Innovation Frontlines

This week on Innovation Frontlines we speak to a serial innovator in the area of advanced materials for energy storage and mobility. In two decades, under the current pathway, India’s total vehicle stock could more than double, with cars and trucks increasing their share to about 45% of the vehicle stock and carbon dioxide emissions doubling by 2040 if we don’t change energy source. On a net zero by 2070 pathway, about 20% of India’s road vehicle stock will have to be electric by 2030. Akshay Singhal is founder and CEO of Log9 Materials, which has been applying its expertise in graphene to trial an audacious fuel cell system for road transport using electricity and aluminium, and also a way to fast charge more conventional battery packs. Akshay tells us how they identified the importance of tackling range and charging times for electric vehicle users and how they have built batteries, cars, 3-wheelers and chargers, all since being founded in 2015. This conversation was recorded in December 2021. Since then, Log9 has set up a new battery manufacturing facility and won Best Energy Start-up at the Economic Times Energy Leadership Awards.

Batteries have become pervasive in the modern economy. From the device in your hand, to electric cars and the power backup in homes and offices, we rely on batteries to provide uninterrupted supply of energy, and greater mobility to the modern tools we use. Analysis by the IEA shows that India would have one of the world’s largest markets for batteries by 2030. India, however, is a net importer of batteries and the critical minerals that make them, and this import dependence would likely increase as demand grows. Darshan Virupaksha and his team at Nunam have developed a new system for testing and guaranteeing the performance of batteries that would otherwise be sent for disposal or recycling, and repackaging them at much lower cost than new battery packs. We talked to Darshan in November 2021 about how he came to recognise the scale of the impending battery waste management challenge and how they have chosen to work with automakers turn the challenge into a business opportunity. The opportunity is large: the IEA estimates that, globally, nearly 10% of mineral demand for batteries could be met by recycled batteries by 2040 if the right conditions are in place.

Over the next two decades, India’s vehicle stock is set to double to over 550 million. Along with it, oil demand from these vehicles, and carbon emissions are also expected to double. In India, two and three wheelers are routinely identified as having the highest potential to be a frontrunner in vehicle electrification, but commercial fleet operated vehicles spend most of the day in motion. Slim margins mean that drivers cannot afford to spend too much time charging during the day. Ashwin Shankar, the Founder and CEO of BatteryPool, provides battery swapping solutions for EV fleets. In our interview, he explains how he identified vehicle electrification as a major pollution-tackling opportunity for India’s cost-conscious society, and how fast the landscape has changed over the past five years. Given the challenges of managing capital risk in an environment with hardware inventory and rapidly evolving battery technology, Ashwin tells us how BatteryPool has pivoted from vehicle ownership to selling to fleet operators. This episode was recorded in December 2021.

Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies trap CO2 before it can be emitted to the atmosphere, and stop it from contributing to climate change. The captured CO2 is typically sent to a safe and permanent repository, deep underground, but could potentially also be used in industrial processes that bind the carbon into materials. While there are good examples of successful and large CCUS projects around the world, the sector has to date suffered from a perception of high costs, very large public funding requirements and few incentives to radically cut emissions in sectors like cement production, refining or coal-fired power generation. Carbon Clean is an unusual player in the CCUS space: not only do its founders hail from an emerging economy like India, but they are a relative outsider compared to the major energy companies that otherwise dominate investments. In this episode, Aniruddha Sharma explains how Carbon Clean’s technology tackles the CCUS cost problem and how they aim to lower the barriers to investment for emitters at all scales. Since the recording of this episode in November 2021, Carbon Clean has gone on to raise a major fundraising round and be selected for the Global Cleantech 100 list. Whether you calculate that we need seven billion tonnes of CCUS by 2050 (as the IEA does) or less than one billion tonnes, we urgently need the conditions for companies to start making money from locking up emissions.