Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Jacob Kohn and Dr Gaetano Dedual, co-founders of Futurity.
In the future they might just look back on this period as the Oil Age, in the same way we look back at the Stone Age. Fossil fuel or oil derived stuff is used at some point in the production, transport or materials of pretty much everything in the world. And it isn’t just the obvious stuff. Most advanced chemicals used as part of building things, coating things, and synthesising things are fossil fuel derived, and this reliance is pretty obviously a big problem.
Oil dependency has created perverse political and social outcomes, enriched and impoverished nations at the same time, and the impact on the climate is an actual disaster, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be this way.
There are really exciting emerging scientific methods and practices to be able to produce these materials we are hooked on as a society, but in ways that leave fossil fuel in the ground, and in the process get more value out of an abundant renewable resource here: pine trees.
Which is a super cool idea – oil is pretty much trees plus time – and today we’re talking to New Zealand company Futurity, who are at the forefront of finding a way to cut out that middle part of time. They’re in the process of bringing a bio-refinery to Tairāwhiti Gisborne, that would use new techniques to break pine down into its building block chemicals, that then become the platform chemicals that can be used for plastics, resins and all sorts of applications today provided by oil-derivatives.
It’s an awesomely ambitious project that I’ve been lucky enough to see up close as my work has helped with the branding, it’s aiming to create jobs, increase the value we get for timber grown here, and help keep carbon in the ground. Co-founders, Jacob Kohn and Dr Gaetano Dedual joined us on the podcast to talk the science, goals and the ways the system needs to improve.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.