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our guest today is Bernard David the chairman and CEO of co2 Sciences but I thank you so much for joining us at
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knowledge at Wharton thank you it's my honor to be here at Davos this year you
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launched a global co2 initiative did you come up with the idea and if so what was
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your inspiration I absolutely did and my inspiration was I was a Caltech about three years ago I know it's a sacrilege
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to be mentioning that in these in this interview but I saw that we had hit 400 parts per million of co2 in the
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atmosphere realized that that was a big challenge and everyone was concerned about it
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so I just said wait a second could we actually take co2 and make products out of it and it's kind of gone from there
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so how do you go about taking co2 from the atmosphere and turning it into products can you explain that a little
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bit I absolutely can and and there are actually five sources of co2 that that can be used to make in into products so
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co2 comes out of the ground and that actually is used somewhat in something called an enhanced oil recovery to get
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more oil out of oil wells it actually comes off of industrial sources so in urea manufacturing you have a very pure
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stream of co2 and that's a second source that can be used to make product as well
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a third source is before you burn it you can actually take coal if you will and take the carbon out of it so you don't
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have the co2 and you can make fuels amongst other things or you can take it off of a coal-fired plant as its
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escaping into the atmosphere and and that's actually a good place to do it because it's highly energetic and you
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can capture it and use it there and and capturing it out of the air where it's
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400 parts per million you can also do the challenge with each of those five approaches is the cost and so the least
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expensive is the one taking it out of the ground and then industrial sources and it goes all the way up to taking it
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directly out of the air and today it costs between 600 and $1,000 a ton to take it out of the air because it's a
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needle in a haystack problem there are only you know 400 parts per million right so so that's that's where you can
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find it to capture it dis answer your question though yeah it does and I was actually going in a different direction
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with what I was asking earlier which is once you take the carbon from the atmosphere and you want to turn it into
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products right how large is the market for products that are called CCU products carbon capture and utilization
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products how large is the market and so what's the business opportunity there
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right right so that's that's a very good question in fact one that I asked early
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on because I was concerned I was first concerned about the technical do ability and we can talk about that later but
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then I was also concerned about the market size so he had McKinsey and company do a market assessment for us of
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the global markets what can you actually use co2 for what kind of products can you create what's the size of these
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markets what's the competitive landscape just on and on and on and we discovered
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that you can actually make 25 different products out of co2 and in 2030 the projection is this will be an 800
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billion to one point one trillion dollar annual market so it's a big deal coming
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back to the point earlier about taking carbon from the different processes you mentioned what's going to be your
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strategy of an area of focus probably not focusing on the air first I would imagine right so the way we're working
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we're actually building an entire ecosystem because we realize that such an animal did not exist and we think an
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end-to-end solution is absolutely critical which means that we're going to endeavor to fund R&D all
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over the world with people who have novel ideas to capture and then in turn transform co2 we're also then going to
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take a in on the commercialization aspect how do we actually commercialize these things because ultimately the
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solutions have got to get to scale so that it both creates the revenue as Frank and frankly it's climatologically
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significant meaning that it matters that we can capture enough co2 in the atmosphere and you mentioned you know
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some research projects I saw on your website that there is a plan to fund about a hundred million dollars a year
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in research right how would that process work and where are you at today in that
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process all right so today we've gotten commitments for over 50 million dollars
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total and our goal is to frankly aggregate as much money as possible our funding so that we can in turn fund more
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R&D and and our goal is a hundred million dollars a year for ten years so that's a billion dollars we'd love to
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have - we'd love to have three billion or even more because the more we have
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the more we can we can actually then fund from an R&D standpoint how it will
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work is as if you have an idea you'll present that idea to us and it will be
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vetted on technical terms does it work you know does it violate any of the laws of thermodynamics and and it will be
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vetted by a very esteemed panel of scientists if it passes that test questions was how large is the market so
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if you look at fizzy water and let's say that's your application that's a pretty
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small market so even if your application can work if it's a small one it doesn't necessarily fit that
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climatologically significant screen will then give you an award of let's just say
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hypothetically $250,000 you'll go off and you'll work on your invention we'll
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work with you so it goes from inception to bench scale prototype to pilot plant to hopefully large-scale
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commercialization and and when we're doing that we'll bring others in like large
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corporations to actually watch that happening because it may make sense for them to license your technologies and
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then you can get it to market in that way or you could do a greenfield startup we're also not averse in fact we're very
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keen on funding those things that are commercially viable today and we've talked about various examples there are
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some things that we think can get into the market today that can truly matter so what kind of example
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would you offer so the best example that I'm just so fond of telling is is cement
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and today's cement represents 7% of the global co2 emissions and that's a big
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that's a big number there's a process today where we can use co2 to create a
