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The renewable energy trend crossed partisan boundaries decades ago when red and blue states alike partook in the hydropower boom of the mid-20th century. More recently, some state officials have tried to push the clean power genie back in the bottle by ginning up action against ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing. They have achieved some success, but investors just can’t resist the opportunities offered by new clean technologies.

The anti-ESG movement is mostly hot air

In a new report, the consulting firm Pleiades Strategy tracked 165 bills introduced by Republican lawmakers across 37 states, all aimed at steering government pension fund managers and contracting agencies away from ESG principles. Since the “E” in ESG leans heavily on renewable energy, the main thrust of the legislation is to protect fossil energy stakeholders.

Last week, Pleiades reported that the legislative push has met with significant pushback. “This coordinated legislative effort, commonly referred to as the anti-ESG movement, generated massive backlash from the business community, labor leaders, retirees, and even Republican politicians,” a new report from the firm reads.

Among the 165 bills it identified, only 21 became law. Many were substantively amended to satisfy objections. “Broad escape clauses were added to limit the most draconian prohibitions, which experts have warned legally contravene the basic tenets of fiduciary duty, creating a ‘liability trap,’” the report reads. 

Renewable energy is not a new “woke” craze

The Republican-dominated state of South Dakota provides a living example of the extent to which anti-ESG office holders are out of step with business leaders.

Anti-ESG rhetoric is larded with scary talk that warns of a new “woke” threat taking over the country. But there is nothing new about renewable energy in the U.S., and South Dakota is a case in point.

In March, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed an open letter with 18 other Republican governors, warning that the “proliferation of ESG throughout America is a direct threat” that puts “investment decisions in the hands of the woke mob.”

Nevertheless, South Dakota continues to benefit from the 20th-century hydroelectric program. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) notes that 3 of the 4 biggest power plants in South Dakota are hydropower facilities that were built more than 60 years ago.

South Dakota’s agriculture industry has also benefited from longstanding federal policies going back to the Energy Policy Act of 1978. South Dakota is currently the fifth-largest producer of bio-ethanol among the 50 states, all from corn.

In addition, South Dakota grabbed onto the wind energy coattails fashioned by Iowa and Texas legislators in the 1990s and early 2000s. Wind contributed more than 50 percent to South Dakota's grid in 2021, with hydropower coming in second, according to the EIA. Coal and natural gas each contributed less than a tenth. 

More wind power for South Dakota

Activity in the South Dakota solar industry has also begun to stir. But much attention remains focused on wind resources, including tribal lands. “Four of the nation’s top five reservations with the greatest wind-powered electricity generation potential are in South Dakota,” the EIA observes.

Transmission bottlenecks have been a roadblock to wind development in South Dakota, as in other states. Back in 2012, several South Dakota Sioux tribes organized to overcome the obstacles by forming the Oceti Sakowin Power Authority — which holds an estimated 60 gigawatts of potential wind capacity on tribal lands. Pending resolution of the transmission bottleneck, an initial tranche of projects is in the planning stages.

Diversification in the renewable energy field

New clean power technologies are also popping up in South Dakota. Much of that activity is focused on renewable natural gas (RNG), sourced from the state’s copious production of livestock manure.

At the start of the year, the Pennsylvania-based holding company UGI Corp. announced an investment of $150 million for two new RNG clusters in South Dakota, drawing from multiple dairy farms. The two projects add to a third cluster previously announced, with an investment of $70 million.

The Michigan company DTE Vantage also opened a massive RNG facility in South Dakota last summer. Another RNG company with a hand in the state is the global firm Biogest — which claims “RNG is the only renewable energy source that can be carbon-negative, as it significantly reduces methane emissions from agricultural operations."

ESG or not, new green fuel industries are growing

Sustainable aviation fuel is another new industry establishing a footprint in South Dakota. In 2021, the biofuel firm Gevo began laying plans for an aviation biofuel plant that leverages the state’s corn growers as well as its wind industry.

