Climate Break

The Benefits of Recycling Wind Turbines
While wind energy is renewable and non-polluting, the wind turbines themselves can create pollution problems. Now, scientists are creating wind turbines that can be made with less energy, but also create less waste because they can be recycled. This, of course, reduces impacts on the waste stream and provides a sustainable alternative to current wind turbines that are often extremely hard to recycle. Moreover, the new material requires less energy to create and mold into the desired output, subsequently reducing associated greenhouse gas emissions.
Making Wind Turbines with Recyclable Resin
Not surprisingly, even renewable energy resources also have environmental costs. For instance, when the life of a wind turbine ends (after about 20 years), it ends up in landfills. Moreover, as more wind farms are built and older turbines are taken out of usage, the waste burden is significant. Most resins also used in wind turbines require many nonrenewable resources and a lot of energy to produce. In addition, they do not easily degrade.
This is why researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) started developing turbines from recyclable resin. They call the resin PECAN, and it is created with “bio-derivable resources” like sugars as opposed to the type of resin that has traditionally been used, which is not bio-derived and extremely hard to upcycle. Specifically, when the wind blades are unusable they are shredded to be used as “concrete filling”, which never biodegrades, while turbines made of recyclable resin can chemically break down within 6 hours.
Benefits of Recyclable Resin 
Not only can PECAN withstand harsh weather, but it does not deform over time. Additionally, once the resin undergoes a chemical process called “methanolysis” it only takes 6 hours for the original carbon and glass to be recovered to be recycled. Moreover, the catalyst to harden the resin is also recovered and this means that it is possible for it to be used again (creating a circular waste stream). Moreover, PECAN produces “40% less greenhouse gas emissions and 30% less energy to make”.
Challenges of Implementation 
There is a general lack of awareness of solutions like PECAN which strive to make our waste stream more circular, and without that awareness, it would not be able to make the large positive impact that it is capable of making. This is also one of the reasons why right now, wind turbines made out of recyclable resin proves to be more expensive, as there is not enough of a demand for it yet.
Ryan Clarke believes that creating wind turbines from naturally occurring resources like sugars can be extremely helpful in waste reduction. Additionally, he emphasizes that larger deployment of this technology and increased awareness can lead to major cost savings in the long run. 
About Our Guest
Ryan Clarke studied materials science and became a postdoctoral researcher for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where he was the study’s lead author. Now, he works at Hexion Inc. as a R&D material scientist.
Resources
reNews, NREL Develops Recyclable Resin for Wind Blades
ENERGY THEORY, NREL Develops Wind Turbine Blades From Recyclable Resin
Environment + Energy Leader, NREL’s Breakthrough in Renewable, Recyclable Wind Energy
Further Reading
Research Gate, A Recyclable Epoxy for Composite Wind Turbine Blades
NEW ATLAS, Fast-Dissolving Bio Resin Could Drive Recycling of Wind Turbine Blades
For a transcript, please visit: https://climatebreak.org/recyclable-resin-for-wind-turbines-with-ryan-clarke/

