Reinventing the future: How technology could be our way out of the climate crisis

“We do not stand a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting to net zero by 2045”, professor Astley Hastings, reader in environmental science at the University of Aberdeen, tells me.

Hastings is one of 200 climate technology leaders who wrote to the main political parties ahead of the July general election, urging leaders to place climate change at the heart of their agenda.

However, four months on from polling day, there have only been “warm words”, Hastings tells Holyrood.

The academic has a long background in the energy industry and for the last 20 years has been lobbying for a tech-powered, environmentally safe future.

Climate technology – a suite of innovations designed to mitigate the effects of climate change – is poised to buy time in a race where time itself is running out. Around 35 per cent of the CO2 emission reductions needed by 2050, according to a report by the International Energy Agency, depend on technologies that are still in development. And, a report published by global experts during COP29, which took place earlier this month, outlined how climate tech plays a “pivotal role” in “revolutionising” the global supply chain.

In Scotland, climate tech has long featured in net zero plans. In 2020, the Scottish Government announced an £18m Emerging Energy Technologies Fund as part of an update to its Climate Change Plan and, ahead of COP26, a report by ScotlandIS said Scotland was on the “cusp” of a climate tech revolution.

However, since then the momentum has died down, with a year-on-year cut of more than 40 per cent in investment in climate tech start-ups since 2021 – a situation worsened by global and national climate targets hanging in the balance.

Andrew Wordsworth, chief executive of Sustainable Ventures, a climate tech start-up accelerator which recently launched in Glasgow, says: “One of the challenging things of the last three to four years was the stop-starting and people saying, ‘we’ll do 2035, now we’ll move to 2030’, to ‘now we’ll just abandon targets’. That sort of loss of certainty obviously damaged large companies and investors’ confidence in these technologies and rolling them out.”

He adds: “Ultimately, they’re [politicians] increasing the cost of the transition, they’re not creating these new green jobs. So sometimes they’re shooting themselves in the foot.”

Unsurprisingly this technology faces an issue shared by most innovative solutions – it isn’t cheap. Conflicting targets scale back the confidence investors may have about long-term returns on the short-term and large investments climate tech requires.

Hastings says: “We’re all in the lifeboat and we’ve all got to row in the right direction. The problem is now that each government department does its own thing, and they don’t really talk to each other.

“They’re all trying to do something that’s different from the others, just to be different, to make a point. It’s a political game that people are playing with this [net zero].”

To put it in perspective, the mainstream adoption of green hydrogen technology, which Scottish Power says is “vital” to decarbonise the future UK fuel mix, is estimated to begin within the next five to 10 years, according to the CFA Institute which sets the global standard for investment management excellence. And the Energy Transmission Commission estimates that for hydrogen to decarbonise energy and other industries, almost $15tn will be needed until 2050. Although this is a figure that reflects the investment required at a global level, Labour confirmed just £2bn of funding for green hydrogen projects in its Autumn Budget, continuing the prior Conservative government’s previous pledge. It is understood that this fund would only cover the cost gap between renewable hydrogen generation and the market price over 15 years. Put simply, timeframes outlined in support plans do not match the revenue timeline for investing in the technology.

We do not stand a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting to net zero by 2045

Rebecca Alisson, chief operations officer at the Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC), acknowledges securing investment will be “one of the biggest challenges” but adds that a “joint approach” between the private and public sector would fix the issue. “While public funding can’t bear the entire cost, government policies should create an attractive landscape for private investors.

“We do need to invest in the supply chain element and really help them accelerate their technology at pace into what the energy sector looks like for the future. So there needs to be changes in some of the consenting and some of the regulations, etc.”

And GB Energy has emerged as a potential lifesaver for the sector, she explains. “I believe that GB Energy’s role as an investment partner helps de-risk the process, which aligns with much of what we do at the NZTC – addressing and mitigating risks. We’re often dealing with technologies that haven’t been fully tested, which introduces uncertainty. At the same time, we need to adapt existing technologies, repurposing them from their original use to fit into the new clean tech space.”

Clare Reid, director of policy & public affairs at Prosper, formerly known as the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, also says that better self-awareness could help fix the issue.

"It would be great to see kind of a bigger public engagement campaign, probably led by the Scottish Government around climate, on the role that we can all play."

She adds: "The onus is on all of us, whether we're in business, the third sector or government, to think about and understand how technology can help us."

Reid suggests that a more effective campaign could also help close the skills gap in the sector.

"I think we're probably not being long-sighted enough in terms of thinking about attracting more young people into climate tech and sort of related climate roles.

"I think there's something about how we think longer term...how we build that pipeline of future people. A kind of more national campaign for climate literacy. And I think that's probably happening to an extent in schools. But I would question whether it's happening across the broader population."

Over the last few years most eyes have been fixed on one technology – carbon capture and storage (CCS), a system that captures, transports and stores CO2 emissions thousands of kilometres underground to prevent it from damaging the atmosphere.