The Gevo facility broke ground last fall. It includes a green hydrogen system, representing still another potential new industry. With an ample supply of both renewable energy and water, South Dakota has all the basic ingredients for a green hydrogen industry that could lead to follow-on opportunities in green ammonia and e-fuels production.

South Dakota businesses want renewable energy

The Joe Biden administration issued a fact sheet last March that drew attention to supportive relationships between renewable energy producers and other businesses in South Dakota. The White House took note of the meat producer Kingsbury and Associates, which is investing in a new $1.1 billion processing facility in Rapid City. Kingsbury says the new plant will rely on renewable energy, including captured biomethane, to achieve bottom-line results in a competitive environment.

Another indicator comes from the solar developer GenPro Energy Solutions. In May, the company received equity growth funding from the in-state financial firm South Dakota Equity Partners and an established South Dakota investor. The partners launched a new GenPro branch that aims to “open doors to South Dakota and other regional energy providers desiring to develop utility-scale solar projects while embracing South Dakota values,” according to GenPro.

Against this backdrop, last week the Washington Post took notice when an unnamed lobbyist for the Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce “scolded the supporters of anti-ESG legislation.”

Speaking of “woke,” all of this should be a wake-up call for anti-ESG candidates. It may be too late to make a course correction in time for the all-important 2024 election cycle, but 2028 is right around the corner.     

Image credit: Kervin Edward Lara/Pexels

As the sun warms the morning air, bundles of brown leaves slowly come to life. Soon, orange fairies start their delicate dance — flitting through the shady canopy, landing on passersby and dotting the sky. In winter, the fir forests in central Mexico transform with the arrival of millions of monarch butterflies. Once described as “the personification of happiness,” sadly those masses of monarchs are slipping away. 

Along with many other insects, monarchs are disappearing. Their migratory populations declined 80 to 99 percent over the past few decades. While the migratory monarch was listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species in 2022, the U.S. Endangered Species Act has not offered them any formal protection. With federal action lacking, it's up to citizens and corporations to help America’s insect. 

The benefits of monarch butterflies

Monarch butterflies and other pollinators provide us with a variety of benefits, so sharp declines in their populations impact us negatively.

“We used to have hundreds of millions of monarchs, especially in the eastern United States, and tens of millions of them in the West,” said Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. “Monarchs recycle nutrients by eating their host plants, and they’re food for a huge variety of animals. They're likely really important from an ecosystem functioning point of view.” 

Monarchs are also deeply embedded in our culture. We raise them in classrooms, visit butterfly gardens, and celebrate them in festivals, myths and legends. And we value this cultural importance a lot. Americans are willing to spend a combined $4.7 billion to $6.6 billion for monarch conservation through donations and money spent growing monarch-friendly plants, according to a survey published by the Society for Conservation Biology. 

The appeal of monarch butterflies also draws tens of thousands of tourists to their overwintering grounds in Mexico and coastal California, generating income for local communities. 

Threats to monarchs

Nonetheless, tackling the monarch’s decline is challenging. Weighing less than a paperclip, they can migrate an astounding 3,000 miles each year. This mobility means habitat spanning three borders needs to be protected.

In the U.S. and Canada, many breeding areas used to be covered with milkweed and flowers. Milkweed is the exclusive food for monarch caterpillars, while flowers provide nectar for adults. Unfortunately, many of those areas were converted for agricultural use. The widespread use of herbicides and genetically modified crops has further reduced milkweed abundance.

“The use of highly toxic insecticides is likely linked to monarch declines,” Black said. "Pesticides are used ubiquitously in agriculture and for things like mosquito management in some natural areas. They're also used in the quest for the perfect lawn and the perfect road. In two studies we’ve done with the University of Nevada Reno, wherever we test, we find residues of pesticides in milkweeds. About a third of them would have likely been harmful to monarchs who are eating them. And that's a real problem.”

In addition to natural areas, milkweed from nurseries can also contain pesticides, according to a study published in the journal Biological Conservation. In fact, milkweed marketed as wildlife-friendly were almost twice as likely to contain at least one pesticide at levels that were potentially harmful.  

Other prominent threats to monarch butterflies include the loss of overwintering areas, climate change, invasive species and disease.

Plans for monarch conservation

Despite that bleak picture, reversing the monarch population decline is achievable. “In some ways, it’s relatively simple,” Black said. “We have to provide what these animals eat. In the case of monarchs, their host plant is milkweed — having a place to lay their eggs and for the young to grow is vital. But when it comes to monarchs, as well as other pollinators, we need to go beyond milkweed. Monarchs are strong flyers, and they use a lot of flowering resources for nectar to fuel flight, mating and egg-laying. So, we need milkweed and mostly native flowers that monarchs and other pollinators can use.” 

Fortunately, detailed plans exist to do just that. The Monarch Conservation Science Partnership has a goal to plant at least 1.3 billion stems of milkweed, particularly in the North Central region of the U.S. And the Monarch Joint Venture aims to restore 7 million acres of pollinator-friendly habitat nationally, including 50,000 acres in California’s Central Valley and foothills.

In addition, a consortium of midwestern states and federal, private and non-governmental partners are working to implement the Mid-America Monarch Conservation Strategy. This ambitious plan aims to reverse the monarch population decline by planting milkweed and flowers across the landscape east of the Rocky Mountains.

What can you do for monarch butterflies?

For companies and individuals interested in chipping in, there are a plethora of ways to help. 

One option is to plant a pollinator garden in your yard or company’s property. Schools, 4H clubs and scout troops can receive seeds for pollinator gardens through the Save Our Monarchs Pollinator Garden Program. The Xerces Society also has guides for finding suitable milkweed and flowers according to your location and a tool to locate milkweed seeds. But make sure to avoid tropical milkweed, which can be harmful to monarchs. 

In an example of environmental responsibility, Google established numerous pollinator gardens across its California campuses. After planting 4,000 milkweeds, the company said sightings of caterpillars are 10 times greater in its gardens compared to control plots. It also provided support to organizations protecting monarch butterflies and their habitat like the Xerces Society and Peninsula Open Space Trust, and gave a grant to the city of Mountain View in the Bay Area to create pollinator habitat. 

Another opportunity for monarch conservation exists in roadsides, highways, paths and electric lines. The Rights-of-Way as Habitat Working Group brings the transportation and energy industries together to create monarch habitats across 48 states. The organization encourages brush removal, mowing and seeding strategies that support monarch habitats. Interested energy and transportation companies can join this project until late 2024.

Some companies are going a step further and changing their supply chains to source produce and food grown in a monarch-friendly manner, Black said. Moving toward integrated pest management and reducing pesticides in agriculture, cities and lawns are also big steps in the right direction.

The monarch butterfly has flitted dangerously close to extinction. But there’s still time, and plenty we can do, to save this charming bug.

Image credit: Joshua J. Cotten/Unsplash

This is the second article in a two-part series about brands addressing police violence — click here to read part one.  

In 2020, corporations donated billions of dollars to under-served and over-policed communities hoping to correct the deep-rooted systemic injustice that breeds police violence and brutality and underscores every aspect of our country.

It didn’t work. 

An estimated 1,096 people were shot and killed by U.S. police last year, according to tracking from the Washington Post. That’s the highest number since the paper began keeping track in 2015 — with a disproportionate number involving Black Americans. U.S. police have killed 436 people since the start of 2023.

Creating a cultural renaissance to reduce police violence

When it comes to a polarizing topic like police violence, brands often prefer to weigh in with solutions-based rhetoric, rather than just restating the problem. So, brands are far more interested in suggesting police reform projects and less interested in publicly condemning police violence. 

“Positive action and language always has more staying power,” said Diane Primo, CEO of the Purpose Brand agency. “Gun prevention versus gun violence, think about it like that. That creates lasting impact.”

