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Climate Takes Concrete
35 Plays2 months ago
Welcome to Carbon13's podcast "Climate Takes" where we ask special guests for their "takes" on their industry and climate challenge, as well as setting a call to action, asking what will it take to solve the climate emergency?
In this episode hosted by Sara Jones, we speak to Eliot Brooks, CEO and Co-founder of Cocoon Carbon. In just 18 months, the cofounding team has scaled their technology to TRL6, raised $5.4m in pre-seed funding, and grown the company to 12 people.
Eliot was already an award winning entrepreneur and Forbes 30 Under 30 when he joined Carbon13's Venture Builder in 2023, in this episode, he shares his journey and his mission to make Cocoon Carbon one of the fastest growing climate hardware companies in the world.
Why does concrete matter? Concrete is the second most used man-made material after water. It's also one of the biggest single emitters of carbon dioxide, responsible for 8% of emissions. If it was a country, it would be the 3rd or 4th most polluting country in the world.
Sara Jones is Head of Marketing at Carbon13. She's worked in London's startup ecosystem for well over a decade and has been with Carbon13 since 2020, turning it into one of the strongest magnets for climate focused entrepreneurs in Europe.
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Transcript
Introduction to Climate Takes Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to Carbon Thirteen's podcast, Climate Takes. This is our chance to talk to our community about not only our founders, our investor communities takes on their industries and their sectors, but it's also going to be a call to action about what it takes to fight the climate emergency and reach net zero in our economy and keep this planet habitable for its people.
Featuring Elliot Brooks on Cocoon Carbon's Work
00:00:37
Speaker
I'm delighted that I'm joined by Elliot Brooks for this episode, Climate Takes Concrete, um which gives you the clue that Elliot Brooks is co-founder of Cocoon Carbon, who works across both the steel and concrete sectors. A little bit more on that.
00:00:55
Speaker
We want to be one of the fastest moving climate tech hardware companies out there. It's a case of putting a cocoon unit or plant in every steel mill around the world. Oh, that is a very loaded question. I think in modern day society, unless you work in these industries, you're so far removed from how these things all around you get made.
00:01:18
Speaker
we've We've kind of started the fundraising process and it like something's gone wrong here. I think when we got the results, we had to have ah like an hour of silence and the alone time, the three founders.
00:01:33
Speaker
Elliot, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. Really looking forward to today's conversation. It's going to be good. In fact, actually, can we do a podcast vocab test first? Because what I love about Concrete in Steel is it's got some specific vocab going on. And I think our listeners need a bit of education
Reducing Emissions in Steel and Concrete Sectors
00:01:52
Speaker
on this. Can you just take us through? What is cementitious material? What's slinker? And what does a slag handler do? OK, perfect. Good, good, good. ah Three items to kick us off. Yes, so.
00:02:08
Speaker
A supplementary cementitious material, which is the product that Cocoon ultimately produces, is a material that can be used to replace anywhere from 30% to 50% most commonly, ah but maybe even up to 95% of cement that would go into concrete.
00:02:27
Speaker
So you're supplementing the the concrete mixture with the cementitious material to reduce the amount of cement that ultimately goes into the concrete. And that's really important. And and the big reason people do this um is because, obviously, cement is the bulk of the emissions that we find in concrete. Concrete is roughly 1.1 tons of CO2.
00:02:50
Speaker
ah per tonne of concrete and 90% of that is cement. So people are looking to supplement or replace what goes into concrete with a supplementary cementitious material to reduce the amount of cement effectively. ah The second one was <unk>ker clinker. So that's effectively what you're producing when you're making cement. So when you put limestone into a kiln you produce clinker and that is effectively then you ground and use this ordinary Portland cement typically.
