Recent IPCC and UN Reports make it clear that climate change is real, and that Carbon Dioxide keeps increasing in our atmosphere. Many startups are working on ‘something’ to help fix the problem. For example, Cimeworks has an effort to create a direct air capture technology. This engineered solution pulls carbon from the atmosphere using expensive and complex machinery. Then, it injects it back into the ground for long-term storage.
Unfortunately, this is not the most efficient (or effective) way to capture carbon. Nature itself may have the solution and that solution is photosynthesis. Nature-based solutions using photosynthesis have been championed by nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy and American Forests.
Why?
Well, for one thing, nature-based solutions are cheap and bountiful. However, they are seen as short-term carbon removals because much of the carbon is at risk of being released back into the atmosphere if, for example, a fire burns through a forest, or humans cut down trees. Engineered solutions are more durable and quantifiable. Unfortunately, they are expensive and in short supply.
Living Carbon is a San Francisco-based start up that exited stealth mode in March. The company is working at the intersection of nature and engineered solutions to climate change. They are genetically engineering trees so they can store more carbon. Living Carbon’s Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), Yumin Tao, says that “Plants have the unique power of fixing carbon from the atmosphere: photosynthesis.” The startup plans to enhance that power by creating trees with higher photosynthesis capability. The idea is to “utilize the natural process with added storage and the added durability of an engineered solution”, according to CEO of Living Carbon, Maddie Hall.
We may think that this is idea is new, but it’s not. The food and agriculture world have been breeding and engineering plants to be bigger and stronger for decades now. Even the scientific innovation that Living Carbon is using – enzymes to bypass the inefficient biological pathway called photorespiration. Photorespiration causes plants to release some CO2 back into the atmosphere, wasting some of the energy produced by photosynthesis. Photorespiration has been a field of research for a long time. Instead of using the tools to grow more food, more easily and cheaply, Living Carbon is turning a biological innovation towards carbon sequestration.
Hall thought when she learned about this process that perhaps it could be utilized for carbon removal. What her company is doing that is extremely innovative is to take the genetically engineered process of suppressing photorespiration that was developed for tobacco plants and putting it in trees like the hybrid poplar and Loblolly pine trees. According to Yumin Tao, Living Carbon has spliced genes for enzymes from pumpkins and algae into the trees so the carbon dioxide is broken down inside the chloroplast and results in a more efficient process of converting CO2 into sugar with less released back into the atmosphere. This process is based on a naturally occurring one found in certain more photosynthetically efficient plants called C4 plants such as sorghum and corn.
Tao says, “More carbon fixed means there is faster growth and bigger plants.” Since 50% of the biomass of a plant is carbon, bigger plants mean less carbon in the atmosphere. A recent research paper focused on an indoor controlled growing environment found that over five months, trees genetically engineered with Living Carbon’s technology had a 53% increase in above-ground weight than the control plants.
The next step is for Living Carbon to field test its genetically engineered trees. The company, which has a four-year partnership with Oregon State University to continue researching its trees. In April of 2022, the company started planting with private landowners in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and California.
The research and subsequent technology look promising. However, the jury’s out on what the implementation will look like. We do hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.
