THE NAVIGATE CIRCULAR CARBON ECONOMY PLATFORM
It’s difficult to avoid what would appear to be mounting evidence of alarming climate change all around us – news of devasting storms, rampant wildfires and debilitating droughts, increasingly permeating the news cycle. The ‘weather’, regardless of whether its interlocutors being of British provenance or not, leads many a conversation.
However, what is often less reported, perhaps less newsworthy, is the momentous progress being made in deployed technologies, which are driving industrial efficiencies and decarbonisation efforts across primary industries, which are pivotal to growth in all markets, emerging or otherwise.
The Paris Agreement of 2015 was ambitious in terms of its targeted emissions cuts, (although the ends more than justify the means) and was unilaterally endowed with support by nations globally. Even then though, it dawned on most that it required an unprecedented wave of private capital to be mobilised to spearhead the initiatives, both to drive innovation and then to be able to commercialise affordably at scale. However, the ‘Big Five’, those sectors of the economy which do the heaviest lifting in respect of the ‘emissions burden’ – manufacturing, electricity, agriculture, transportation and infrastructure, now all have demonstrably established clean climate technologies, which are no longer theoretical, but have transitioned into a commercial reality. Within a decade, humanity can already draw upon a portfolio of proven, transformative and also accretive technologies, which can be deployed modularly, but at scale in aggregate and therefore wield a swingeing axe to global emissions profiles of industries, which are so Platformamental to improving living standards.
A MACRO LENS – AFRICA’S ADAPTIVE REASONING
As an energy transition focussed asset manager, we scour the earth to best the best risk adjusted opportunities, or for that matter those which we believe are mis-pricing the risks. “The concept of risk is completely invented to ensure that investment doesn’t come to Africa,” Gagan Gupta, who runs logistics and utilities across Africa, remarket to an investing audience earlier this year, which met with notable applause. Since COVID passed, foreign direct investment into Africa has declined, yet it still stands to benefit from Western countries Platforming which has been set aside for green megaprojects. Germany has promised to invest over 4bn USD in green energy projects on the continent by 2030, including a green hydrogen plant in Mauritania. Britain has invested into a 200mn USD equity Platform focussed on providing equity to climate focussed companies, and of China’s 51bn USD pledge to Africa, clean -energy projects number 30 and counting. However, Africa’s need for infrastructure, energy security and industrialisation is a global mega trend, and whilst the pledges above are substantial, will not land a glove of the amount of capital ultimately required. As Phillpe Valahu of Private Infrastructure Development Group aptly remarked, “Industrialisation is not going to take place on solar panels”. Irrespective of the green funding available, it’s not enough to prevent a group of 18 African countries from partnering with the African Export-Import Bank, to raise over 5bn USD to Platform fossil fuel projects. In a continent where over half a billion people do not have ready access to electricity, droughts, flooding and desertification are a constant thorn in the side of progress of livelihoods and businesses to boot. In that regard, it is particularly vulnerable to climate risks. In combination, the combined challenges of climate and energy for the continent are overwhelming compared to the capital currently earmarked for them. Should further investment be made available a diverse energy mix providing cheaper power will provide a virtuous circle for the wider industrial base, generating jobs, growth and social cohesion from gigafactories, data centres and circular manufacturing industries. “We are basically given a higher risk profile unfairly. One of the reasons that this is happening is because our balance sheets and economies are not valued correctly,” Hakainde Hichilema, the president of Zambia, said earlier this year.
The view that the cost of credit or risk pricing is unfairly elevated is a predominant across African regional economies. The continent’s leaders also plan to launch a regional credit scoring agency to produce credit assessments free of some of the historical biases that the Western establishment agencies are belaboured by, in the minds of many. We believe in appropriate discount rates, and even with those that fairly price the economic fundamentals of certain African regions, there are opportunities to generate supersized risk adjusted returns from sustainable impact investments, that are not commonly found in developed markets. Waste to Wealth Last year the International Resource Panel, an independent scientific body under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme, suggested that wiser use of resources could add $2trn, or roughly the GDP of Italy, to the global economy by 2050. Of the 84bn tonnes of materials consumed each year globally – including biomass, sand, metals and fossil fuels, less than 9% are reused. A series of reports for the Club of Rome, a think-tank, found that, if product lifetimes were doubled and half the virgin materials consumed today replaced with recovered ones, the resulting economic shift would create 200,000 net new jobs in Spain and 300,000 in France. (Improving energy efficiency and replacing half of all fossil fuels used with renewables would add another 565,000 jobs across all the countries studied.) Most new work would come in green industries such as recycling. After reviewing 65 studies on the effects of a more circular economy, academics at the University of Augsburg found that related job creation outweighs job destruction. A report by McKinsey said the global net employment gains would be anywhere between 9m and 25m jobs. By identifying projects that reduce, reuse and recycle, not only can the challenge of green premiums be sidestepped, but the ‘triple bottom line’ is not just achievable, but difficult to ignore. A Virtuous Circle: Circular Carbon Economies Carbon is a main component in the make-up of all living things. It is the primary ingredient in the threads in our clothes, the materials in our homes and the fuel we use to power vehicles. It is also the source of our biggest environmental challenges. It is best known in its gaseous form, carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas that is overheating our planet. Most of the carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere is a by-product of industrial processes like the production of fossil fuels, refining of petrochemicals and manufacture of metals which feed into our carbon-dependent global supply chains. The linear carbon economy is outmoded: it depends on energy-intensive industries to extract non-renewable resources underground to make necessary, yet disposable, things. Take, make, waster is out of time. NAVIGATE Commodities seeks to redefine resilience. It is well within our ken to reimagine and remould this extractive, linear carbon economy as a circular model. In doing so, we will rebrand the many forms of carbon-rich waste as valuable, abundant resources rather than inevitable, harmful liabilities. Instead of the relentless extraction of virgin fossil carbon out of the ground to make things we discard, we can reduce emissions and make more sustainable products by capturing and reusing the gigatonnes of carbon already above ground.