00:03:21
Speaker
um And then the third was a slag handler. So slag is the byproduct from the steel manufacturing process. You get various types of slag depending on at which point in the process of going from iron ore to steel or scrap to steel that the slag is produced. ah So the slag handler is the third party, ah often third party contracted on site to move, manage, dispose or resell ah that byproduct. And it used to be deemed it a waste material, but increasingly the industry is is deeming it a byproduct because it has value in the market. Got you. And these byproducts matter because
00:04:08
Speaker
I don't think it's well understood that steel and concrete contribute such a percentage of emissions. Why do steel and concrete matter to net zero? And what's your take on what the industry is trying to do to reach net zero? Yeah, so they between them account for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. I think it's roughly 8% due to the concrete industry, which is by and large due to the production of cement.
00:04:38
Speaker
um and then 7% to the steel industry. ah So these are pretty critical materials, right? We use them for all of the infrastructure we build. You won't find a major building project that doesn't involve steel or concrete.
00:04:54
Speaker
And when you think about all the construction that has to happen in the next 40 years as part of reaching net zero, so think solar farms, think um new transport infrastructure, all of that's going to need more steel and more cement. Then there's new housing for the growing populations around the world, et cetera. So it's projected that over the next 40 years we'll be able to double the amount of infrastructure as there is in the world today. That's the equivalent of adding a Manhattan every month.
00:05:23
Speaker
And so that means a lot more steel and a lot more cement and concrete than we've ever produced before. um So if we don't decarbonize these two materials as fast as possible or find alternatives, um ah we are going to really struggle to hit our limiting of global warming targets that we've set.
Decarbonizing Challenges in Steel and Concrete
00:05:43
Speaker
So decarbonizing these two is really what Kukun is focused on and you know gets me excited and out of bed every morning.
00:05:51
Speaker
Exactly, because unlike some of the other sectors that are emissions producing food or transport or energy, there's really nothing a consumer can do about steel and concrete, right? There's no such thing as a concrete beacon. You work in the building that you work in, you live in the building that is available for you to live in. ah Consumer power is quite weak in this area, which means that industry and innovators within the industry are the ones who have to stand up and lead it.
00:06:22
Speaker
Would you say the approaches of steel and concrete, the two industries, is differing for reaching net zero? I wouldn't necessarily say they're differing. ah They're both very hard to abate. So they're both very difficult to get to net zero. um But they're probably at slightly different stages or clarity levels on on the path to net zero.
00:06:47
Speaker
um And they're both similar in the fact that you know kind of historic chemical processes, by nature of what they are, emit CO2. And in cement, that's incredibly challenging, because the chemical process of producing it requires that you take limestone, put it in a kiln, and heat that material, which effectively is releasing the CO2 in the limestone. um And that was historically true you know when you look at making steel in the blast furnace. Again, you're going to have CO2 being emitted there as part of that process.
00:07:18
Speaker
ah The difference in terms of where they're at in stage, I would say, is that the steel industry, I think, is a bit clearer, I would say. like There's a very set path. The economics are probably a bit better understood that we go down the route of producing steel in the electric arc furnace. And rather than the blast furnace and then refining that refining that the iron that you produce in the blast furnace in a basic oxygen furnace. Instead, we can use these electric arc furnaces. So they're powered largely with electricity. In some cases, they are still putting natural gas into them. um But these furnaces can either remelt scrap
00:07:57
Speaker
ah to then produce steel, although ah there's not enough scrap in the world to meet the demand for steel. So we also have to find a way of going from iron ore into steel that ideally circumvents the blast furnace process, which is highly emitting. So the other method or ah of steel production using the electric arc furnace is to then use what's called direct reduced iron ore.
00:08:21
Speaker
So a specific type of iron ore that's been processed in such a way that it can then go straight into the electric arc furnace to produce steel. So through that means, we can make a ah meaningful impact on the decarbonisation of steel. It wouldn't get us completely to net zero, and that's where things like ah using hydrogen power, for example, come into force. So if you look at a company called
Progress in Net Zero Steel Production
00:08:44
Speaker
Stegra, formerly H2 Green Steel, I believe they'll be one of the first who will have a true net zero plant operation, which is effectively the combination of those processes I've described. So hydrogen powered, DRI, yeah EAF, steel plant. So, you know, it's almost already being done, like with the commissioning of that plant, once it's ready, you know, we would have seen a real life example of a steel manufacturer getting to net zero or as close to um as, yeah, as as can be feasibly done today.