North of the border, all the attention is on the Acorn Project in Aberdeenshire. However, the initiative has continuously failed to secure support from the UK Government, losing out to projects south of the border. Although it received track two status in July, it has since moved down the agenda again, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer excluding Acorn from a £22bn funding boost for carbon capture clusters announced last month.

For Hastings, allowing the close-down of the Ineos plant at Grangemouth was an act of self-sabotage by the Scottish Government in its calls to push the Acorn Project forward. He explains to Holyrood that without the refinery, the emissions in the region have dropped, meaning that priorities have shifted to areas where these are higher.

He explains: “It [the Acorn project] would have   gone up the priority list for the UK Government because then it [Grangemouth] would’ve been an emitter, so it’s a good target and place that you could sort of focus on. But right now, there’s not a lot of emissions up there. So, in terms of the UK, it’s peanuts.”

He tells Holyrood the clampdown on the oil industry will only delay the tech-enabled just transition. “You obviously want to keep the revenue streams coming from the oil industry so that it can invest in changing to carbon capture. Companies that are doing so will use their existing infrastructure and their knowledge of the subsurface for the reservoirs in which to store the CO2 in a very cost effective and efficient way. But if you take the oil companies out and you force them to leave the UK or Scotland, then why would they invest in CCS here?”

Yet the idea of having CO2 below our feet has caused division among stakeholders. Friends of the Earth Scotland’s climate campaigner Alex Lee accused the Scottish Government of wanting to turn the North Sea “into Europe’s carbon dumping ground”, supporting “greenwashing tech” that he claims has “nothing to show” for itself.

He told Holyrood: “Even if by some miracle it worked, the carbon would have to be monitored and guarded forever, creating a hugely expensive, dangerous burden that is forced on to future generations.”      

However, although Stuart Hazeldine, CCS professor at the University of Edinburgh, recognises that the CCS alternative isn’t great, he warns that “Scotland cannot get to net zero unless there’s some sort of CO2 storage”.

He adds: “We’re too slow in increasing the rate of carbon dioxide storage if we’re going to meet climate targets, what needs to be done is not research on new technology particularly, but persuasion, calculation and scenario modelling to demonstrate to governments that there really is very little alternative disposal.”

The UK aims to store 20 to 30 million tonnes of carbon per year, which is only around six per cent of the total carbon the UK emits annually, according to the most recent statistics by the UK Government.

Hazeldine continues: “None of the alternatives are particularly great but carrying on as we are is one of the least great options, because that will certainly end up in tipping points and rampant global warming”.

“Particularly in places like Scotland, we’ve built lots of windmills and we’re busy building tidal power, [and we think] we’ve got the problem solved, and we have barely started solving the problem.”

However, climate tech’s potential goes beyond it accelerating the pace to net zero. These breakthroughs offer the opportunity to become more resilient to climate change effects that are currently being felt across the world as well as energy conflicts, like the one kickstarted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

You want to keep the revenue coming from the oil industry so that it can invest in changing to carbon capture

Last year, storm Babet forced hundreds to evacuate their homes and claimed the lives of two Angus locals, and right now the Spanish region of Valencia is still managing the chaos caused by flash floods which left more than 200 dead. Severe weather events have increased in frequency and intensity, and it seems the trend is far from slowing down.

The University of Glasgow is shooting for the stars after finding satellite video footage could become an early warning system for flooding, allowing for better planning.

And, last month, Glasgow’s managed testing service provider Resillion partnered with Strathclyde University to test a new interoperable system which could monitor and optimise energy consumption, contributing to grid stability.

These technologies would not only help climate strategies but also boost the social license to operate – public’s acceptance of the widespread adoption of climate tech –  which is key to fixing the lack of long-term commitment to the sector, Hastings claims.

“The whole country has to be behind this. If not, then it [investment] won’t happen because politicians are not going to implement policies that get them out of office in in one term.”

Similarly, Bill Chard, Resillion’s energy business manager, explains to Holyrood: “The digital transformation that’s going on in the industry is enabling consumers to be much more aware of how they use energy, helping them manage costs while being a part of reaching net zero targets. So better visibility and better control of energy usage is a key thing.”

None of the alternatives are particularly great but carrying on as we are is one of the least great options

But Donald Trump’s victory has put a spanner in the works for the future of the sector. Trump has often downplayed the climate emergency, and his win saw climate tech stock market shares plunge. For Orsted, one of the largest offshore wind developers, the share price decreased by 14 per cent.

However, Wordsworth argues the US’ potential cut-back in the sector could be a starting gun for an international race on who can fill the gap in the market and reap the financial benefits of doing so. “Whilst Trump’s victory is unlikely to be a positive for the global need to transition to a net zero economy, it does present an opportunity for the UK and Scotland to take a leadership role in climate tech and capture the significant economic opportunity this represents”, he says.