We need radical innovation to solve the climate emergency.
I wrote this piece to participate in Belgium’s “40 under 40”, a call for leaders of a new generation. My application wasn’t considered, but I’d like to share my vision nevertheless.
Ever since I was a little boy, I wanted to become an inventor. My heroes were the nutty professors from comic books and movies, and Leonardo da Vinci, the man with whom I share a first name. I’ve had the good fortune that throughout my young career, I’ve been able to pursue that passion of invention and innovation, in a series of fascinating environments, from universities (Ghent University, Berkeley, EPFL, TU Eindhoven) to multinationals and most recently my own start-up “out of the blue”. From Belgium (both sides of the language barrier) to a number of other countries on different continents.
However, what I experienced also deeply concerns me. In academia and industry alike, I have seen surprisingly little surprising research.
Yes, there is an ever-increasing stream of papers and patents being written, but most of them are disappointingly uncreative. In fact, uncreative, repetitive research is often encouraged, because it increases the chances for funding and publication. And while this is a great strategy for continuous and gradual improvements, it will not suffice to tackle the ever-growing challenges of our times.
Yes, science is increasingly “sexy” and disseminated to a wider audience, but the environment in which it is set rarely fosters true breakthrough innovations. Too many times have I seen how form wins over content, how an unrealistic project plan in a PowerPoint is valued more than promising preliminary lab results. How research ideas are managed to death before they have a chance to grow.
These trends worry me.
And they worry me the most when it comes to the biggest challenge of this century: the climate emergency. While climate change will pose an enormous threat to humanity itself, the tools and systems in place for solving this problem, are still the same ones that caused the catastrophe to unfold in the first place.
Just because electric cars are somewhat better than their petrol analogues doesn’t mean they are the solution of the future: they still have enormous unsustainable CO2 and material footprints. We need to think bigger and rethink mobility more holistically.
Natural gas is a bridge fuel, only if that bridge led to nowhere. We don’t need less CO2 emissions, we need ZERO CO2 emissions — and fast. Gradual increments are no longer enough, are no longer fast enough, for the urgency of the climate emergency.
This realization was the reason why I quit my comfortable, yet soul-destroying job in an oil company. If we have to rely on the entrenched fossil fuel (or automotive, you name it) industry to tackle climate change, we might as well just light ourselves on fire. I launched my own CO2 removal start-up, and I’m now spending all my time and energy in building this business and getting the message out.
However, it is not easy to yell above the noise of fossil companies and human fossils.
What is lacking most, is a long-term framework and environment for truly innovative ideas. We need to revisit our way of thinking to tackle the problems of our times. We will need a plethora of groundbreaking ideas, and we need them fast. Moreover, we need breakthroughs on many fronts: technology, engineering, policy, economics, social issues…
That is the message I would bring to the “40 under 40”: We need radical innovation to solve the climate emergency. More resources should go to the Leonardo’s da Vincis, rather than to mastodontic companies. More attention needs to go to drastically new, instead of “more of the same”, with a lick of green paint. We need to do some dreaming before we do the engineering. Think of what could be rather than what is. We have to do this, and we have to do this fast.
We, the young people, desperately need the right environment and mandate to do so.
We shouldn’t be encouraged to prove themselves in the box of the current system, but urged to lead the way towards what is possible beyond it.
Can we get that chance?