00:09:16
Speaker
On the concrete side, obviously the big emissions source is the manufacturing process of cement. um So there's a few different ways ah that that the industry is looking to address this. And know I would say that the there's probably a little bit less progress so far, but that path is becoming a lot clearer um and there's a lot more that you need more of a portfolio approach. There's not one really clear, obvious solution that everyone needs to get to. You need to do kind of everything as much as you can, as soon as you can. Got you. And so, cocoon carbon is able to
00:10:00
Speaker
work with the increasing byproduct of one industry, which is actually increased as I understand it through the increase in electric arc furnaces. So through the transition of steel to a more electrified way of producing steel, it actually produces more of the byproduct that you want to turn into the cementitious material. And therefore you can try and link the two.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yes. so So I think that's a really interesting point in that they were already historically linked. So the blast furnace yields blast furnace slag. That for many, many years has been used by the cement industry as a supplementary cementitious material.
00:10:42
Speaker
So you can either grind it with cement and produce a slag cement, or you can mix it at the point of making concrete and reduce the amount of clinker or cement that goes into the concrete. ah And historically, that was for cost reasons. It was considered a waste material. It was very cheap to acquire, often even free. um Then there's also specific properties it might give the concrete. But increasingly in the last 20 years, it's because of the lower emissions associated with using a byproduct.
00:11:11
Speaker
So that that link between blast furnaces and the cement or concrete industry has long existed. But as you're kind of pointing out, we're moving to electric arc furnace still making. Blast furnaces are being shut down. And this new byproduct is called steel slag. And that's where we're focused. So by enabling that material to be upcycled in the same way as blast furnace slags, we are reconnecting these industries again so they can decarbonize in sync. Got you.
00:11:38
Speaker
now You started working on cocoon carbon within the last two years, ah roughly to two to year and a half yeah you're in a half, less than two years. And you didn't know any of this no a year and a half ago. So for aspiring founders who are trying to find where they should be looking for decent ideas to actually you know, build something that will have a global impact. What were the learnings from that journey which gave you the confidence to try a completely new industry and indeed a very ah very conservative complex industry as well? Yeah, so, I mean, what I would start by saying is, I think,
00:12:20
Speaker
doing that shift and changing industries was pretty illogical. I think a lot of people would be looking at me, you know i I left private to knowing I wanted to set up a second company and do the journey again, take everything I'd learned and apply that. And the logical thing would be to do something in healthcare, even if it was a climate angle, because you can leverage your your industry knowledge, your contacts, et cetera.
00:12:45
Speaker
ah and i joined carbon 13 obviously wanting to understand the climate space but thinking maybe I would do something in health care related to climate.
00:12:57
Speaker
Um, and instead what I ended up doing was, you know, co-founding Cocoon in a completely different industry, building hardware. Um, like you say, uh, you know, forever was medical diagnostic kits assembly. There was lots of operations and logistics, but it wasn't developing proprietary hardware. So yeah, it was, it was very, very different. Um, and I think that.
00:13:25
Speaker
You know, you have to kind of remind you, think about what you're really good at in the context of private that is, or your previous roles that is transferable. So for me, ah this sounds quite nebulous, but i I felt like I was really good at making things happen and getting things done. So getting a team together, getting them really focused on a project, getting everyone working well together, getting really clearly defined goal parameters and path forward.
