Curiosity Can Change the Climate: LLNL Scientist Drew Wong, PhD and the Roads2Removal Report

Startup Tri-Valley Podcast – Drew Wong

Yolanda

Welcome to the Startup Tri-Valley podcast. And we are here today with scientist Drew Wong, materials engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Drew, welcome to the pod. 

Drew

Thanks. It’s a ton of fun to be here. 

Yolanda

So, let’s just dive right in and we’re going to start with a little bit of why Drew is here.

So, Katie, I don’t know if you want to talk about the Innovation Tri-Valley meeting, that kind of spawned the idea to have Drew on the pod. 

Katie

Sure. Yeah. Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group is a regional movement where a business-led organization representing leaders from the research labs, your institution, Lawrence Livermore National Lab and then Sandia National Laboratories and the business sector of the Tri-Valley and the educational institutions and the government agencies. And in 2020 we launched a plan for the region to continue thriving to the year 2040. And a really pivotal aspect of that was the green economy and how the Tri-Valley in particular can be a model of environmental stewardship and also create new job opportunities.

And as part of that plan about 1000 stakeholders from the region contributed to it. And two goals really bubbled up. One of them being doubling down on efforts to commercialize lab research within the region. And leading on moving towards a carbon neutral and water neutral future. So when the plan was envisioned a few years ago, I don’t even think those leaders at the time could even anticipate what we’re talking about today.

So clearly with innovation, Tri-Valley leadership group, we partner with Startup Tri-Valley, another partner. Two valuable partners of ours are the Lab Foundation, Livermore Lab Foundation and Lawrence Livermore National Lab. So we’re very excited to be amplifying your work and brought you to an Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group board meeting and it kind of exploded.

People have been talking about it. People are really excited. So we’re excited to have you here and we’re really trying to get the word out and get as many folks, especially regionally as possible to know about the work that you’re doing. 

Drew

Thanks. That’s really encouraging to hear. I didn’t realize it was going to be so impactful and love to hear that something I said is actually listened to and talked about.

Yolanda

Absolutely. Listen to talked about and continuing to inspire people. So of course, I was at this meeting and heard your presentation on the Roads to Removal. And that spawned so much curiosity from our part. Obviously, Startup Tri-Valley is about fostering science based startups and immediately go to our, are we funding the right things are, you know, how do we encourage our startups.  Before we go into all of those kinds of big questions, I want to start just with you. You’re a scientist. You’re an engineer. Tell me about, tell us about what you do at Lawrence Livermore National Labs and how you came to To be involved in the roads to removal. 

Drew

Absolutely. Yeah. So some of those are kind of intertwined. So I joined the lab after my PhD in 2019.

I was working on batteries for grid scale energy storage, kind of a unique type of flow battery that there’s actually a startup company in San Leandro that’s, that’s running with it, Quinoa Energy. And so we were working on a kind of electrochemistry material science for that.

And that’s the work that I started picking up at the Lab. But I got more focused on the carbon aspect. And so we were focused on what was called carbon utilization. How do you take carbon dioxide and instead of burying it or storing it in some way, which is, is a really valuable and impactful thing to do.

How could you actually use that in any interesting way for production of new materials? So I joined the Lab looking at carbon utilization and  my work has slowly started to continue to expand more and more towards technology translation. And how do we move the innovation and research at the Livermore (National) Lab into the public sphere which is something I’m really excited about.

And I got involved in the roadster removal report. One of my bosses invited me and said, Drew, would you be interested in being a part of this? I think that you could really contribute. And I said, I’m, I’m an electrochemist, a material scientist, that’s not really the core of this work, but I’d be more happy to contribute.

And so I got involved in some special side projects looking at things that other people weren’t. Blue carbon and a couple of things that we just didn’t have an opportunity to put into the report, but eventually got a spot to do a regional analysis in the report. And we can talk about that.

Yolanda

Yeah, that’s great. And I think let’s just uplevel it a little bit because we know what Roads to Removal is, you know, what Roads to Removal is. Can you tell our audience what the Roads to Removal is? 

Drew

Yeah, so, jumped the gun a little bit there. So roads to removal is a report that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory led but was put out back in December.

And it looks at the question of if we can decarbonize or remove. the need for fossil fuel burning power plants across the country. What is this? What is the residual amount of carbon that we still need to remove from the atmosphere? And what are the ways that we could do that? What are the potentials and what’s it going to cost?

And so this report really looks at kind of a national level scale of how we do carbon removal, in cost effective and, and practical ways. 

Great. And this is the Livermore Lab Foundation that led the report? 

The Livermore Lab Foundation’s sponsors and was helping with a lot of the publicity and the funding and resources.

