00:00I think Europe is at the forefront, but are we actually meeting planetary needs of our future generations?
00:07No, we need to speed up.
00:14Hello, you're watching The Big Question, a series from Euronews,
00:19where we speak to leaders in business about some of the most pressing issues on today's agenda.
00:24I'm Angela Barnes, and today I'm joined by Marta Sjogren, the co-founder and co-CEO of Pebble,
00:32a Nordic-Dutch company storing CO2 in construction materials.
00:37First of all, can you just give us a little bit more context about what Pebble does?
00:41We take CO2, the gas, the carbon dioxide, and quite simply turn it into CO3.
00:48So it's a solid state carbonate, and thereby we lock away CO2 permanently.
00:54So we mimic a natural process, whereby in nature, every day since the beginning of times and forever,
01:03CO2 that's in the air doesn't actually want to be in the air, and it will get pulled down by rain, by water,
01:09and it will merge with magnesium silicates or calcium silicates, and it will form a carbonate rock.
01:18All we do is that we industrially speed that up about 10 million times,
01:23and therefore in an industrial reactor you can just generate the same reaction in minutes.
01:29What other materials can be made with Pebble's technology?
01:32What we have experimented with are bioplastics, regular plastics, paper, and then, of course, concrete.
01:42And as a company, because we want to restore the planetary carbon balance by quite a large amount by the year 2050,
01:49we focus on the most high-priority sector, which is concrete.
01:55I mean, concrete is the most widely used material after water.
02:05Concrete, as well, is often seen as one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize.
02:11Why is that?
02:12Concrete is difficult to decarbonize because cement is difficult to decarbonize.
02:19Cement also, for various reasons, hasn't been really innovated on for quite a long time.
02:26There's really been no incentives.
02:28Now there are incentives.
02:29There is the climate urgency, that's one thing.
02:33There's also the increasing costs of production of everything because of the supply chains that are getting more complicated.
02:40And finally, and not the least, we need to build more.
02:45So it's becoming more of an agenda item, industrial resilience is as a whole.
02:50I read on your website, Pebble's solution reduces the carbon footprint of concrete by 70%.
02:56What does that mean for the construction industry, for example, which accounts for 8% of global emissions?
03:04Well, firstly, technically, we can reduce it up to that amount.
03:07Now it's up to the value chain to figure out how much of a material it allows to input into the concrete mix.
03:16So what's happening in Europe right now is that the European trading system of CO2 emissions, so the ETS,
03:24is opening up to cement being charged for the emissions that it produces.
03:30Because we replace some portion of cement, therefore those using our material can decrease the cost of material procurement
03:39because we simply do not have a carbon tax because we are a negative emissions technology.
03:45Whilst we are very, very small, like we are right now, of course our cost of production is higher than regular concrete ingredients.
03:53However, within the coming five years or less, we foresee that we will be quite price competitive.
03:58And that's because we're using CO2, which is usually a waste stream, and as an input in the mix.
04:05What could this mean for the future of housing in Europe?
04:08In Europe, if we are good at adopting technologies like ours, we will not only be environmentally more friendly,
04:15but because we're more economical in terms of the overall energy footprint, it should also get cheaper.
04:22And Martha, the EU is often seen as a leader in sustainability.
04:25Do you think the pace of change here is fast enough in Europe, or are we still lagging, would you say,
04:30when it comes to large-scale industrial decarbonisation?
04:34I think that lagging is a question of lagging behind whom?
04:38I think US, China?
04:41No, I think Europe is at the forefront, but are we actually meeting planetary needs of our future generations?
04:50No, we need to speed up.
04:51I can't comment about other parts of the world, other than I think China is doing some interesting things.
04:59I think Europe is ahead, and US is very quickly falling behind.
05:04It's very unfortunate to see.
05:05You touched on the US seems to be rolling back on its carbon capture programmes.
05:10How do you see this divergence shaping the future of global decarbonisation efforts?
05:16It's very difficult to tell what is going to happen.
05:20I mean, every day we wake up to some kind of news that we don't know what to do with.
05:25What we do know is that, you know, talent is central to any economy.
05:30And more than ever before, we have talent from amazing backgrounds in the US reaching out to us
05:37because they're worried about whether it's about scientific integrity or economically rational decisions.
05:45They're worried about rational decision making in the US.
05:50And here in Europe, we seem to be quite stable.
05:53And so I think there's going to be a huge influx of talent that just wants to deliver on their career targets and their planetary ambitions, frankly.
06:02So, Marta, with the EU Clean Industrial Deal targeting a 90% emissions reduction by 2040,
06:09how do you see the role of private companies like Pebble, of course, in helping meet these very ambitious targets?
06:15I believe that private companies will be at the very centre of this, leading the way in terms of creating a blueprint
06:22for how you can use the built environment as a sustainability solution and also save money.
06:28But let's not forget, most concrete today is used by public spaces.
06:35So hopefully the public projects that are going to be built in the coming decade or slightly more than a decade
06:42will learn quickly from the private sector and also therefore enable the larger scale up of these technologies.
06:49How does Pebble's technology contribute to the overall European vision of transforming the built environment into a massive carbon sink?
06:57So that's a great question.
06:59So in Europe, we are very committed to resource efficiency.
07:04And the built environment, because it is such a huge source of emissions today,
07:09if you can flip that equation and every single building can be storing a little bit of carbon as a carbon custodian,
07:16I think that goes a long way, both economically and environmentally.
07:21And if you think about the bigger picture here in Europe, we're quite built out.
07:26But the Global South is just in that process of building out infrastructure and building out cities.
07:32And so from Europe, we can be leading the way with adopting the technologies quickly
07:36and then also partnering with the Global South to actually scale these technologies beyond Europe.
07:41Brilliant. Well, Marta, I wish you the very best of luck with scaling up.
07:45And thank you very much for joining us on The Big Question.