Primo recommends an approach that’s different from many advocates, calling on brands to work toward creating a cultural renaissance in police forces that have been perceived as having a bias against Black communities.

“The police's relationship with the community has broken down. A few bad apples have tainted the reputation of the dedicated officers who are committed to serving and protecting the community,” Primo said. “Local governments and the citizens they protect rightfully hold them accountable.” 

So, how can brands support police-community engagement? “Continuous retraining and re-engagement with the community continues to be paramount,” Primo said. "Therefore brands should consider supporting and funding training and community engagement programs. Brands should ask police leadership what they need to accelerate their own transformation. I don’t think there’s a police force in this country that isn’t grappling with these issues while facing budgetary constraints.”

Police reform requires additional funding for police departments. If pro-reform Americans don’t want this additional funding to come out of local budgets, then they ought to embrace the concept of brands funding police department reform projects, Primo said.

Still, she understands the skepticism from critics wary of increased investments in police departments, the majority of which already boast hefty budgets. Though public safety across the nation has become inextricably linked to malpractice, corruption and the avoidance of accountability, Primo observed that similar issues are also prevalent in other sectors like healthcare, where a solutions-oriented approach has been effective.

“No one has a problem leaning in and saying, ‘Let me figure out ways to help ensure there is equitable health care,’” Primo said. “We know there are plenty of organizations with the ability to tactically provide solutions — what I'm proposing is not radically different.”

To achieve the police reforms advocates seek, it may be necessary to fund, rather than defund, police departments — just not directly. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals, community outreach, de-escalation seminars, and interventions with problematic perspectives are all initiatives that brands can finance for police departments. 

“It's not necessarily pledging money to the police department open-ended. It's providing restricted funds to accelerate their own internal transformation and engagement with the community,” Primo said. “These funds should be dedicated to rebuilding processes that embrace diversity when hiring, promoting and engaging with the community. This ensures institutional change. This is equivalent to the same internal diversity challenges that corporations and brands face. I would argue that it is brutality of a different sort.”

Cops can take a page out of corporate America’s DEI playbook

Police departments increasingly find themselves tasked with addressing the symptoms of larger societal crises that complicate a police officer’s normal duties. Black-and-white laws cannot accommodate the gray space created by systemic issues like poverty, socioeconomic inequality and community disinvestment.

“The issue of policing is far more complex than many understand, meaning they are really at the center of things that are socially and economically so out of hand. This creates its own set of unique problems,” Primo said. "When you have a community that is not healthy because they can't get jobs. They don't have a living wage to support their families. There's a transportation issue in their community. There's a healthcare issue in their community. When you're talking about crossing the ZIP code and having mortality change. That’s going to create a special set of problems.”

These same communities, though, hold the key to unlocking a better model of policing. In communities that harbor strong distrust, fear and skepticism of law enforcement, there lies the potential for a new generation of police officers who are better equipped to navigate the challenges of enforcing the law in an underserved and over-policed community.

Yet in areas where police departments have acted downright antagonistic toward civilians, how are these same departments to recruit from a group of people who have only ever had negative experiences with cops?

Once again, companies have the potential to bridge this gap, Primo said. If brands really want to commit to police reform, they will need to invest in reforming both police personnel, as well as the communities they serve and protect.

“What dollar amount can brands give to support education? What dollar amount can brands give to create a better relationship between the community and the police, and actually fund more positive policing in the community?” Primo asked. “Helping the police figure out how to attract more prospects of color into the police force so they, too, achieve diversity.”

American police officers lost the trust of the people they are supposed to protect. For many young people, trust in police is not eroded — it is non-existent. To win it back, police need to plant the seeds of community engagement. And corporations can help connect these seemingly incompatible camps. This young generation recognizes the power of corporations to enact change and has leveraged brands to act on various topics in the past, including police violence. So, it is not a stretch to suggest activists could again pressure corporations to fund police reform. 