The Lawrence Livermore National Lab was the one that led the report and brought in other national labs, other research groups around the country. So I think they’re, Something like 14 different groups. There were 68 authors on the report. Wow. So it was, it was a pretty big effort over the past two years.

Yolanda

That’s an amazing collaboration to be a part of. 

Drew

The leadership was fantastic in, in being able to, to try to orchestrate all this. 

Katie

It’s a first of its kind too, isn’t it? This report on a national scale, the studying both the execution and the implicate the cost implications, right?

I believe it’s the first time that anything like this has been attempted. 

Drew

Certainly, certainly for the scale, the scope and the granularity. So, looking at something across the United States for all of carbon removal, but getting down to the county level, which was, which was really challenging to do for a lot of things to get down to, to get down to the county level.

The granularity was probably the thing that I think is really, really interesting. Other reports have looked at carbon removal across the country and looked at it in different ways, but certainly this was unique in the scope and and the granularity. 

Katie

Interesting. Okay. 

Yolanda 

So one of the things that really struck me when I heard your presentation is that there were similarities between regions.

That seemed very different. And I think the one that really stood out was the similarity between the Central Valley in, in what was creating carbon release and Northern California. Both were, I think, waste primarily and the remediations because of the differences in the region were, you know, Similar, but also different.

And I was wondering if you could maybe compare and contrast these two regions that are very different, but also releasing carbon really essentially from the same source, which is waste. 

Drew

Yeah. So there’s one of the neat things about this and one of the challenging things about the work that we do is, we have a big country and it looks very different in very different places.

Very different corners. And so one of the things we were asking is how do we, how do we draw these stories out? How do we, how do we really say, you know, yeah, the Central Valley of California is going to look different than Northern California and that there’s a lot of commonalities. And so the things that we really pinpointed for each of those are that the Central Valley really has a lot of agricultural activity. And there’s a lot of activity around, quote unquote, carbon that can be done involving agricultural waste and storage in some of the geologic formations down there. More than happy to elaborate further on that. Northern California, I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and Northern California looks quite a lot like where I grew up, you know, a lot of forests and the opportunity for doing carbon activities. forests are really prevalent there. But also in how do you, how do you take that, the biomass, the materials and and use, use those or leverage that opportunity for carbon dioxide removal.

Yolanda

And how would you compare and contrast that to the Bay Area, which I think is Northern California, but cook considered coastal. 

Yeah. So the urban centers were always a really tricky one to work with because it’s hard to do a lot of the carbon dioxide removal activities. A lot of the things that people picture in their head are big And you know, frankly, you know buying a condo in the Bay Area is kind of hard so being able to to use, you know, significant areas of land or or resources like water are challenging.

So, but the urban areas we do leverage or have looked at the opportunity to leverage municipal solid waste. So basically anything you’d throw in your trash and asking how, how can you take what would normally be destined for a landfill and would be piled and covered and, and allowed to decompose over time, who knows how many years, how could you actually take that and provide a valuable service to the economy to, to humanity and to the environment by, by using that as a carbon removal source. 

Yolanda

Amazing. And so this. This, I think, leads us into BiCRS. So, I’m hoping you’ll talk a little bit about that.

Please spell it out for our listeners. 

Drew

Yeah. So bikers B little I C R S is biomass carbon removal and storage. So we say BiCRS. Some people who are in this space might know something similar, which is called BeCS. And but essentially biomass, carbon removal and storage. So what you’re doing is you’re using biomass to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

So plants are pulling in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere constantly. And it’s, you know, a very efficient way to do it. And they store it in the, you know, woody tissue of trees or in the, in the stocks of, of plants. And the question is that it will eventually decompose if it’s left alone.

And so that ends up being a little bit circular. So anything that’s captured in biomass is then released into the atmosphere. So the question is, once it’s captured and moved from a gas particle in the atmosphere to a solid, you know, in a, you know, in a block of wood or something like that, how could you, how could you then take that and store that in a permanent source?

Now there, a wide variety. I think we looked at like 27 different ways to do this. There’s a lot of really interesting technologies that are being developed on how you take carbon in biomass and put that in a permanent storage option. I will not be able to do an exhaustive list here, but essentially you could turn it into a different form, whether it’s solid or it’s liquid or it’s a gas and then store that in a permanent place.

Basically what you’re doing is you’re using plants to concentrate. Carbon from the atmosphere into tissue. And then you can do interesting things with it. 

Yolanda

Exciting. Deceptively simple sounding.

Drew

It always is. It’s easy. It’s easy to be able to talk about something in 30 seconds and the actual building of it would take quite a while.

