The Company That’s Raised $60 Million to Geoengineer the Planet

For more than 30 years, a heterodox group of scientists have proposed injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight away from Earth, thereby cooling the atmosphere and reversing climate change.

But actual research into the idea has remained taboo, or at least the province of university and government labs. Then, last year, Heatmap broke the story of an Israeli-American company named Stardust Solutions that had raised $60 million to develop a new solar geoengineering technology. This system would be easier to control and track than the traditional approach to geoengineering, it claims.

On this episode of Shift Key, Rob is joined by Yanai Yedvab, the cofounder and CEO of Stardust. They discuss why Stardust is researching geoengineering now, whether a for-profit company belongs in the space, why Yanai believes Stardust’s particles are superior to sulfate aerosols, and whether Stardust has or will ever conduct outdoor experiments.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.

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Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

Robinson Meyer: It’s an inert particle — or it dissolves, right? If it dissolves and breaks down in water, is it really inert? Because on the one hand, we’re saying, oh it’s inert when it’s sprayed in the atmosphere, and on the other hand, oh but it dissolves in water. But a particle that dissolves doesn’t seem to me to be a particle that could be inert, so ... And then if it’s inert then it would bioaccumulate, right, because that’s, you know, plastic, for instance is inert and what we’ve learned is that plastic is bioaccumulating in tissue.

So walk through, how can it be inert and also dissolve in water and break down through a number of natural processes that exist in the Earth system already?

Yanai Yedvab: It sounds like a paradox, right? And the short answer is the difference between the air atmosphere, the stratosphere, where we need these particles to be inert, which is very, very dry, contains primarily sulfates and a few other trace gases. But much, much cleaner and drier than the atmosphere. And yes, you’re right. In that environment, the particle is inert. And once it falls on the ground, where you have enormous amount of water and vapor and all the other components, these components are able to dissolve it.

But I think that I would say the more fundamental point that you’ve been making in your question is that essentially you need to meet a very strict set of requirements. Part of it has to do with the stratosphere. Part of it has to do with the atmosphere. And to your question, why do we believe that the right way to do it is to actually develop the technology? It’s because in the end of the day, only when you’re walking through these problems and you are able to do, for example, I would say, micromanagement of the surface properties of the particle and make sure exactly, as you were saying, that it will be inert when it’s up there in the sky but once it falls, it will dissolve, is when you have a potential to come up with a solution that works.

So yeah, it looks like a paradox but the bottom line is that we were able to demonstrate that we can do both. That we can make sure that it’s inert up there but it dissolves when it falls on the ground.

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.

Mentioned:

Rob’s initial story on Stardust: Stardust Solutions, a Geoengineering Startup, Raises $60 Million to Build a Solar-Reflecting System by 2030

Stardust’s new governance commitments

What we know about Stardust’s tiny spheres

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by ...

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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow