Living the green recovery

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Governments are planning unprecedented spending to prop up economies hit by the coronavirus. Many top finance and economic minds are calling for the money to help—and certainly not hinder—our ability to cut emissions.

Not all countries may choose a green recovery, but the European Union seems eager. On Wednesday, the bloc will unveil the details of a likely multi-trillion euro plan to fuel its recovery. A draft of that document suggests that low-carbon initiatives will benefit, including electric vehicles, renewable energy projects and new, green technologies.

What could such investments do? Bloomberg Green spoke to four pioneers about their hopes and fears.

Energy efficient buildings

An office renovated by Eco Intelligent Growth in Barcelona using sustainable architecture and design principles, and Eco Intelligent Growth's headquarters on the outskirts of Barcelona.

Source: Construcia S.L., Eco Intelligent Growth S.L.

Spanish biologist-turned-businessman Ignasi Cubina started thinking about sustainable buildings in 2005, at the height of Spain's real estate bubble.

Cubina's firm Eco Intelligent Growth has benefited alongside growing awareness both of climate change and the benefits of efficient buildings. But there's a long way to go. "The problem is the scalability of that," Cubina says. "We need the financial world to move the needle toward the right direction. Here's where the EU package can be a game-changer."

Buildings are responsible for 36% of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the draft stimulus proposal, making them its main consumers of energy. To change that, the document proposes a financing facility of €91 billion per year to triple the number of buildings currently being renovated for energy efficiency.

Electric-vehicle (EV) charging

In 2015, Javier Guerra became an early investor in ChargePoint, an EV charging startup. It was a small and unprofitable business with EVs still seen as a luxury purchase. "Making money out of this was complicated before, and it is complicated now if you're looking at it from a short-term perspective," he says.

But that may be about to change. The European Commission's draft proposal suggests that it will double its planned investment in public chargers.

Electric cars will make up about 40% of all vehicles in Europe by 2030, even if the pandemic will force sales to fall this year, according to BloombergNEF. To meet demand for charging, Europe will need to invest about $750 million in EV infrastructure per year through 2025, and more than $1 billion per year through the decade after that.

Biogas

Biogas facility on Icknield Farm near Goring, Oxfordshire, U.K.

Photographer: David Bermingham

About 25% of all natural gas burned in Europe is used to heat homes. Clean alternatives, such as electric heat pumps, are not always viable in dense cities.

When David Bermingham saw a 2013 video demonstration of the U.K.'s first commercial anaerobic digester he saw an opportunity. "Give it the right kind of feed and it will produce methane," he says. Within a year he'd built his own plant at Goring, a village 50 miles outside London, which currently produces biogas for more than 4,000 homes.

Still, biogas struggles to compete with natural gas without subsidies or an appropriate carbon price, and the rate of new biogas facilities coming online has slowed in recent years. That is why the EU is planning to spend €4 billion over the next two years to boost biogas production by 15 million metric tons of oil equivalent (mtoe). It's a small fraction of 400 mtoe of natural gas consumed in the EU annually, but seven times as much biogas as was produced in 2018, according to the European Biogas Association.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen could also contribute to decarbonzing heating, and help high-emitting industries, such as steel-making, heavy transport, and chemicals. Currently the Europe uses 8 million metric tons of what's known as "gray hydrogen," derived from natural gas in a process that releases carbon dioxide.

When that carbon is captured and buried, the result is called "blue hydrogen." When renewable electricity is used to split hydrogen from oxygen in water molecules, that's called "green hydrogen," which is both the cleanest and the most expensive to make. "You need both routes"—green and blue hydrogen—"if you're really serious about decarbonizing all the use cases," says Oliver Bishop, general manager of hydrogen at Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

Hydrogen production can't yet be scaled up by small startups or entrepreneurs. Each method is complex, and requires significant upfront capital. The EU's draft proposal includes plans to spend more than €50 billion on research, as well as the wider deployment of current technologies.

Cubina, Guerra, Bermingham, and Bishop have all seen their businesses grow due to increasing awareness of the dangers of climate change. While there's still a long way to go to recover from the shock of the coronavirus, the flow of government money could provide the stimulus these small businesses need to go mainstream.

— Written with Laura Millan Lombraña

Akshat Rathi writes the Net Zero newsletter on the intersection of climate science and emission-free tech. You can email him with feedback.