Katie

So, I was just going to say, to expand on that. What, what are we talking timing wise? What would be a regional initiative? Look like, say, let’s take the Tri-Valley and what, what would that first step look like? 

Sure. So there’s when we were looking at the report BiCRS, as you mentioned, is one of those different pathways, taking biomass, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and biomass, and then finding permanent places to store that.

We also looked at how you could store carbon in agricultural soils or in longstanding tree biomass? So if you were able to support, you know, afforestation or the regrowth of forests could you store carbon in the new growth of those trees? So those are actually really, really good questions.

Fast you could, you could start that tomorrow. And with pretty minimal changes in either agricultural practices or in forest management, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for supportive, you know, folks in our forest service and stuff like that to be able to leverage the skills and knowledge in those spaces to be able to do carbon dioxide removal.

That is a small portion, but I think a very important portion of what is possible today. BiCRS involves a little bit more engineering. So there’s, you know, you need to build a facility. Typically, if you’re getting the permits and stuff like that, all the business related things, it’s going to take you a couple of years to build it.

And then probably a couple of years to really see the financial benefits of that. So you’re probably looking at the time horizon of five to eight years would be my, my guess. But it’s a system that could be used for a long period of time. And then we have other, other technologies that we’ve looked at, which are still needing more work at scale. And so. But we can talk more about that as well. 

Yolanda

Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like one of the strengths of this report and what you just brought up here is this identification of sort of near term, midterm, long term. And there’s different types of innovation across the board. Everything from how cities can operate. And you mentioned, you know, the people who are like forest rangers and how they’re managing the forest. And, but I’m very curious because of Startup Tri-Valley and Daybreak Labs and our mission, what you see as some opportunities for innovation from the startup community, especially, you know, here in the Tri-Valley.

Drew

Yeah. I mean, the startup community is just great. I’ve, I’ve loved getting to know founders and entrepreneurs and the, just the, the number of things that they get to think about on a daily basis. And so, I don’t even know if I will be able to do justice to talking about all the opportunities.

Cause we looked at a portion of ones that are technologies that are fairly mature, but there’s certainly a ton of innovation that needs to happen in, in, in and making processes more efficient or to work with let’s say figure out ways that we can work with carbon, carbon dioxide solid carbons better.

One of the areas I’ll just highlight cause I think this is really relevant and is often under talked about when we, we often think about, you know, I want to make the new battery or I want to make the new big plant system is there’s a lot of really interesting technology going on in the agriculture sector.

How do we do farming better? How do we use water better? How do we grow resilient crops? How do we not use as much pesticides? And those, those kinds of technologies really can, I’ve seen some really cool things where they’re, they’re analyzing soil in real time and that wasn’t possible 10 years ago.

And the, the opportunity for carbon dioxide removal and being able to, to monitor and record and and to verify that there’s just so much opportunity specifically there. And one area that I don’t think is. is very well understood that I would love to see a lot more just personally is, is in forest.

How do we get systems that remote monitoring systems that you could put in a forest and it’ll last for 30 years, 40 years and, and it’ll, you know, pay attention to the health of the forest or how do we do monitoring of, of trees and, and biomass a lot better. I would love to see that. And I think it’s very underexplored.

Yolanda

That sounds exciting. 

Katie

I like the agriculture shout out. We give a little shout out to some of the companies that are local to like Monarch Tractor in that space. Topcon has been working in that space for a long time. 

So what about jobs? One of the things that we really look at at Innovation Tri-Valley and in this community is anticipating the pipeline anticipating what we’re going to need.

And I know that’s something that the Livermore Lab Foundation is really working on. They’ve got a future of climate tech workforce development survey that we’re going to partner with them on. And we’re doing some workforce development listening sessions with some of the companies. So what do these jobs look like?

What are the skills? What are the, what’s, what kind of reskilling are we looking at? And what does a typical climate tech worker look like? 

Drew

Oh man, I don’t even know if I really could say what a typical climate tech worker is. Gosh, I think, I think one of the big areas that’s really, really underserved or really under I think could use a lot of growth and there’s a huge amount of potential are folks who are in practical trades.

How do you do metalworking and how do you do you know, construction and building? There’s a lot of things that are going to involve a lot of hands-on projects. And frankly, there’s a lot of trades that really at a community college level and within trade schools, I think, really could be augmented and will be absolutely critical to the growth of, of any of this future industry.

We also need planners and people who are good at, you know, schedules and development developing projects. So people who are able to see the big picture and, and direct with how to, how to do something on the course of, you know, many years. So I think that those are two areas, but, but certainly there’s so many different places that we need.