“Sticking power really is about how to create positive change — you don't approach that negatively. And that's why during the George Floyd protests, people talked positively about, ‘What can I do? What does this mean?’” Primo said. “From a brand perspective, think about the transparency that was created in your own organization with the acceleration of DEI reporting, DEI officers and DEI hiring. The question remains: Will it continue, and what will the impact actually be today and over time?”

For this to work, though, police must commit to reforming their own procedures and perspectives. Brands must commit to putting their money where their mouth is and continue their reform work after the media stops covering it. Activists must acknowledge that abolishing and significantly defunding the police are unrealistic goals — the pursuit of which fails to address, and even exacerbates, the present policing problems.

“We know that whenever there's a crisis, positive change can come out of it,” Primo said, “There is potential here for positive change, for brands to support the police in very positive ways.”

Image credit: Cooper Baumgartner/Unsplash

Hydrogen is ubiquitous throughout industrialized economies, filling needs in a wide variety of industries from refining and metallurgy to agriculture and personal care products. Even as these industries attempt to decarbonize, hydrogen holds them back, because fossil fuels are the primary source of the global hydrogen supply. Fortunately, more sustainable alternatives are finally emerging. Now, the race is on to displace fossil energy with green hydrogen produced from renewable resources.

Green hydrogen from seawater

Much of the activity in the green hydrogen field is centered around electrolysis systems that jolt hydrogen gas from water with an electrical current, sourced from wind, solar or other renewable resources. 

Electrolysis is not a new technology, but its application to commercial-scale hydrogen production is a recent phenomenon, and innovation in the field is still ongoing.

One key challenge involves water resources. Under the current state of the technology, electrolysis requires purified water. That can raise a red flag, as global freshwater resources are already stretched thin. However, according to some analyses, this amounts to water savings overall as green hydrogen displaces fossil-based energy systems that use even more water. Green hydrogen also compares favorably to nuclear energy in terms of water use.

In addition, recent improvements in electrolysis technology opened the door to using seawater instead of freshwater. Researchers are working to lower costs by eliminating the purification steps without exposing the system to corrosion and other damage caused by seawater.

One recent breakthrough, published in the journal Nature earlier this year, demonstrates that hydrogen can be coaxed directly from seawater, yielding results similar to that of using purified water.

Green hydrogen, now with carbon capture

Another variation of seawater-based electrolysis was developed by the U.S. startup Equatic. The company’s green hydrogen system captures and converts airborne carbon into a solid form, drawing on the natural chemistry of seawater. 

“Seawater has contained dissolved inorganic carbon for millions of years, and is in effect oversaturated with respect to calcium carbonate (as exemplified by the stability of sea shells),” the company's website reads. “The Equatic process exploits this fact to immobilize carbon dioxide in the oceans for tens of thousands, if not millions of years.”

The Equatic green hydrogen system is a closed process that takes place within an industrial-type facility, which allows for precise monitoring to ensure that seawater is returned to the ocean in its original condition with no acidification.

“We say we make green hydrogen,” Equatic COO Edward Sanders told TriplePundit. “But our [green hydrogen] is actually carbon negative. For every ton of carbon dioxide we take out, we make 4.5 kilograms of hydrogen. We can either sell it for revenue, or we can use it to power our process in a fuel cell.”

The sustainable limestone economy of the future

Equatic is focused primarily on marketing its system as a low-cost, energy-efficient, carbon-negative source of green hydrogen. However, the potential to harvest bicarbonate solids from the system raises some interesting possibilities for carbon recycling.

Sanders suggested that using carbon solids in support of climate adaptation would be one good place to start. For example, calcium carbonate is more commonly known as limestone, the main ingredient in Portland cement. 

In addition to cement-making, limestone has many other applications throughout the global economy. Calcium carbonate is an important source of calcium oxide, which plays a role in industries like steel, glass and paper manufacturing. Calcium oxide is also used to treat water and purify sugar, among other applications.

Considering the potential for environmental and health impacts involved in limestone mining, a non-mined supply of calcium carbonate would be a valuable resource for manufacturers that are seeking to align their supply chains with ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles.