Overview 
The buildings and construction sector accounts for approximately 37% of global carbon emissions (UNEP). According to the UN Environmental Programme, much of this impact is derived from the operational aspects of buildings including heating, cooling, and lighting. However, building materials and their production also play a major role. Construction materials include cement, steel, and aluminum. Timber and wooden materials play a major role as well. According to Plantd co-Founder Josh Dorfman, “The global economy produces and transports 4.1 gigatons of concrete, 1.9 gigatons of steel, and 0.8 gigatons of timber products every year.”
The UK Green Building Council highlights that timber harvesting (logging) can be conducted with varying degrees of sustainable forest management, “from clear-cutting to regenerative forestry.” While the timber industry has been focusing on more sustainable practices, the process often leads to soil erosion, habitat loss, negative impacts on the water cycle, and potential harm to indigenous communities. Further, trees can take several years to grow and harvest.
What is Plantd?
Plantd, a startup dedicated to creating sustainable construction materials, seeks to solve this issue. The company has developed its own material: a grass species similar to bamboo and sugarcane with high fiber strength embedded into the plant itself during growth. The plant can grow on large plots of land, is ready for harvesting two to three times per year the year after it is planted, and is not subject to wildfire in the way that forests are. When the plant is harvested, the fiber can be extracted and reoriented to create a wood-like product according to different specifications with an electric press invented by Plantd. It is fully certified as a durable construction material, meeting both strength and moisture requirements. According to Plantd CEO Nathan Silvernail, “ if you take a timber-based material and you fully submerge it in water to the point where it can no longer take on any more water and you dry it out and you strength test it, it loses 70% of its strength. Our material under the same exact conditions and exposure loses only 1% of its strength.” Ultimately, with the new natural material and more efficient press, Plantd hopes to develop construction materials that are far more cost-effective and scalable. 
Potential Drawbacks
In order to overcome potential dubious consumers and encourage widespread adoption of their product, Mr. Silvernail is optimistic that the company will attract buyers with a lower price point for the product. According to Mr. Silvernail, “ Our bottom line is not counted in dollars. It's counted in tons of CO2 captured. I tell all of our investors that. So we are not sitting here trying to just make the biggest margins we can. We're trying to make an impact. And again, the only way that I'm gonna do that is through price and volume.” 
Mr. Silvernail also hopes that the government can subsidize costs for buyers to buy their carbon-negative product, allowing it to penetrate the longstanding foothold of the traditional timber industry over construction. However, many government programs aimed toward assisting sustainable companies are being cut, presenting a potential challenge for Plantd to build its market and appeal to consumers. Further, once Plantd is able to encourage demand for their product, their biggest challenge is scaling to meet demand. While they are sold out at the moment, the company is working to optimize their build processes to create enough panels to eventually sell in stores for home builders. 
About our guest
Entrepreneur and engineer Nathan Silvernail is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Plantd Materials. While working at SpaceX, he led the team that built life support systems for astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, and made history by building the first payload fairing recovered from space and reused on a later mission. In addition to his work at SpaceX, Nathan founded a company that designed, built, and flew reduced gravity experiments onboard NASA's zero gravity simulation aircraft. He has received recognition for his work in the industry, including the Emerging Space Leaders Grant and the First Suborbital Research Flight with Virgin Galactic.
Resources
Building Materials And The Climate: Constructing A New Future, UN Environmental Programme
Plantd Raises $10M, Pioneering Carbon-Negative Building Materials, Forbes
Embodied Ecological Impacts: Timber, UK Green Building Council
Further Reading
Plantd Materials
Plantd Raises $22M to Scale Carbon-Negative Materials and Transform Waste Stream Into New Market Growth
For a transcript, please visit https://climatebreak.org/plantd-with-nathan-silvernail/.

What is the LCFJ?
The  Latino Climate Justice Framework (LCJF) prioritizes environmental justice while helping to protect disproportionately affected individuals–commonly Latine people. Specifically, LCJF works with communities that “face numerous climate-related issues, from extreme heat affecting outdoor workers and poor air quality in neighborhoods near industrial facilities, to increased vulnerability to natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and wildfires.”
The Particulars
LCJF has three areas of focus with different goals for how to better the health of the environment and the Latino community. Chapter one of the LCJF identifies how fossil fuels disproportionately expose the Latine community to toxic pollutants. LCJF believes that carbon capture methods are an extremely passive solution that do not address the problem; instead they hope to prioritize renewable energy while enhancing affordability and accessibility to these amenities by “ramping up recycling, reusing batteries and solar panels” and “ensuring equitable investment”.
The second chapter outlines how “latinos are 21% more likely than white individuals to reside in urban heat islands” and “only 19% of Latino/a/e children have nearby recreational green spaces, compared to 62% of white children.” They follow up with recommendations for how they hope that plans for “prioritizing urban greening projects in Latine neighborhoods with the highest heat risk and lowest tree canopy and green spaces” would improve air quality in their neighborhoods, while reducing health risks. 
The last chapter outlines how Latines have an extremely sacred relationship with land and water.  However, due to “patriarchal and white supremacist oppression” they have been deprived of their access to nature. Moreover, they acknowledge that Earth has been losing vital biodiversity for those very same reasons. Thus, they hope to reduce this problem by opposing efforts to extract natural gas and oil, build the US Mexico border on sensitive lands, and “sprawl development on public lands.”
The Upsides 
The LCJF aims to mitigate climate change by reducing pollution from fossil fuels through stringent regulations and promoting clean energy alternatives. It emphasizes the development of climate-resilient infrastructure to protect communities from climate-related disasters. Additionally, the framework seeks to empower Latine communities by involving them directly in environmental decision-making processes, ensuring that solutions are culturally relevant and effective.
Foreseeable Difficulties in Utilization
Though potential issues may include challenges with implementation, funding, political support, scalability, and policy adaptation efforts. LCJF Program Director Irene Burga argues that Latine people are often kept out of the conversation of climate equity despite the fact that they are extremely affected by climate change. If their voices are heard, she says, climate policies would be much more impactful.
About Our Guest
Irene Burga is the Climate Justice and Cleaner Program Director at Green Latinos, where she works to bring Latine voices to government.
Resources
Climate Advocacy Lab, Latino Climate Justice Framework 2025-28 | Climate Advocacy Lab
Further Reading
LCJF, The Latino Climate Justice Framework. El Plan Para Nuestra Gente
Green Latinos, Latino Climate Justice Framework
For a transcript, please visit https://climatebreak.org/latino-climate-justice-framework-with-irene-burga/.