We need development of skills and opportunities. 

Katie

What about you personally? Did you, you know, we hear this from our young people, you know, they’re holding our feet to the fire. Sustainability is number one for them. Did you imagine yourself working in a climate? Was that a goal for you when you were young?

Drew

No. No. No. Frankly, I’ve just followed the things that I’ve been interested in. So, you know, five years old, I wanted to be a paleontologist and then that’s, that’s kind of continued to pivot. I didn’t even know when, when I went to college, I’d said something in math and science. And so I took a bunch of courses and my first courses in engineering were just And I was like, I love this.

And I’ve just continued to, to take. More opportunities to learn different subjects and different materials. And it’s just, it’s just really, really cool. I tend towards bigger projects. So, I tend to think, Oh, what happens if you, you expand the problem, you make it bigger and bigger. And so that inevitably leads me to the energy and climate space, because these are some of our biggest challenges today.

And so that’s the area I found myself in. I find it really interesting because there’s so many things to do, so many things to think about. And so many ways to tackle really practical problems. And so I just love, love learning all aspects of that. 

Yolanda

It’s so interesting that it’s the scale of the problem that drew you to working in energy and climate, and I’m curious for our Tri-Valley residents who might be interested in what they’ve learned from Roads to Removal or maybe other aspects of working on problems that if we solved could, could really help us in terms of our climate, what advice would you give them in terms of, you know, and there’s, there’s sort of a skillset building for the, the kids that are still students and then, but the adults that are maybe already early career, mid career, or even late career, where do you think that those groups could contribute and how would they skill up? 

Drew

Oh, there’s so many things unpacked there. I think, I think at its core I would just, my encouragement across ages and stages is just to be curious and and just to exercise curiosity. It’s like, oh, I’ve never heard about that.

I want to learn more, go learn more. We have, we have such amazing resources to be able to learn more. And, and frankly, you know, I think it’s a, it’s, it’s challenging to be able to convey all ideas and, you know, in a single page or in a hour long podcast or in a, you know, in a YouTube clip or something like that.

Like go, go research it, like go, go look it up if you’re really curious. And I think that that’s the, the. I, I really encourage people to ask questions and, and poke holes at the, the things we’ve worked on. Certainly the report, whereas it’s, it’s one of a kind and we did a really, we tried to do, be really diligent about diving down deep into all the little nuances.

It’s almost necessarily imperfect. And so, so I would really, I really. would welcome the opportunities for people to, to dive in and be curious about well, why is that? Why, why does that work that way? Could we have done it better in a different way? So whether you’re a, you know, a high schooler or middle schooler you know, in school and learning a new subject, or, you know, you’re a seasoned professional thinking about, well, how does it might work in and impact the climate. I just say, yeah, do some, do a little bit of digging and there’s a lot of fun stuff to find. 

Yolanda

That’s awesome. And we will, we will help our listeners out by making sure to put some things like the roads to removal and other resources linked in the show notes. So for those of you listening, you’re going to have at least a starting point.

Let’s see, Katie, any, any other closing out questions that you can think of? 

Katie

Mostly, I guess I’m really excited. I’d really like to know what excites you the most about this. What, what are you excited about? What do you see? How about five years and then 10 years from now? What would you like to see?

What is your, what is, what is your, what is your near term and what’s your moonshot? How about that? 

Drew

Ooh. Okay. So, so I’ll start with, I’ll start with what I’m excited about. One of the things that came out of this report and I, I’ve mentioned this before, but I, frankly, was really floored and really excited that being able to reach our carbon removal goals is possible.

It’s possible. It’s certainly expensive and we’ll take concerted effort, but that was something that I just walked away with. Like, wow, we can, we could do it. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. And certainly it’s going to take a lot of work, but that was, that was a, yeah. A piece that I just keep on running with and so 5 years, 10 years from now I would like to see people catch that vision of like, it’s possible and we’re going to do something about it.

What that looks like one of the one of the amusing things about the report is that we’re, you know, we’re trying to try to create a roadmap. And it feels to me like I’m a runner. Orienteering is something that I think is just kind of a really fun concept of here’s your starting place and here’s your ending place.

Here’s a map of the terrain, but you have to figure out how to get there and do you go up that mountain? Do you go around, you know, swim through the lake or however you get there could look very different. You just have to start getting there. And so five years, 10 years from now I would love to see.

People using the concern about the climate and concern about our environment and human health. Not as a place of fear or concern where it’s, I can’t do anything about this, but you know, I’m going to do my little part and I’m going to be encouraging others to do their little part and collectively we, we can do this together.

Yolanda

That sounds great. 

