Written by: Tricia Brouk, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Dr. Andrew Benedek founded Anaergia in 2007 to address the climate crisis by working to eliminate methane emissions from waste. He began his career as a professor at McMaster University in Canada and left academia to tackle water pollution by founding Zenon, which became the global leader in technology for recycling water.
After Zenon was acquired by GE in 2006, Dr. Benedek worked briefly at the Scripps Institute of Technology in San Diego, California, where he became interested in finding solutions to climate change. To further his newfound mission, he founded Anaergia, which has since become a world leader in recovering energy, fertilizer, and water from waste. Anaergia is now publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
I had the privilege of sitting down with Andrew and have come to know that he is extremely unique in having created a paradigm shift twice in global infrastructure and is hopeful something can be done to save the planet, but we must act now.
You are a chemical engineer who turns to nature when it comes to solving problems on the planet like water pollution and climate change. What inspired you to think this way?
And what inspired you to help tackle the climate crisis?
After GE bought my first company, Zenon a company that invented and commercialized the world’s key technology for recycling water I took a position at UCSD’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego. where I became very concerned about climate change. In particular, the consistency of Ocean warming and the potential for the release of a solid form of methane from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, if the warming continued unabated, really scared me. The methane, of course, is already a big problem from land-based releases, due to its very high greenhouse gas impact, but ocean-based releases could potentially put climate change on steroids.
At that point, I knew I had to figure out a way to help. And I decided the biggest impact I could have would be to develop technologies that would convert waste into renewable fuel. That way, we could both prevent methane emitted by rotting waste from contributing to global warming–and create carbon-negative renewable fuels to replace fossil fuels at the same time, a kind of double whammy.
We all know about the fires, floods, and polar bears and have still done little to nothing to reduce our carbon footprint. You have an even more distinctive point of view about global warming. How did we get to a place and time on the planet where people are going to be dying of heat?
Of course, the problem began when people discovered that burning coal and later oil were an extremely efficient way to create heat and thus steam, which eventually was used to generate electric power. By the time scientists figured out that all the extra carbon dioxide those fuels were producing was trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere, almost everything in the world ran on fossil fuels.
Since the problem was identified, it’s been a struggle to change things for several reasons. Entrenched businesses have a vested interest in keeping things as they are for the sake of profits. Individuals tend to follow the path of least resistance doing things as they’ve always done them. But perhaps most egregious perhaps is the role of governments. They are responsible for understanding what is in people’s best interests and making societies’ systems work hopefully by encouraging free enterprise while also directing capitalism with legislation and regulations. But in my observation, governments mostly function with short-term interests in mind. Thus, little has been done and at a crawling pace to create the carrots and sticks needed to incentivize change.
Andrew, can you talk about Net Zero emissions and why we need them? And your point of view on the importance of carbon-negative fuels.
Net-zero emissions is a commonly used term, but many people don’t understand what it means.
To get very basic, climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions mostly carbon dioxide and methane which are created from fossil fuel use and society’s waste. To stop the earth from warming, our societies need to stop emitting greenhouse gasses (GHGs). We know that we will never manage to eliminate GHGs entirely, so we need to at least achieve “net zero emissions.” That means we need to take out just as much carbon dioxide and methane from the atmosphere as we put in.
The primary way to achieve net-zero emissions is to prevent greenhouse gases from being emitted in the first place by using solar and wind power rather than coal-fired power plants, conserving energy, and the like. Doing those things prevents carbon dioxide emissions.
Then there is the challenge of stopping methane emissions.
Most people don’t realize that methane which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is 37% of global warming emissions if measured over the next twenty years. They also don’t realize that most methane emissions are created by our own waste, such as landfills and sewage.
Why do landfills emit methane? Because they are full of organic waste stuff that rots. In landfills, where little or no oxygen is present, organic waste is converted to methane. And then it leaks out, causing climate change.