Scaling up for the green hydrogen economy

With or without a market for carbon solids, the demand for green hydrogen is growing at an explosive rate, providing Equatic with the opportunity to scale up rapidly.

“The ultimate scale we need to get to on carbon dioxide removal is gigaton-scale. At that scale, we could decarbonize entire industries with green hydrogen,” Sanders said.

Equatic described its plans for carbon capture with hydrogen production in a press announcement last month, which notes that the company spun out of research at the University of California Los Angeles Institute for Carbon Management, with $30 million in private- and public-sector financial support.

Two Equatic systems are up and running at a demonstration scale. One is located at the Port of Los Angeles, as part of the port’s longstanding support for low-carbon initiatives. The other system is located in Singapore, where a commercial-scale system is also in the planning stages.

The carbon removal at both of the demonstration locations is fully subscribed through the revenue platform Stripe. A newly announced pre-purchase option agreement with Boeing will also help accelerate Equatic’s transition to a commercial scale.

The agreement calls for the delivery of 2,100 metric tons of carbon-negative green hydrogen to Boeing, which will involve removing 62,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That brings Equatic a significant step closer to its interim goal of removing 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. By 2028, the company expects to bump its carbon removal up to millions of metric tons per year.

Equatic is just one example of innovation in the green hydrogen field. There are others, such as the use of photoelectrochemical cells to mimic the natural process of photosynthesis. As a group, these developments are pushing down the cost of sustainable hydrogen sourcing for a wide variety of industries — and pushing fossil-sourced hydrogen further along the path to irrelevancy.

Image credits: City of Gold Coast and Sarah Brown via Unsplash

The common narrative of 2020 — and perhaps our collective memory of that tumultuous summer — is that corporations delved neck-deep into conversations of police brutality and a culture of excessive force. But for all the lofty words, the condemnations of violence and commitments to change, most corporations have quietly shifted back to their standard messaging and practices, even as police violence increased.

An estimated 1,096 people were shot and killed by police in 2022, an increase from 1,019 people in 2020, according to real-time tracking from the Washington Post.
 U.S. police have shot and killed 436 people since the start of the year, according to the database.

Last year marked the highest number of police killings since the paper started keeping track in 2015, with a disproportionate number involving Black Americans. So, what prompted large corporations to go quiet on police reform? Are consumers just not applying the same pressure?

Why have brands grown silent on police violence? Thinking back to what they really said

For starters, a brand can’t become silent on an issue it never explicitly addressed. Most companies that issued statements regarding civil unrest in the summer of 2020 did not address police brutality at all, observed Diane Primo, CEO of the Purpose Brand agency.

“When you actually go back and look really carefully, you don't find many brands actually using the words ‘police brutality’ or ‘abuse of police power,’” Primo said. “They are purposefully choosing to stay away from those words specifically.”

Corporations flooded the internet with press releases and statements from CEOs weighing in on a violent police culture in need of reform — though most stopped short of explicitly condemning police brutality or police violence.

“This is a really important insight,” Primo said. “Brands give the impression that they talked about police brutality when, in fact, their focus is really on the larger issues in the community. They are focused on the end game, being that Black lives really do matter. If they matter, brands must take responsibility and help address the root cause by providing opportunities that ensure equal education, employment and economic mobility. The brands let the protests represent these issues, while they moved toward action and commitment to the community.”

Though most brands didn’t comment on police violence and brutality, their actions weren’t necessarily performative, nor their statements vapid, Primo said. By and large, corporations focused on issues they could directly control. Some brands focused on increasing their own internal representation in terms of diversity and inclusion, as well as making fresh commitments toward supplier diversity initiatives. Many banks and financial institutions made substantial investments to support community development and promote financial mobility in areas lacking both. 

For example, in June 2020, Bank of America announced a $1 billion commitment to health, housing and job training initiatives in historically underserved communities, with a special focus on addressing “economic and racial inequality accelerated by a global pandemic.” Likewise, in 2020 PepsiCo created its Racial Equality Journey (REJ) Initiative, pledging to invest more than $570 million over five years to increase Black and Hispanic representation at the company, while working to dismantle systemic barriers in Black and Hispanic American communities.