Katie

You heard it here first. CDR is not a moonshot. 

Yolanda

So going back to your analogy of the orienteering map, for you personally, what, what are your next steps? And then what are the next steps for Roads to Removal? 

Drew

So for the Roads to Removal report, we’re continuing to continue to share this around the country.

So we’re going to be going to different parts around the country throughout the year at different workshops and events to talk about this. We were just in North Carolina and we have a bunch of things coming up in the fall. There’s actually going to be a Livermore Lab Foundation run event that’ll be local that people can attend.

I’m not exactly sure of the details on that, but I’m sure you can..

Katie

I believe that’s going  to be in September and at Las Positas College from what I understand. So we’ll put those details in the show notes as well as that’s forming that plan. 

Drew

Wonderful. That’s great. Yeah. There’s so many, so many different activities going on that I can hardly keep track of them all.

But we’re also looking to yeah, just we’re, we’re one country. And so what, what could communication look like with people beyond? So, that’s still, that’s still very much an infant stage, but I’m not involved in those conversations, but we certainly are thinking about how we can collectively make a difference in the environment.

Yolanda

And how does this translate to what you’re doing in your own work for Lawrence Livermore? 

Drew

Yeah. My own work, again, as I started off, I got really excited about technology development. And so, even some of the, some of the things that we wrote up in the report, there’s still a lot of. research to be done.

And so my work really centers around this question of how do you move something from, I’ve demonstrated at the benchtop scale, you know, I’ve proved a proof of concept that it works. It’s a long way to get to it’s in someone’s pocket or it’s attached to someone’s house or it’s, you know, in a field.

And my current excitement is how do we move more of the lab technology that way developing both facilities to do prototyping and and develop ecosystems to be able to bring in people with business mindsets to be able to to really grow technology so that there’s more of a pull from the industry community on that.

Yolanda

That’s exciting and really aligned with the things that we’re both involved in

Katie

At the energy summit, the regional energy summit that we just held Lawrence Livermore director Kim Budil was our keynote speaker, and she also did a panel with Courtney Jenkins, who’s the president of Engie U. S. Services, and they really leaned into public private partnership. For them, that was the key. To the future of the environment, really. And so that just goes along to what you’re saying. And we’re very fortunate to have people like you at LLNL who prioritize that and are young and can see this tech transfer into fruition.

So that’s very exciting. 

Drew

Thanks. I think it is. It’s definitely, definitely hard. And so it’s not an easy road to walk down, but sometimes the fun roads to walk down aren’t always the easiest. 

Yolanda

We know you like large scale problems. 

So for, so for other scientists and engineers listening to this, who also like large scale problems or want to work on part of one is Lawrence Livermore hiring and how would they find that information?

Drew

Always, always. I think the lab just never stops hiring. Certainly the easy place to point to would be careers.llnl.gov. I assume you can link that as well. 

Yolanda

Yes, we can. 

Drew

But yeah, just basically the Livermore career web page and there’s a lot of opportunities. I’d also just say, you know, leverage your social networks.

So LinkedIn is always a great one to just be able to make connections and learn what people are doing. A lot of my colleagues are posting about the research that they’re doing and the work that’s being published. And in public forums. And so definitely take a look at that and see what are the things that you’re interested or curious about and and, and to reach out.

Yolanda

Before we say goodbye, is there anything we didn’t ask that you really wanted to put out there? 

Drew

I don’t think so. I used, I, I really, I really hope that people will take You know, even listening to this as an opportunity to learn more. And and I think that it’s really important and valuable to, to look at a report like rose to removal and anything that comes out of the lab and, and, and be willing to to have a perspective that could change, but also be willing to to create challenges and say, like, why, why is that?

One of the things that I thought was really cool that we did in this report was we looked at features of how technology put in a place would affect the environment and would affect people both in terms of jobs, in terms of health, in terms of And again, necessarily we got that imperfectly.

It’s not going to tell you the story about, you know, somebody who lives in a particular place and you know, has a story of their own. And so we, we really care about being able to understand those stories and, and how the things that we, we do and develop and, and suggest as opportunities for addressing the, the the environment, like really impact people both in a positive and in a, in a detrimental way.

We want to try to continue to work on encouraging things and building things that are really positively impacting both human and environmental health. 

Yolanda

Love it. I think that’s a great way to close out. Drew, thank you so much for being on the pod. And Katie, thanks for co-hosting. 

Katie

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

And thanks, Drew. This was inspirational and informational. Really, really great conversation. Thank you. And thanks for the work you’re doing. 

Drew

My pleasure on all fronts. I appreciate it. 

Thanks for listening. For more information, go to startuptrivalley.org.