00:13:51
Speaker
um And then I had a lot of, I guess, understanding around the kind of general ops and scaling challenges of hiring, building out the team, growing a company, that sort of thing. um And I had learned a new industry but before with Friba. You know, I'm not a clinician. I'm not from a medical background. So I kind of learned a new industry um and in that case. um But so focusing on what I felt like I could bring to the table was kind of what I had to remind myself rather than telling myself, oh, you don't know anything about this. like It was patently clear from the beginning that yeah I had a lot to learn. um But it was focusing on how we actually progress and move the business forward. um So yeah, the biggest learning was, yeah I guess, just kind of reminding yourself what you're good at, trying to stick to that, and recognizing that you're going to have a really steep learning curve, um and not being afraid to not know the answer, to kind of go back to school.
00:14:46
Speaker
I watched a number of YouTube series on you know every the every aspect of cement and then getting to the point of concrete, reminding myself of the chemistry of the blast furnace that you learn when you're in 15, 14 years old in school and chemistry lessons. um So you have to be quite humble and and find good advisors, industry experts who recognize what level you're at and are kind of comfortable explaining things.
00:15:14
Speaker
at quite a basic introductory level initially. Was the priority for Cocoon
Focus on US Market and Regulatory Environment
00:15:20
Speaker
right now because you've raised $5 million dollars from investors in the US, if I understand correctly, and do you actually think a lot of your customer base is going to be in the US? Is that right?
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So five minute yeah just just over five million, largely ah US investors, one London based fund, which has been nice to have some on this side of the the Atlantic as well. um And yeah, for for a couple of reasons, the US makes a lot more sense for what we're doing. One, the They're a lot further in this transition to electric arc furnace still making. So 70% of the still in the US is made by this method. So there's a lot more still slank to go after first in Europe, where it's maybe 30% is made by the electric arc furnace, although rapidly changing and increasing. ah So that was was one reason.
00:16:14
Speaker
The second was the kind of standards and regulations for bringing a new product to market are a lot easier. They have what you call performance based standards. So you're looking at how does that material perform when in concrete, whereas in the UK and Europe, they are changing, but they have been what's called recipe based standards.
00:16:34
Speaker
So you have to say that you have to give the meet specific criteria on the chemistry of the material, the source of the material. um So for those reasons, we've been a lot more focused on the US initially. We still have some interesting activities happening in Europe with potential future partners, but ah yeah the focus has been on the US.
00:16:53
Speaker
And the big kind of goal right now ah that we're working towards is proving the technology out at scale. So getting an onsite ah demonstration of the technology we've built to show that we can work on a still plant that we can slot into existing slack handling processes and do that safely whilst also generating a material that the market wants. So that's about producing a large amount of material to enable testing of it at sufficient scale, using it in use cases, so getting it into the ground and then building confidence in the market um in that material such that you can ultimately then hopefully have both of those parties say, build a pilot plant here and we will buy the product from that pilot plant. So that's what we're trying to get to through these demonstration trials that we're running. And everything that you've just described,
00:17:48
Speaker
is a commercial decision.
Balancing Climate Goals with Market Demands
00:17:50
Speaker
So I'm going to ask you a very loaded question and I really want our listeners to pay attention to this. Are you a climate tech company? Oh, that is a very loaded question. of ah We are. I mean, that's why we exist, but it's not why people should buy our product.
00:18:10
Speaker
um So you know that is very much what motivates us, what drives us, what causes us to work very hard and you know do the the founder life and the founder challenges. um It's what galvanizes the team, but it's not how we're going to win customers. We're going to produce a product that performs comparative to something else on the market and is price comparative to that product. It's very simple. I think Everybody's looking for those business models, those products where the end result is significant reduction in emissions.
00:18:51
Speaker
But it's the price comparison, the cost comparison, the the properties of the product, which are going to commercially scale this this startup. There are some industries where the direction of travel will introduce regulations so which will drive the adoption of green technologies and introduce green premium, everything from the EUC ban, which is the cross border adjustment mechanism, um to the future of trading relationships ah in in this planet. But in your industry, it's a price decision, it's a commercial decision. And yet we're talking 16% of the world's emissions, and we have to drive change through a commercial argument.
