Sijoittaminen biotekniikkapörssiosakkeisiin, jotka työskentelevät ilmaston lämpenemisen ratkaisujen parissa

Ilmaston lämpenemisen ratkaiseminen

Climate change, aka global warming, is becoming the central concern for most policies worldwide. A lot of proposed solutions look at it from mostly 2 angles:

1. CO2-päästöjen vähentäminen siirtymällä pois fossiilisista polttoaineista energiajärjestelmissämme.
2. Teknologinen ratkaisu, jolla poistetaan CO2 ilmakehästä ja/tai alennetaan maapallon lämpötilaa jollain tavalla.

Most of these solutions are technologically oriented: EVs, fuel cells, renewable energies, utility-scale batteries, carbon capture, or even geoengineering.

Tämä jättää huomiotta sen, että suurin osa ilmastonmuutoksen vahingoista tapahtuu ekosysteemiemme ja elintarvikevaraston häiriintymisen kautta. Tietenkin merenpinnan nousu tai muuttunut ilmasto aiheuttavat paljon laajempia ja kauaskantoisia seurauksia kuin pelkkä se.

Jos voimme kuitenkin lieventää joitakin vahinkoja, se auttaa meitä monin tavoin. Ensin se rajoittaa yhteiskuntiemme häiriöitä, mikä mahdollistaa ratkaisujen paremman toteuttamisen ja ihmiskustannusten vähentämisen. Lisäksi se vapauttaa resursseja muiden ongelmien lieventämiseen.

Keskeinen tekijä, joka auttaa tekemään elintarvikejärjestelmistämme ja ekosysteemeistämme kestävämpiä, on ehdottomasti bioteknologia.

And maybe some biotechnologies could even help solve climate change by reducing carbon emissions, capturing carbon, or maybe even bypassing the need for farming entirely.

Vaihtoehtoiset polttoaineet

EVs are taking over the car markets. But there are going to be a lot of fuel-powered cars for decades. And oil is even harder to replace for trucks, ships, or planes. So, finding a carbon-neutral alternative to oil is needed.

That is the promise of biofuels. After all, oil and natural gas were created from organic matter, slowly decomposing and accumulating over geological time. So, recreating this process ourselves could allow for turning plants into CO2 pumps and fuel-creating machines.

The most promising avenue for this technology is algal biofuels, as it avoid competing with food production for fertile soil.

This is a topic we investigate further in our article “Leväbiopolttoaine: Seuraava energiarevoluutio”, covering the technology’s details and the two forefront leaders in the field, Indian Reliance Industry (RELIANCE.NS) and “Big Oil” ExxonMobil (XOM ) (XOM).

Another possible “fuel” is biogas from organic matter and farming waste. Many companies produce biogas in ecological and carbon-negative or carbon-neutral ways, for example, Scandinavian Biogas Fuels International AB (BIOGAS.ST), OPAL Fuels (OPAL ) (OPAL), or EnviTec Biogas AG (ETG.DE ) (ETG.DE)

Hiilidioksidin talteenotto

Soil is one of the greatest carbon reservoirs on Earth. The erosion of topsoil and the loss of organic matter in soil is among the top sources of global carbon emissions.

This is why Gingko Bioworks (DNA) is working on modifying microbes and fungi to increase soil biomass.

By combining “mechanical” carbon capture with biogas, Bloom Energy (BE ) Corp (BE) is one of the rare carbon capture companies able to avoid emissions and perform actual removal of carbon from the atmosphere.

Maatalouden päästöjen vähentäminen

Farming is a big carbon polluter, and a few things could be done to reduce the sector’s CO2 production.

One option is to remove the need for fossil fuels in farming. This could be done either by electrifying tractors or removing tractors entirely and replacing them with a fleet of smaller, more efficient robots. We covered This idea further in our article “Sijoittajien tulisi huomata:  robotit  .”

Another option is to reduce the need for fertilizers 

Potash and phosphorus are mined, which is a carbon-heavy activity and damaging to the environment. Nitrogen fertilizers are mostly produced using natural gas.

Nitrogen fertilizer could be replaced by engineered bacteria, fixing the nitrogen in the air into the soil. This is a project on which Bayer (BAYRY) collaborates with Gingko Bioworks (DNA).

A powerful greenhouse effect gas is methane. It is emitted by massive quantities of ruminants like cows or sheep, considering the size of herds grown for human consumption.

Eri kasvatusstrategiat, ruminanttien mikrobiomin muuttaminen, or tietyt rehuvalmisteet could help reduce these emissions.

Another possibility is to modify crops and animals to make them less demanding (land, fertilizer, feed, etc…) or less emitting greenhouse gases. A central method likely to be used is CRISPR, a gene editing technology barely 10 years old but already widely explored for applications in human medicine and agricultural biotechnology.

We have explored this deeply in our article “CRISPR ihmisterveyden ulkopuolella: Uusi sijoitustyökalun raja geenieditoinnille.” New crops more resistant to drought, extreme climate events, or new pathogens will help feed the world despite climate change’s harmful effects.

Maatalouden poistaminen kokonaan

Some plants are farmed only for a very specific compound they produce. An oil used in cosmetics, a scent or flavor used in perfume or food. Maybe a very expensive spice. Or an active compound, like in the case of cannabis.

Most of the time, the final product is less than 1% of the total biomass.

Joten vaihtoehtoiset menetelmät vähentäisivät maatalouden kokonaiskysyntää ja ympäristövaikutuksia.

We explored this in our article “Viisi parasta synteettisen biologian julkista yritystä (huhtikuu 2023)”. In it, we notably discussed Amyris (AMRS), producing fragrance and another high-value molecule in industrial fermenters. Another company doing the same is Calyxt (CLXT), using both plant cells in fermenters and CRISPR gene editing.

And Ginkgo Bioworks (DNA ) (DNA) is looking to produce cannabinoids in labs using microorganisms.

Toinen vaihtoehto voisi olla ruoan kasvattaminen suoraan laboratoriossa.

This includes vertical farming, allowing for a reduction of water consumption and land usage. A land that can then instead be used for carbon capture, rewilding, or growing forests. Some of the prominent stocks in the sector are,

1. Kalera (NASDAQ:KALRQ)

2. Appharvest (NASDAQ:APPHQ)

3. Hydrofarm Holdings (NASDAQ:HYFM)

It can also be lab-grown meat, something we discussed in “Viisi parasta laboratoriossa kasvatettua lihaa koskevaa osaketta sijoittajille (huhtikuu 2023)“, covering Tyson Food (TSN), JBS (JBSAY), Agronomics Limited (AGNMF), Cult Food Science (CULT.CN), and Steakholder Foods Ltd (STKH )  (STKH).

Johtopäätös

This is just a little bit of what biotechnology can do to help solve or at least reduce the damage of climate change.

More techniques will likely be added to the arsenal, like geneettisesti muokatut puut, biochar (hiilen sitominen hiiliraaka-aineeseen ja maaperään), levämerialueet (kelp), meren mikroluonnon lannoittaminen raudalla, etc…

Maybe the solution to a technological problem (carbon emissions) is not, or at least not entirely, in better or new technology. Maybe life itself, in all its forms, starting from microbes and finishing with trees, also holds part of the solution.