After years of growth that spawned hundreds of startups, the nascent carbon removal sector appears to be facing a reckoning.
Running Tide, a promising aquaculture company, shut down its operations last summer, and a handful of other companies have shuttered, downsized, or pivoted in recent months as well. Venture investments have flagged. And the collective industry hasn’t made a whole lot more progress toward Running Tide’s ambitious plans to sequester a billion tons of carbon dioxide by this year.
The hype phase is over and the sector is sliding into the turbulent business trough that follows, experts warn.
And the open question is: If the carbon removal sector is heading into a painful if inevitable clearing-out cycle, where will it go from there? Read the full story.
—James Temple
This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series, which looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.
An AI app to measure pain is here
This week I’ve also been wondering how science and technology can help answer that question—especially when it comes to pain.