, and more importantly, carbon.
The carbon economy continued cycling. Humanity continued to organise, disorganise and reorganise carbon. All to fuel endless biological growth.
Reflections
One of the difficulties we face right now is looking ahead to what’s possible. It is too easy to get bogged down in the politics of the day and the limits of current technology. I have gone out of my way not to get tied up in technical details because I want to shortcut black hat thinking. All you need to know is that biology has made complexity from carbon for billions of years at room temperature. Humanity is right now stepping off on a journey that begins with learning how to do this with intentionality.
My provocation to you is one of scale across time and space. Try to zoom out and think about the long-term carbon cycle. Energy is the first organelle of human civilisation, and it ebbs and flows in webs across the world. It is unlikely that liquid and gaseous carbon will ever leave the global economy because they are so central to the natural carbon cycle of which humanity is a major part. It is high time we learnt to work with this cycle rather than against it. We need to find a third way.
The Biofutures series paints scenarios with the techniques of applied foresight and the elbow grease of imagination. These scenarios are intended to push the boundaries of what you believe is possible.
All images made using DALL·E, prompts available on request.
As we discussed in last week’s Energy Verticals, the requisite minimum viable product/solution/technology (MVP/S/T) for liquid and gaseous circularity exists now via cell-free and cellular reprocessing pathways.
I’m grossly simplifying here, but let’s lock fixed-point carbon down to immovable assets and infrastructure that vent gaseous carbon or have liquifiable waste streams. Floating-point carbon encompasses the aviation, maritime and trucking assets that either need to be offset somewhere else, or must capture their waste carbon into tanks built into the asset for return during a refueling cycle.