What is Chaos Wheat?
Wheat varieties that are resilient to climate change are sometimes referred to as "chaos wheat." An initiative of King Arthur Baking Company–an emerging leader in the creation of chaos wheat–and Washington State University's Breadlab is aiming to create wheat blends, such as King Arthur's Regeneratively-Grown Climate Blend Flour, composed of unique wheat varieties bred for resilience against the unpredictable effects of climate change, including fluctuating temperatures and varying water levels. These wheat varieties are cultivated using regenerative agricultural practices that enhance soil health and biodiversity.
Chaos Wheat as Climate Solution
By focusing on breeding wheat that can withstand extreme weather conditions, the initiative seeks to ensure consistent crop yields despite environmental unpredictability. Additionally, the use of regenerative agriculture practices contributes to carbon sequestration, improved soil health, and increased biodiversity, all of which play a role in mitigating climate change. 
To create the special, “Climate Blend” flour out of chaos wheat, researchers use practices like “cover cropping and crop rotations, minimizing inputs, no/limited tillage, and affordability and accessibility of crops.” The chaos wheat collaboration with Washington State University’s Breadlab, aims to increase biodiversity, promote carbon sequestration by improving soil health, and build resilient farm ecosystems as a whole.
In the late 1800s, white bread was extremely popular due to its low cost of production at enormous scale. However, this quickly became detrimental to the environment because it led to monoculture, which reduces genetic biodiversity.  In fact, large scale bread production “emits more greenhouse gases than Russia, Brazil, and Germany combined”.
Benefits of Chaos Wheat
Chaos wheat increases genetic diversity and reduces risk of diseases and increases “resistance to drought, pests, and volatile weather, while requiring less water, fertilizer and agrochemical.” Part of the potential advantage of chaos wheat is the plants’ improved ability to deal with “‘ chaotic events.’” Currently, however, it is more expensive in comparison to standard whole wheat, “$2.98, compared with $1.12”.
The inspiration for this blend came from ancient strategies that farmers employed, for example a “mix of different species and varieties known as maslins” which are “plants [that] compete less with one another for soil resources and are diverse”. Essentially, if “they can offer 2 to 3 percent higher yields, they will be our greatest asset to increasing yields and crop resilience.”
Challenges of Implementation
Potential critiques or drawbacks of this solution include the challenges associated with transitioning farmers to regenerative practices, which may require significant changes in traditional farming methods and could involve initial financial investments. Moreover, as regenerative agriculture is currently unregulated and lacks standardized certification, defining and implementing consistent practices can be complex. Ensuring that these new wheat varieties are economically viable for farmers and acceptable to consumers in terms of taste and baking quality also presents potential challenges
There is also a tension between large scale efforts, including the King Arthur Baking Company initiative, and more local initiatives that might be “developing more sustainable and climate-resilient products” and which “keep our dollars in the local food economy” but “invest[s] in a more sustainable and resilient food economy”. This is often a difficult tradeoff.
Robin Morgan believes that chaos wheat is a  game-changer in agriculture and in the face of climate change as it reduces wheat’s vulnerability to extreme weather conditions. This means that the crops can grow in more locations and with reduced soil disruption. Moreover, he emphasizes that it increases health benefits by providing more fiber to consumers.
About Our Guest
Robin Morgan moved to Washington state to pursue a PhD at the WSU Breadlab in order to develop a perennial grain crop. He has experience ranging from the chromosomal to the field level as well as studying the history of wheat. 
Resources
King Arthur Baking: What is regenerative agriculture, and why is it so important? 
Washington Post: Why ‘chaos wheat’ may be the future of bread
WSU Breadlab: About Us
Fresh Farm: Local Grains: A Delicious, Climate-Friendly Choice
For a transcript, please visit: https://climatebreak.org/chaos-wheat-with-robin-morgan/

