Deep tech refers to technology solutions based on significant scientific or engineering advancements. These innovations often require substantial research and development (R&D) and are characterized by their potential to disrupt industries and address complex global challenges.
These technologies, rooted in scientific or engineering breakthroughs, tackle intricate global issues and involve high technological risks. The potential impact of deep tech is significant and can lead to transformative changes over the long term.
Deep tech solutions are rooted in advanced scientific discoveries or significant engineering innovations. They tackle complex problems that require extensive R&D and often have long development timelines. These solutions can potentially be disruptive, transforming industries and considerably impacting society. Many deep tech initiatives aim to address pressing issues such as climate change, sustainable energy, healthcare, and food security.
Examples of deep tech:
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning: AI-powered solutions are developed for various applications, including drug discovery, financial modeling, and robotics.
2. Biotechnology encompasses advancements in precision medicine, gene editing, and synthetic biology.
3. Quantum Computing research develops new algorithms and system designs for solving complex problems.
4. Robotics: industrializes automation, healthcare, and space exploration.
5. Space Technology focuses on developing technologies for space exploration, satellite communication, and the potential colonization of space.
6. Sustainable Energy innovation includes advanced solar power, nuclear fusion, and improved energy storage solutions.
7. Advanced Materials development creates new materials with enhanced properties for various applications.
However, only one addresses sustainable energy, climate change, healthcare, and food security.
As the late Nobel laureate Richard Smalley offered in his “Terawatt Challenge, " the world’s most pressing problems can only be addressed if people have plenty of energy. Energy is the top problem facing the world, followed by water, food, environment, and poverty. Solve the energy problem, and then “the next four go away,” he said.
Energy also catalyzes AI, quantum computing, robotics, space, and advanced materials.
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report stated that if human-caused global warming is not limited to just a couple of tenths of a degree, the Earth will experience serious degradation in 127 different ways over the coming decades. Therefore, the energy industry needs to be disrupted and transformed.
The IPCC report recognizes geoengineering, also referred to as climate intervention, as a potential, though risky, area of research related to climate change.
Geoengineering involves the deliberate, large-scale modifications to the Earth's climate system to counteract human-caused climate change. However, the report emphasizes that geoengineering cannot replace the need for significant and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It also highlights the high risks and uncertainties associated with these technologies.
The classic examples of geoengineering focus on the imbalances in the carbon cycle and the solar budget. These methods aim to manipulate these imbalances to counteract global warming. While it is widely recognized that climate change poses moral and political challenges, many believe that if moral and political solutions take too long to implement, the relative simplicity of geoengineering merits further exploration. Additionally, proponents argue that policymakers need a broader range of options, and geoengineering could be a crucial strategy to buy time until a more comprehensive solution can be developed.
Switzerland’s Climeworks opened the world’s largest operational direct air capture (DAC) plant, Mammoth, to global fanfare in May last year at a reported cost of US $800 million.
However, the facility, which uses what look like walls of giant fans to capture CO2 directly from the air and then pumps it deep underground, has not lived up to expectations.
According to a report by Iceland's Heimildin newspaper last month, the pilot project pulled just 105 tonnes of CO2 from the air in its first 12 months of operation, a fraction of its projected annual capacity of 36,000 tonnes. “The promotion of such technologies might be compared to some misguided science experiment to resurrect a long extinct species. Indeed, in the case of Climeworks’ Mammoth, the evidence suggests that its time is already up,” oceancare warned a year ago, and as reported here, such an effort is an exercise in economic denial.
The "Exploring Climate Cooling" program, supported by the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), is a research initiative focused on investigating solar radiation management (SAR) to cool the Earth and mitigate the effects of climate change.
The Center for International Environmental Law, however, has cautioned that these risky initiatives, including five different projects conducting outdoor experiments, could violate the precautionary principle and must be halted to safeguard both people and the planet.
Thermodynamic Geoengineering (TG) is the third geoengineering approach to tackling climate change and addressing its causes and effects. It is the only way to generate revenue-generating energy, offering a 1300% climate dividend. It is one part energy conversion, 12 parts surface cooling. It is the true “Deep Tech” because it shifts the heat of global warming to an average depth of 500 meters in the tropical ocean by converting it into a worldwide energy resource that is the lowest-cost energy extant and provides the greatest environmental benefit.
Environment and Climate Change Canada estimates that every dollar spent on proactive climate adaptation measures can save taxpayers between $13 and $15 in the long term. TG provides this dividend, with transformative change and advanced technology that meets the century's greatest challenge, offers 3000 years of climate respite, and can be scaled by mid-century. Â