Inside the most sophisticated plan for solar geoengineering
Show notes
One of the biggest challenges with technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions is that they require mass adoption. Solar radiation management (SRM) has the opposite problem.
By Stardust Solutions’ estimate, dispersing three million tons of reflective particles into the stratosphere could cool the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius for the relatively small price of $30 billion; that's less than the cost of a single hyperscale data center.
Despite concerns about such an endeavor, the company is building a proprietary particle injection system with the goal of being deployment-ready this decade. While Stardust says they won’t deploy without the explicit authorization of multiple governments, questions nonetheless remain around the safety and ethics of SRM.
In this episode, Shayle sits down with Yanai Yedvab, CEO and co-founder of Stardust, to unpack how the technology works, its potential risks, and when to deploy it.
Shayle and Yanai discuss topics like:
- Why Stardust is eschewing sulfur dioxide in favor of naturally occurring, biodegradable amorphous silica and calcite particles
- How Stardust’s technology incorporates real-time and holistic testing
- Stardust’s commitment to only deploying under strict international regulation
- How the company balances the risk that solar geoengineering will reduce the economic incentive to decarbonize heavy industries with the imperative of an immediate climate solution
- Why Stardust structured itself as a private company rather than an academic or non-profit lab
- Catalyst: Making sense of solar engineering
- Catalyst: Serving data center load with carbon capture
Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.
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