Real Ice, a UK based start-up, has been on the forefront of exploring the viability of this new technology. Aqua Freezing involves drilling holes through sea ice to pump out the sea water below and refreeze it on the surface. Once the water freezes, it thickens existing ice to the surface. Adding snow insulation in late winter is expected to help ice persist through summer melts, thereby reducing the risk of a "Blue Ocean Event." This solution targets climate change by maintaining Arctic ice cover, which can stabilize local ecosystems and moderate global climate impacts. If the project is successful, it is projected to postpone the loss of ice caps by approximately 17 years for each year this is completed. For every four feet of water pumped onto the surface, it is projected that the ice will cover around 3 feet. 

The Decline of Arctic Sea Ice
As climate change heightens temperatures and alters climatic conditions, summer sea ice in the Arctic is melting rapidly. By the mid 2030s, it is predicted that a “Blue Ocean Event” (or BOE) will occur, meaning that the Arctic Ocean is expected to have less than one million square kilometers of sea ice. This equates to just 15% of the Arctic’s seasonal minimum ice cover of the late 1970s. As ice continues to melt, more of the ocean will be exposed to the sun's rays, thus absorbing more heat and accelerating warming. The Arctic has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world since 1979, largely due to this positive feedback loop known as Arctic amplification. Since the 1980s, the amount of Arctic sea ice has declined by approximately 13% each decade. As the BOE unfolds, it will trigger significant impacts, including droughts, heatwaves, accelerated thawing of terrestrial permafrost (releasing emissions in the process), and sea level rise. The Arctic plays a critical role in climate stabilization by acting as a large reflective surface, helping to cool the planet and maintain a stable global temperature. The BOE is thus a major climatic tipping point with catastrophic global consequences. A new methodology has been proposed to protect and restore Arctic sea ice known as Aqua Freezing. This approach uses renewable energy-powered pumps to distribute seawater on existing Arctic ice, allowing it to refreeze and thicken, helping to maintain climatic stability.
The plan aims to target over 386,000 square miles of Arctic sea ice, an area larger than California. The process of refreezing already shows promise in field tests conducted over the past two years in Alaska and Canada. Proponents of refreezing Arctic sea ice believe that this technique would buy the region time while we make the necessary emissions cuts to curb the impacts of climate change. Refreezing ice would also preserve the albedo effect, which reflects sunlight back into space, preventing warming. 
Although AquaFreezing offers a potential solution to combat Arctic melting, scientists and policymakers doubt whether sea ice can be grown over a long enough period to make a true difference in the climate crisis. Further, the project is quite costly, equating to over 5 trillion dollars and demanding more steel than the US produces in a single year. The project would require 10 million pumps; however, this would only cover 10% of the Arctic Ocean’s roughly 4 million square mile size. To cover the entire area would require 100 million pumps and roughly 100 million tons of steel each year. The US currently produces around 80 to 90 million tons of steel a year, so covering just 10% of Arctic ice would require 13% of US steel production. The production required for the project could lead to immense environmental degradation and added emissions in the process. 
 
About Our Guest
Simon Woods, co-founder and Executive Chairperson of Real Ice, is hopeful that this solution will buy the region time while we make the necessary emissions cuts to curb climate change. Real Ice believes this innovative solution can preserve sea ice and thus work to combat climate change.
 
Resources
Arctic News, Blue Ocean Event
CNN, A controversial plan to refreeze the Arctic is seeing promising results. But scientists warn of big risks
RealIce, Introducing AquaFreezing: Encouraging the natural process of Arctic sea ice generation.
Smithsonian Magazine, Arctic Could Be Sea Ice-Free in the Summer by the 2030s
Sustainability Times, Controversial Arctic Refreezing Plan Shows Promise, but Risks Remain
Warp Notes, They are developing a technology to restore sea ice in the Arctic
Further Reading
Youtube, Scientists’ Crazy Plan To Refreeze The Arctic
For a transcript, please visit https://climatebreak.org/real-ice-with-simon-woods/.