Though these investments were in direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the vast majority of these funds were not invested in the official Black Lives Matter organization or local Black Lives Matter chapters. Companies like Apple, Walmart and Comcast made similar investments to racial justice and community development, and immediately faced calls for boycotts from their conservative consumers. In response, some brands issued statements emphasizing that they had not donated to the Black Lives Matter organization, but rather invested in causes that support Black communities. While PepsiCo also hit back at false accusations from Fox News that it had donated directly to the organization, Gatorade (a PepsiCo brand) eventually did just that.

Outliers: Brands that spoke up early 

Some exceptions included statements from companies like Ben and Jerry’s and Dell that denounced police violence specifically. 

Ben & Jerry’s issued what some experts called the strongest and most substantive statement in response to the murder of George Floyd, denouncing white supremacy and demanding broad reforms to address the legacy of slavery and reign in law enforcement. 

Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies, similarly focused on the undeniable connections between America’s legacy of slavery and its history of brutally policing Black communities. “From the devastating and disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 to the devastating impacts of police brutality, the long-standing racial injustice in America that began 400 years ago is impossible to ignore,” Dell wrote in a letter shared within the company and later on LinkedIn.


In 2020, protesters were able to pressure corporations to acknowledge the ubiquitous racial injustice that defined the segregation of U.S. communities and the disparate policing of American citizens. Police violence is the core issue that dragged brands into the conversation, whether or not they explicitly addressed it. Yet police violence has increased in the years since these corporations donated billions of dollars to support “community development.” 

So, how can protesters get brands to start explicitly condemning the police brutality that started this dialogue in the first place? The next installment of this two-part series explains the approach Primo recommends — click here to read it.

Image credit: Jacob Morch/Unsplash

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a group of manufactured chemicals that have been produced since the 1940s. While they have myriad useful properties and manifest in a range of products from nonstick surfaces to personal care products, concerns over their use are growing. 

Current scientific research suggests exposure to PFAS may lead to a range of adverse health outcomes, including certain types of cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

PFAS are also known as “forever chemicals,” because they break down very slowly, if at all, in nature. Consequently, they continue to accumulate in greater concentrations in our environment, and by now they’ve even infiltrated our bloodstreams.

TriplePundit recently reported on new innovations aiming to mitigate the proliferation of PFAS by finding safer alternatives to them. But we need to find ways to remove existing PFAS, too. 

Though this is notoriously difficult, a North Carolina-based company found a way to eliminate these chemicals, somewhat by accident, in its effort to modernize wastewater treatment. “We got lucky in that we responded to the challenge to re-invent the toilet.” Sunny Viswanathan, VP and head of global sales at 374Water, told TriplePundit. 

Meeting that challenge, seeded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, focused the team on developing an optimal sanitation system which could be deployed in low-income parts of the world. In that effort, they sought ways to render waste sludges both useful and inert, leading them to consider supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) as a potential solution. 

Historically, SCWO was used to destroy persistent environmental damage resulting from chemical warfare, Viswanathan told us. But his team found the technology translated well to wastewater management, while coincidentally dealing with PFAS. 

What is supercritical water oxidation?

Water reaches the supercritical stage when both its temperature and pressure are increased to a point where it is no longer a liquid, nor is it a gas. Instead, as Viswanathan described it, “It goes into another ‘phase’ of water.”

Supercritical conditions for water arise at 374 degrees Celsius and a pressure of 218 atmospheres, or over 3,200 PSI (pounds-force per square inch). Once supercritical, water develops some interesting properties which are useful for processing organic waste. 

“Water as a liquid can dissolve salts, but it can’t dissolve organic matter,” Viswanathan explained. He used the example of adding pepper to water, which of course won’t dissolve. Why that’s the case has to do with the shape of the water molecule and consequent polarity of water, Viswanathan explained.

