AWARD YEAR
2023
CATEGORY
Community
GOALS
Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure, Sustainable Cities & Communities, Responsible Consumption & Production, Climate Action
KEYWORDS
synthetic biology
COUNTRY
Denmark
DESIGNED BY
Professor Birger Lindberg Møller
WEBSITE
https://sciencenews.dk/en/tomorrows-climate-friendly-production-will-harvest-solar-energy-and-use-co2
Photosynthetic Civilization
Replace the entire fossil fuel and plastic industry with algae that harvest CO2 and sunlight
How does it work?
With synthetic biology we can produce the industrial basis of our civilization through natures own design instead of burning fossils: Capture CO2 and sunlight with algae to produce everything from biofuels to bioplastics in a renewable and climate positive way. Leverage the elegance of plants to align our culture with the planetary ecosystem.
Why is it needed?
Our civilization is fundamentally unsustainable: Ressource depletion, pollution and emission of CO2 gives our world a short lived outlook for the future. Many crucial ressources will be depleted in the coming decades, and the continuing emissions are locking the fate of our home in the trajectory towards an inhabitable planet. We are now ready to embrace the design of nature and fundamentally redesign how we interact with the carbon cycle, thus switching from a linear cradle-to-grave design to a circular cradle-to-cradle model. This is our next chapter.
How does it improve life?
The promise of a future with prosperity instead of turmoil and collapse is a great improvement for the lives of all people alive today and to come in future generations. Our consumption itself can become to process by which we capture CO2 from the atmosphere, allowing life to become sustainable and able to continue to improve indefinitely.