00:19:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. i I think that's the way it's got to be. You know, the steel manufacturers, the slack handlers benefit because we're taking a product that maybe best case scenario has a resale value of $20 a ton and we're processing it such that it can be sold for a hundred dollars per ton. Um, so we enable them to share in that value uplift and then ultimately we're producing a product.
00:20:02
Speaker
that is growing in supply already exists in tens and hundreds of millions of tons around the world, tens of millions of tons in the US. So the cement manufacturer or the concrete producer knows they can get the supply and the volumes they need. And we're doing it at a price that they might already be paying for another product when this performs comparatively. And you know if you're buying glass furnace slag and using that, it's getting increasingly hard to access because they are shutting blast furnaces down, largely in the west, in the northern hemisphere at least. And if you're using fly ash, which is another byproduct
00:20:41
Speaker
that comes from coal plants um that's used as supplementary cementitious material. If you're using fly ash, it comes from coal plants. Guess what? Suppling to coal plants. We're shutting them down. So um we offer a kind of alternative growing supply of a material at a price that is based on the market and the performance of that product.
00:21:03
Speaker
why um Why do you think you were able to
00:21:10
Speaker
say to your pre-seed investors, including Carbon 13, but also the other VCs and investors, why should they pick your team and your product and your company to build the future that you've just described? What do you think impressed them?
00:21:28
Speaker
That's a very good question. It's a shame they're not here. Yeah, I should ask them as well. Yeah, we can invite them in. No, I think if I hazarded a guess, it was the ability of the team to deliver and perform and move at a very fast speed in a very short space of time. You know, Carbon 13 is all about solving the climate emergency as an emergency.
00:21:53
Speaker
um I believe that what we're working on by virtue of the fact that this material was produced in hundreds of millions of tons already around the world. you know The technology is challenging to build. It's not easy, but yeah if it can be done, then it's a case of putting a cocoon unit or plant in every steel mill around the world, and then it's a rollout challenge. But you can have a huge amount of impact. you know If we could get one of these on every steel mill in the next 10 years, we can have a ah huge impact on um the emissions ah from the concrete sector.
00:22:28
Speaker
um And, you know, as I said, we've moved at pace so far. We really want to keep doing that. We want to be one of the fastest moving climate tech hardware companies out there because hardware does take time. um So I would say that kind of pace team point was a big one and then also linked to that, the business model. So we kind of touched on it already, but we are.
00:22:51
Speaker
Solving a problem for the producers of that slag or that by-product, we are producing economic value for them and we are delivering a product um that is badly needed by the industry at a price that they are already paying for another product that performs comparatively. so what What signals should an investor look for that would distinguish a fast-paced team?
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really good question. So the the speed with which they can produce results. So I think when we took investment, so we took the carbon 13 convertible note, and at the same time we took a convertible note from HACS, which is a US um hardware accelerator, they have a physical space where companies come in and you know it's got an engineering workshop, it's got a lab space, it's got access to lots of support on site to help you build your first prototype. We moved there in November, ah first of November last year, and we said, right, we want to, at which point all we had done is shown that we can actually capture CO2 into Slack, which has since become a bit of a deprioritized aspect of the company.
00:24:08
Speaker
We had a hunch that we could turn it into a cementitious material, but we hadn't proven that. So we moved there in first of November and we said, right, we want results and we want ah that show we can do this. And then we want to go fundraise by first of January. And that first month.
00:24:24
Speaker
We had all kinds of setbacks, challenges, buying equipment, it arrived broken, tried to get new equipment, again arrived broken, then we didn't have the right power supply. But we found a way to still get the process carried out by a third party and generate data. So by our first monthly check in on that 1st of December, we generated some data to help de-risk the number one priority of the company despite not even having any equipment ourselves. um So I think looking at, you know, how teams make, how they find a way to get to results and get to data and how they then iterate and improve upon that data. I think that's a really strong signal.