A water molecule has a V-shaped structure that includes a single oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms attached. This structure affords it a positive and negative charge at an atomic level. Because of this, ionic salts can dissolve but, with very few exceptions, most organic matter — like, in this example, pepper — will be unaffected, Viswanathan explained. But the inverse is true under supercritical conditions.

“When you go supercritical, the shape of the water molecule literally changes — which means it loses its polarity and becomes a very good solvent of organic substances and a bad solvent of salts," Viswanathan said. "Salts will come out of the solution, but now your pepper will disappear. Your poop will disappear.”

And here is the important point. Because PFAS substances are organic, “Your PFAS will disappear," he said. 
 
In essence, under supercritical conditions, all the organic matter in wastewater — including PFAS — becomes completely dissociated. When air is added to the mix, an exothermic oxidation reaction takes place, completing the process.

“By introducing air, which has 21 percent oxygen, it will go after the carbon and make CO2 [carbon dioxide]. Once it removes carbon from the material, it becomes inorganic and will form salts and water — and energy, as it is an exothermic process," Viswanathan said.

The last point is important. An exothermic reaction is one which produces heat. 374Water’s AirSCWO system uses the heat produced by the exothermic reaction to perpetuate the process. So long as you continue to put waste sludge in, “the waste is the fuel," Viswanathan said. 

Putting the technology in the field to eliminate PFAS

With this simplified and abstract explanation of the science in mind, what does 374Water’s system look like in the field?

The company’s AirSCWO reactor units are packaged into 40-foot shipping containers (see above). The smallest reactor is a single container, while larger configurations would combine two or more. The company has plans for building-based systems, too.

Household or industrial wastewater comes into the container through a pipe at one end, and inside it, the contents of the pipe are pressurized and heated. Some external energy source is needed initially to start the system.

Wastewater sludge coming into the reactor is typically 80 percent water, and it’s the existing water content of the sludge which goes supercritical. Once that happens, all organic matter within gets dissociated and oxidized, which happens quite rapidly. “It takes four to 40 seconds to go from something that is completely toxic to something that is completely benign, clean and useful," Viswathanan said.

Indeed, it's useful in various ways. The system’s output is distilled water and useful minerals such as phosphorus which can be processed into fertilizer. Meanwhile, surplus energy from the exothermic reaction has the potential to be captured for electricity generation.

As for the PFAS, these are broken down into carbon, fluorine, hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur. As Viswathanan put it, “Just by exposing PFAS to supercritical conditions, you have actually destroyed them.”

What's next for this high-potential PFAS solution?

It’s taken 10 years for 374Water to go from concept to commercialization. The company, now traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange, will see the first of its commercial units go into operation in Orange County, California, next month. 
 
Expansion from there will be carefully undertaken, as 374Water plans to start at a scale that is manageable. But the addressable market is substantial.

Each 40-foot reactor can process up to 1 million gallons of wastewater per day. Of the roughly 17,000 wastewater facilities treating household, commercial and some industrial wastewater in the U.S., only 9,000 of these are in the 1-million-gallon range. In theory, in combination with the larger reactors the company has planned, it would have the capacity to service all of these facilities.

That said, scalability relies to a large extent on the right incentives. The state of Maine offers one such example. 

Because of PFAS, the state has banned the application of wastewater sludge on the land, an increasingly common practice on U.S. farms. That shift means water treatment plants have to spend up to $200 per ton to send their wet sludge out of state. Since 374Water’s method eliminates PFAS and produces no waste sludge, the system would provide a huge cost avoidance opportunity under these circumstances. Consequently, municipal sanitation providers could see payback on a reactor in as few as three years, Viswathanan said. 

As a final point, he emphasized the long-term opportunity this way. “The technologies we are relying on now for waste treatment are nearly 100-year-old, antiquated technologies. We now have a system that is capable of not only treating the waste, but also destroying the recalcitrant waste and taking it out of the ecosystem.”