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.
01:55Concrete 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.
02:48Industrial resilience is as a whole.
02:49I read on your website that 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, is opening up to cement being charged for the emissions that it produces.
03:29Because we replace some portion of cement, therefore those using our material can decrease the cost of material procurement because we simply do not have a carbon tax because we're a negative emissions technology.
03:45Whilst we're very, very small like we are right now, of course our cost of production is higher than regular concrete ingredients.
03:52However, within the coming five years or less, we foresee that we will be quite price competitive, and 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, but 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. Do you think the pace of change here is fast enough in Europe, or are we still lagging, would you say, when it comes to large-scale industrial decarbonisation?
04:33I think that lagging is a question of lagging behind who? I think US, China?
04:40No, I think Europe is at the forefront, but are we actually meeting planetary needs of our future generations? No, 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.
04:58I think Europe is ahead, and US is very quickly falling behind. It'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.
05:24What 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
06:00and their planetary ambitions, frankly.
06:03So 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,
06:19leading the way in terms of creating a blueprint for how you can use the built environment
06:25as a sustainability solution and also save money.
06:29But let's not forget, most concrete today is used by public spaces.
06:34So 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.
06:58So 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.
07:20And if you think about the bigger picture, here in Europe, we're quite built out.
07:25But 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.
07:42Brilliant. 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.
