Best of: Inside the stealth startup making zero-emission steel

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Steel is the backbone of modern society, and it’s also responsible for 7% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Last summer, Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi visited a US startup that says they can clean it all up. Operating in a suburban office park in Colorado, Electra claims to have developed a way to get through the most energy-intensive part of steelmaking at temperatures lower than fresh coffee. Akshat dives into the science and story of Electra with CEO Sandeep Nijhawan.

This episode first ran in October 2022. This week, Electra was awarded BloombergNEF's Pioneers award for its research into low-carbon steel. Read more about the award and see all 12 winners of the 2023 Pioneers Award here. Read the full feature about Electra here.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our senior producer is Christine Driscoll and our producer is Oscar Boyd. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, it's Akshad. We started zero last year in the middle of a historic heat wave in London.
0:05.9	Since then, tens of thousands of people regularly listen to the show and we are so grateful.
0:12.0	Now we want to know what you think about it. So we've created a survey that'll take a few minutes of your time, but it'll really help make the show better.
0:21.4	The survey is linked in the show notes or or you can find it at bloomberg.com forward slash
0:26.1	zero survey. That's one word, zero survey. Thank you.
0:35.7	Welcome to zero. I'm Akshadrati.
0:38.3	Every year, Bloomberg NEF awards a handful of leading climate startups, the Clean Tech Pioneer Award.
0:45.3	Back when the award was first launched in 2010, it focused on the kind of companies you would expect, solar, wind and batteries.
0:53.3	But since then, the Clean Tech landscape has expanded in a thousand different directions.
0:58.6	And this year's award features everything from crop spraying drones and microbial fermentation
1:03.6	to nano electrodes and low-carbon cement.
1:07.4	Today, we are replaying an episode of Zero that features one of these winners.
1:11.9	It's an interview with the founder of Low Carbon Steel Startup Elektra.
1:16.3	Their work is pretty cool and if it proves scalable, could play a huge role in cutting emissions
1:21.4	from the carbon-intensive steel industry.
1:24.3	It's interesting to see how far the company has come in just a few months since this
1:28.4	episode was aired. For the full list of winners of this year's Clean Tech Pioneer Award,
1:33.9	check out the link we've put in the show notes.
1:40.8	Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week, steel, stealth and flattening the carbon cove.
2:06.6	This summer, I spent three weeks traveling around the US visiting climate startups. Today I'm going to tell you the story of one of them.
2:09.6	A secretive company called Electra that operates out of a suburban office park in Colorado.
2:16.6	Electra is taking on a massive, often unrecognized problem, decarbonizing steel, an industry
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.