00:25:05
Speaker
um
00:25:08
Speaker
And then, yeah, I guess it's also how they think smartly around de-risking the go-to market. So, you know, when you're building hardware and when you're developing complex technology,
00:25:21
Speaker
You still need to engage your potential customers early on but and start validating the demand for that product. But you know showing up to someone and saying, hey, potential customer, this technology is three years away from being ready at the scale you need, that's not really going to then create the type of traction you need with them. So one of the things we did was come up with ways we could deliver proof of concept work for them.
00:25:48
Speaker
So we can take a sample of their still slag, remelt it, run it through our system, generate data and results, and use that to start showing them what the technology can deliver despite it not being ready. And so I think those seeing teams who can come up with those smart ways of engaging the market early on, building traction, despite the fact that the product might take a couple of years to commercialize.
00:26:13
Speaker
throughout that process what was what was like a hell yeah moment and then what was a squeaky bum moment oh good question um a hell yeah moment would probably be when we went and visited ah one of the first customers we did this proof of concept work for. And we you know went on site, presented the results, getting a tour of the still plant, seeing the size of the operation. It's a very large plant, one of the largest in North for America.
00:26:52
Speaker
um And it's pretty kind of like incredible realization that you know your goal is to be here deploying technology to process this huge amount of like molten material. A little bit overwhelming, but also very exciting. ahs just like you know I think in modern day society, unless you work in these industries, you're so far removed from how these things all around you get made. And it's quite fascinating to actually go there and see the the level of sophistication of operation.
00:27:21
Speaker
I was thinking this earlier, you know, I've known you since about like 2014 and in all that time until about 2022, I've never, every single startup I've seen all these events that you go to in London, I have never heard anybody say they're working on a concrete startup. It would have been unthinkable yeah because it's so divorced from the startup ecosystem, quote unquote. And it's climate, which is being able to redirect really smart founders to the hard to obey industries. I don't think they would have looked so deeply, so far away, if not for that. No. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean that, you know, back to the kind of question of like, yeah, the change in industry. I i think even though it felt like a logical thing,
00:28:10
Speaker
like I got really excited when you know hearing this stat of in the next 40 years will be double the amount of infrastructure. And I got excited about how big a challenge that is and how important it is that we solve these two industries, which are literally the building blocks of all of that infrastructure of society. And, you know, it's not the, the solution is clearly, well, don't just, the solution isn't don't just build. There's lots of ethical reasons. There's lots of reasons related to the energy transition we need to build.
00:28:42
Speaker
So we have to actually find a way of decarbonizing these industries. And that was yeah that just got me so excited, so excited, like drew drew into the like the sense of purpose um that that made me kind of forget some of the logical arguments for not jumping into completely different industry. um But yeah, i think I think that's true of a lot of people coming into climate, starting to see a lot more second time founders being drawn in into very different industries, but they can take the skills they've learned around execution um and apply those. so
00:29:17
Speaker
Yeah, and then you ask for a low moment. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Oh, this is tricky moment. that Yeah, ah there's always plenty of those. um I would say one in particular and you know, to this point of We were trying to, when we decided to go fundraise in January, wanted to prove out the technology could produce a cementitious material. And um so we had this first set of data that looked pretty good. We're then obviously making tweaks to the process, trying to improve it.
00:29:52
Speaker
And the second set of data came out. So we're making cement cubes effectively and crushing them. And you're looking at for good compressive strength, comparable-ish to ordinary Portland cement. So we crushed them and they were like sand. Like, you know, they might as well.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah, not been anything other than Play-Doh or something. They were they were totally are not good at all. And um you're like, right, where we've we've kind of started the fundraising process. And that like something's gone wrong here. um And it was a bit stressful. you know I think when we got the results, we had to have ah like an hour of silence and the alone time, the three founders. And then we quickly came back together, ran through the process.