The Navigate Circular Carbon Platform: Quantifying Impact – Measure What You Treasure. We have originated a number of project verticals that all have common sustainable characteristics, that must meet the exacting definitions and some proprietary metrics of circularity. In short, we have identified four criterion to house certain metrics which determine the validity of a given project in the eyes of the Platform.
We have already established sub-Saharan African projects, with blue chip offtakers, in waste lead acid battery recycling, plastic polymodified bitumen, biochar boilers and bio-diesel, which whilst modular all provide roadmaps to replicating multiple times across the continent. We have the commissioning, engineering and manufacturing credentials to deliver numerous projects all which fit a profile to lead the charge in furthering the circular carbon economy. Many of which can be co-located to create industrial symbioses.
THE PLATFORM IS PREMISED ON THE FOLLOWING:
Disruptive, sustainable business models to traditional ‘old-economy’ industries which are fundamental to driving growth – agriculture, waste recycling, low carbon infrastructure and renewable fuels.
Each vertical has existing, de-risked well-advanced projects to cornerstone the Platform, with a pipeline of ‘copy cat’ projects to follow.
Each project is modular, allowing for rapid commissioning and cash flow generation and can benefit from blue chip off-takers.
Best of breed technologies drive a transition from traditional fossil fuelled industrial activities into sustainable, high impact, low carbon emission businesses.
Each vertical can readily identify and quantify the demonstrable impact as measured by a number of metrics, including CE, emissions reduction and traditional financial return ratios.
Finally, the Platform benefits from highly credentialled energy transition, chemical engineering and technology consultancy specialists and an experienced project management and delivery team with a demonstrable track record of delivering similar projects across Africa.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: OF BIO-CLUSTERS AND INDUSTRIAL SYMBIOSIS
Life is essentially a complex form of carbon chemistry, yet humans cannot digest it in its elemental form, nor does the atmosphere do very well once it is belched above us. The energy transition will take decades. Yet to coin a phrase, the future is already here, its just not evenly distributed. We have solutions now to decarbonise emerging market growth in prospect, on a forwards looking basis as Africa seems destined to grow faster than any other continent in the coming decade. By acting now, we can ensure that is a greener growth, rather than having to find solutions for additional greenhouse gases that have been emitted. Proven, modular, sustainable and scalable technologies exist already which do not suffer the stubborn green premiums that prohibit widespread adoption of many clean technologies.
The Navigate Circular Carbon Economy Platform seeks to finance and develop carbon recycling technologies to make this circular carbon economy a reality. We capture industrial-waste carbon at the source, preventing it from entering the atmosphere. We transform it into more sustainable versions of chemicals like bio-diesel, a critical ingredient for everyday products typically sourced from virgin fossil carbon. Our bioreactor hardware can be attached to any facility generating carbon waste, including oil refineries, steel mills and landfill sites. We have four commercial facilities already operational, with scores to follow. Combined, these four plants can abate ‘500,000 tonnes’ of carbon each year.
Pyrolysis technology stands at the forefront of sustainable energy innovation. By transforming waste materials like tyres, plastics, and biomass into fertiliser, power, and renewable fuels, it offers a viable solution to two pressing challenges: waste management and energy sustainability.
As the world continues to seek environmentally friendly alternatives to fossil fuels, investing in pyrolysis technology [our bio-reactors] will be a pivotal step towards a greener future. Embracing this technology not only promotes environmental stewardship but also opens up new avenues for economic growth and energy independence. Within our circular economies and bio-cluster builds, our bio-reactors technology provides a significant contribution to not just energy savings in circular manufacturing, but also significant economics too. A circular (carbon) approach doesn’t limit the economics, rather enhances them when considered through the orthodoxical financial metrics lens and our proprietary sustainability metrics. A just and fair transition cannot be reconciled against limiting the industrial growth and living standards that emerging nations have. Reduce, recycle and reuse ensures it also need not be. Should “business as usual” continue, we will bake in even more warming for years to come, and the extreme heat and natural disasters we saw intensify in 2024 will escalate. Wealthier nations causing the most emissions will have to foot the bill for poorer countries dealing with disproportionate impact.
An alternative approach is one where the largest corporate emitters, can put a value on biogenic waste from the poorest farmers and acquire that carbon to be recycled into primary, environmentally efficient sources of fertiliser, fuels and infrastructure. The NAVIGATE Circular Carbon Economy Platform seeks to be a vehicle that is an agency for just that. By vivifying the circular carbon economy, energy intensive businesses can be transitioned into climate friendly ones. Profitably.