This is what my company, Anaergia, is here to prevent. We make equipment that separates out the organic material from the trash everyone throws in their garbage cans and then we convert the organic waste to biomethane. Biomethane often called “renewable natural gas” is carbon negative. That means it takes more GHGs out of the atmosphere than if we let the methane escape from landfills and other waste sources. With it, we can reduce our use of fossil methane “natural gas”. Anaergia is building and operating plants like this around the world, but there is much more to be done.
Why is it so important to not throw away food scraps, sewage biosolids, and other organic waste? And what should we do with it instead?
More than 43% of what gets landfilled in the U.S. is material that creates methane emissions—food, yard clippings, or paper/cardboard and the nation’s landfills produce at least 888 billion cubic feet of planet-warming methane every year. If that methane were eliminated by diverting the organic waste, it would have the effect of eliminating more than 695 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year (in CO2e, based on a 20-year time horizon). That’s more than 13% of what the US emits in greenhouse gasses each year.
That’s why we need to stop throwing our organic waste away, and instead use it to create biomethane, a renewable fuel. The biomethane we create from waste can not only stop the harmful emissions leaking from landfills and other waste sources, but it can also help us use less fossil natural gas.
What can we do today to save planet earth and create an environment that will support future generations?
First, support climate change regulations and implementation by voting for politicians with a record of taking action. This means elected officials at every level local, state, and national. And hold elected officials responsible for taking climate action, to offset the lobbying powers that want things to stay as they are. Encourage politicians to pass laws that reduce waste, like California is doing, and laws that incentivize more renewable natural gas as has been done in some US states already and in most Western European countries. It is not enough however to pass laws, it is critical to find ways to implement them with simple rules, regulations, and fines. On the implementation side, Europe is well ahead of the US.
Second, do everything you personally can to promote sustainability. Support consumer product manufacturers that use fewer plastics. Drive an electric car or truck or use public transportation. Conserve power, water, and gas in your home. Think carefully about what you throw into landfills. Most of these tips aren’t new it’s just that people don’t remember how important it is to do them. The collective results will make a big difference.
Are you hopeful we can do what needs to be done?
I think most of us get less and less hopeful as the situation worsens, as the effects of climate change become more damaging, and still, little change happens. And fossil fuel use is still increasing in the world, in spite of great strides in wind, solar and electric automobile technologies.
The truth is human creativity can solve this. We have the technologies to keep climate change from completely ruining our earth. And people will continue to invent even better solutions. The issue is that we have little time and implementation needs to accelerate. Most critically, we need to implement the large-scale use of technologies that can avoid infrastructure changes and replace fossil fuels. This is why I am focused on renewable natural gas.
Our western capitalistic systems have the ability to make dramatic changes. But we will not make these changes quickly enough without strong inducements from governments. Elected officials must stop behaving as if only the next election matters and start to act with our long-term interests in mind.
Tricia Brouk, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Tricia Brouk is an international award-winning director. She has worked in theater, film, and television for three decades. Tricia founded The Big Talk Academy where she certifies speakers in the art of public speaking. She was the executive producer of Speakers Who Dare and TEDxLincolnSquare and now The Big Talk Live. She is currently being featured in a new documentary called Big Stages, which highlights the transformation of her speakers. Tricia’s commitment and devotion to inclusion are a priority as all of her shows, events, and communities are diverse. She curates and hosts the Speaker Salon in NYC, The Big Talk, an award-winning podcast on iTunes and YouTube. The Influential Voice: Saying What You Mean for Lasting Legacy was a 1 New Release on Amazon in December 2020. She was awarded Top Director of 2019 by the International Association of Top Professionals and Top Ten Speaker Coaches in Yahoo Finance in 2021. Her documentaries have received critical acclaim—winning Best Documentary Short at The Olympus Film Festival and Los Angeles Movie Awards. Tricia has spoken at Forbes, Pride Global, New York Public Library, I Heart My Life Live, and The National Organization for Rare Disorders.