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calcium carbonate based cement which is structurally as integral as any other form of cement that's made it has cost
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parity and and it works it's actually commercially viable so it actually is 70% less emit of than the normal cement
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process so if you can then reduce that 7% by 70% by just deploying this to the world you can actually reduce global co2
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emissions today by five percent and when you add up all the different steps that
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you are planning to take huh what's the total impact on the environment and carbon dioxide usage that you would that
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you expect to see yeah so present co2 emissions are about 37 Giga tons a year which to put it into a different terms
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is about 1.2 billion garbage trucks worth of mass and as we've talked about it's a lot of garbage trucks and it
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stays up in the atmosphere for hundreds of years so our in we're endeavoring to capture
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frankly as much as we possibly can but our goal is at least 10% of the global annual emissions which is north of we're
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hoping north of 4 Giga tons per year as you mentioned 50 million dollars in funding you've commitments you received
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so far whose the funding coming from and what are their incentives yeah yeah that's a really good question
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so we think this is appealing to kind of everyone whether you're an individual or
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Foundation Corporation a government we think that has appeal and we're seeing
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that that is the case we do have funding from all of those sources that I just mentioned every opportunity you know
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contains the seeds of risk when you talk to potential funders what are the main risks that you see in this program
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well it's interesting thing I'd flip it around just as we're saying how do you
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take carbon dioxide and and transform it from a liability to an asset the risk here is not doing this we're playing
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with the long-term health of not only the planet but all the species that live on it so that's the climate standpoint
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of things is there a risk to some of these aren't going to work absolutely we
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know that and we have to go in and as Vinod Khosla is fond of saying you need many shots on goal and we've decided
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that this R&D is critical it's absolutely critical especially if you look at what we've agreed to in Paris
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which was to get to hopefully a two degree or one-and-a-half degree world if you look at the IND C's which are what
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the each of the individual countries has agreed to we only get to a three and a half degree world so there's a gap
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between three and a half degrees and even if you say two degrees we through our studies have shown that we can
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capture enough co2 to close about 20% of that gap so we think it's very worthwhile are you getting a lot of
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interest from countries as well as companies absolutely what we're seeing that there are certain countries that
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are enlightened there are certain countries that actually realize that there is that gap and we need to find
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any and all solutions to to deal with it more big proponents on the all-of-the-above strategy when it comes
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to a climate standpoint but we're also big proponents and on sustainable solutions I'm a business person I
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obviously went to Wharton and I believe that the most sustainable solutions are those that have in a capitalist society
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economic value that's created and that's really what we're driving to do what's
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been your biggest challenge so far and how have you dealt with it so it's really a knowledge-based issue and and
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it's an awareness issue too there's so much complexity in the world today what we're trying to do is
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is convey not only the sense of urgency and need which in itself is an educational aspect but it's also that
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this is one of the critical pillars in solving the climate issues the agreement that we all reached in Paris was
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fabulous last week obviously there was a formal signing in New York City and and
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that was great and now people are saying what do we do what do we do we have to do things and this is what we can do
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today to actually make a difference so we're seeing all of a sudden we were aided by Paris because there wasn't that
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same recognition but what happened actually accelerated interest and frankly commitment that we're getting
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and as I've told you kind of my myself and my team have kind of stopped sleeping it's it's it's it's something
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that isn't necessarily necessary if you will because we're just being besieged
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by interest and and that's a good thing you just fund ask questions you would
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launch this in January and Davos at the World Economic Forum right if you were to fast forward the next four or five
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years where do you think you'll be oh we're I hope I that we will be and
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it's an aspiration is that we will have this ecosystem purring all over the world and I mean all over the world and
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we have everyone from individual high school students who are in consider themselves to inventors college students
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researchers and labs people who are tinkering in their garage is actually working on solutions because they
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realize by taking the co2 and using it as an asset to make things that that you know it actually is beneficial so we're
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hoping that it stimulates that kind of interest and excitement that there is hope because I found in the 16 years
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I've been looking at the sustainability issue that a lot of people have despair
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what can I actually do this is something you can do so that's exciting and then
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and and so my hope is is that we have lights all over the world with people working on it at the same time we're
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hoping that there's this massive commercialization which obviously happens both through green fielding of new
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startups but also through adopting of technology that comes out of this Rd and and has broad scale application and
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frankly we see ourselves reducing emissions through other vehicles whether it is clean energy sources or energy
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efficiency but we're also capturing and thus reducing on a permanent basis co2
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in the atmosphere by using in these products so if we're making headway and frankly if we get even halfway to that
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10% goal that we've set in terms of utilization of the co2 and even if we get to hundreds of billions of dollars
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worth of product I'm a happy person but but it's very worthwhile endeavor and I
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want to wish you all the very best not just for the sake of the initiative but for the sake of the the environmental
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health of the world good luck to you and thank you for speaking to knowledge at work thank you thank you for having me
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you