Industrial Decarbonization: The Final Emissions Frontier

In this unedited full interview with Prof. Friedmann, listen to us discuss the issue of industrial heat, innovation agendas, and the nuances of creating technological change. Dr. Julio Friedmann is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. With a background in geology and degrees from MIT and USC, Dr. Friedmann is now one of the most widely known experts on carbon removal, CO2 conversion and use, and carbon capture and sequestration. He has testified numerous times for the US Congress and worked in the US State Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and US Treasury. In Fall 2019, Dr. Friedmann and the Center for Global Energy Policy released the report “Low-Carbon Heat Solutions for Heavy Industry”.

In this unedited interview with Prof. Sadoway, listen to us discuss Boston Metal, electrochemistry, and technology innovation in aluminum leading to process development for other metals.  Professor Don Sadoway is the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at MIT, where he has taught and researched for over 40 years. He’s famous for his research in metallurgy, electrochemistry, and energy storage, most prominently through the development of the liquid metal battery and the associated startup, Ambri. In 2012, he was recognized as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. However, a lesser known fact is that Professor Sadoway is also the founder of Boston Metal, a startup that looks to decarbonize metal production. Boston Metal has pioneered a process to utilize electricity instead of high-temperature heat derived from fossil fuels to produce important metals like steel and aluminum. And, Professor Sadoway has been a major personal inspiration for understanding the role of materials science in addressing issues of energy and the environment.

The challenge of decarbonizing the industrial sector is critical in the fight against climate change. In this podcast, I dive into steel production, concrete production, and industrial heat generation processes, the largest contributors to emissions in the sector, and Buy Clean and Cap and Trade as policy approaches to mitigate industrial emissions. I aim to answer the questions: What significant technical and business innovations have been made in the industrial sector to successfully increase decarbonization? What are modern change-makers doing nowadays, and how can they learn from the past? A transcript of the podcast, alongside music credits and citations, is available here: https://medium.com/@acheng98/industrial-decarbonization-the-final-emissions-frontier-cbd816e5ce5a