00:30:38
Speaker
quickly identified that actually some quite critical things had not been done, ah you know, classic case of one person doing the results initially. And then the next time due to travel and holidays, it being around Christmas, um myself and and Freddie had done the process this time and we'd missed some pretty crucial fundamental steps. It was just your like stupidity and not. Yeah, yeah. like god and And here I was thinking, oh, this is like really enjoying being in the lab, getting hands on and just understanding the process.
00:31:12
Speaker
um ah And Yeah, and little did I realize that I should maybe not not be near there. No, I mean, subsequently have learned how to do that. But yeah, sure. Sure. ah As founders do, just the Swiss army knife that founders have to be is is is quite brilliant.
00:31:34
Speaker
um
00:31:37
Speaker
One point I've kind of already asked the question, but I'd like to go back to that point because I don't think we made it quite clear enough is that I remember in a conversation with you, we were talking about how the decarbonisation paths for steel and concrete are actually slightly at odds with each other.
00:31:55
Speaker
So with the steel industry, it's got a relatively clear, I say relatively, a path to net zero that looks like transitioning away from the historic way of making steel, which is taking iron ore, producing pig iron in the blast furnace, refining that pig iron into steel in the basic oxygen furnace, and instead using electric arc furnaces, using electricity to power them,
00:32:22
Speaker
effectively remelting scrap or producing what's known as DRI, direct reduced iron ore, into an EAF to then go from iron ore to steel and one single furnace and one single process. And then you can bolt on powering it by hydrogen. And that's kind of the rough path to to net zero. um And great examples of ah is companies already making huge progress there, Stegra,
00:32:50
Speaker
ah based in Sweden are building ah that exact sort of plant setup. And that will be as close to net zeros um anyone is ah in terms of producing zero emissions still. um Now, what's funny about this is when you look at the path for the concrete industry, um one of the first things on cement manufacturers or concrete producers paths is maximize the use of supplementary cementitious materials.
00:33:20
Speaker
And that's because they're already available today, and they can have quite meaningful reductions in embodied TO2 of concrete, because you can replace anywhere from you know up to 50% of cement. So you can cut the emissions of concrete by about 40% by using this these SEMs, what Cocoon produces as well. Now, the main SEM source,
00:33:41
Speaker
is blast furnaces, a bit of the slag from blast furnaces, I should say. So that is ground and granulated, and then it can be used as an SEM. So what you're seeing is STILL's path to net zero is choking off the supply of one of these critical ah ah portfolio approaches that cement has to take to reducing it or concrete has to take to reducing its emissions.
00:34:03
Speaker
ah And then the other s dominant ah SEM that's used in the market is fly ash. Fly ash comes from coal plants. Again, the energy transition means we are not using coal plants anymore, therefore we are not producing fly ash. So there's this weird journey to net zero for these two industries where that there's this interplay that's kind of negatively impacting the cement and concrete industry through steel decarbonizing.
Inter-industry Dependencies and Collaboration
00:34:32
Speaker
which I think is a really important point to make is that different industries are going to have different paths and ah people will be speculating on there are going to be byproducts from this industry or that industry is going to lose use less of search and search or that industry is going to need that power source because of that ah technology.
00:34:55
Speaker
And it's really going to be difficult to predict in 2035, 2040, 2050 if industries don't come together and have a dialogue and have conversations. And if governments don't agree directions of travel and don't agree on on partnerships across borders, et cetera, and regulations, we can't just have isolated sectors making their own decisions because they're going to negatively impact each other if we're not careful.
00:35:25
Speaker
um Climate is not just the reduction of an emission in one industry. It's also going to be the reduction of waste. It might be circularity. It's going to be water pury purification. It's going to be plastics reduction, ah resource extraction. As you've articulated, your industry is still going to need to extract ah raw materials um because we just don't have enough to circularize, to recycle. There's just not going to be sufficient.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah, when we need more iron ore to make more steel because there's not enough to recycle. Exactly. And I don't think I've heard of, really heard any, there's no alternative to steel. Yeah, I mean, there's not that I'm aware of. um I mean, you can look at limiting use to some extent, and that's ah that's a bit more of a driving concrete. You're talking about um Things like bamboo buildings and deregulating. So certain markets, for instance, will stop you building, not bamboo, sorry, timber. um But certain markets will stop you. um You can't build timber above a certain height or due to fire regulations, etc. So there's, you know, how can you limit the use of concrete ah by using other materials? um But it's a complex.
00:36:45
Speaker
You know, the world is a complex system, both in terms of the human built, designed world and heavy industries, and production and consumerism, whatever, as well as that the natural system itself. Right. So, um yeah, I don't, there's no, there's always going to be a knock on effect of one industry going down a certain path on another industry somewhere. um And, you know, look at the bullet. Sorry, Karen.
00:37:12
Speaker
I was going to say like the the rise of ah Gen AI and therefore the data center demand and you know a lot of the um construction that needs to happen there at a time when you're also trying to push towards net zero, what are you building these data centers out of? um So yeah, I mean, there's a lot of factors going on beyond just like industries pursuing net zero, but also emergence of new technologies which are changing the needs of of construction or society or, yeah, it's complex. The aim is not to try and find a silver bullet, it's to try and find a pathway which is going to be a able to adapt um and often a decentralized system can be more adaptable. I was just going to say there as well and in terms of
00:38:04
Speaker
you know talk about what governments and companies have to do. But i I think the really interesting areas for innovation are in these, finding these places where the system breaks, where one person's decarbonate, one company or one industry's decarbonization path jeopardizes the way another industry is doing something else and how you can innovate and use technology to solve that in a way that enables both of those things to be more commercially viable.
00:38:32
Speaker
um Yeah, it's a very interesting time for innovation in the climate space. I would encourage both investors and founders, whatever idea you're looking at, really push yourself to look at the world in 2035 as a minimum and not just an immediate problem at the moment. To the aspiring founders and the inspiring aspiring investors for for climate listening to this, the climate curious, what would you say to them, Elliot?
00:39:00
Speaker
Yeah, so the the founders, I would say that you know climate is a huge, huge, huge opportunity. It's really like the next industrial revolution in terms of opportunity. and you know um Apart from using AI in climate, which I think is interesting, like don't get on the gen AI hype. It's overdone unless you're going to use it to solve climate because that is the biggest crisis we face and therefore a huge opportunity and a way you can spend your time with a real sense of purpose and passion. So I'd encourage you to explore opportunities within climate.
00:39:35
Speaker
um and carbon 13 was a great way for me to do that personally. And then if you're a investor who's looking to maybe move into the climate or the hardware space, I guess it's spending time in the right networks, getting to know the right advisors or folks with experience, understanding um the different nuances and niches of industries, opportunities, trends, ah where where those are.
00:40:02
Speaker
through finding these trusted advisors or folks here who have long been looking at the space.
Climate Tech as Business Opportunities
00:40:09
Speaker
ah So I think our key lessons for people listening today is climate tech doesn't always look like climate tech on the surface. Sometimes it just looks like a good business decision. And I think for investors listening to this as well,
00:40:22
Speaker
building up the networks about how to understand how you invest in hard tech and deep tech ah is going to be where some of the most exciting chances to support some of the UK's most exciting entrepreneurs is going to come. So I deeply encourage you to do that. And you're very welcome to reach out to Carbon13. We can make some introductions and and and talk about our world ah further. The climate emergency is here.
00:40:46
Speaker
2024 has not been a great year, not a great leap forward for the climate emergency on on many measures. Climate is going to take patience. It's going to take teamwork. It's going to take steel. It's going to take fire. It's going to take rock. It's going to take concrete. um And above all, it's going to take you to stand up and do something. Thank you very much, Elliot, for your time. Really appreciate it. I'll let you carry on saving the world. Thank you very much for having me.
00:41:16
Speaker
Brilliant. Good afternoon