Climate Change Reversing Façades
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Full project title
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Project Description
At Made of Air, we are in business to reverse climate change. We take carbon dioxide from the air, permanently store in produced goods that replace fossil-based plastics or high emission materials. We harness the miracle of nature with technology and create a carbon-negative compound that is a mixture of biochar and bioplastics. These are sustainably sourced and utilize biomass waste which would otherwise re-release its temporarily stored CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
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Description of the project
Summary
The HexAudi façade application on the exterior cladding of the Audi car dealership in Trudering is a Made of Air biochar-based carbon-negative material rainscreen panel. In partnership with Audi, Made of Air created the compound, developed the final design, manufactured the boards, designed the application process and oversaw the installation of the panel onto the building’s exterior façade.
Biochar is the term given to the product that is formed from biomass waste (e.g. wood chips) through a process of pyrolysis. It creates a permanent carbon sink, directly benefitting fight against climate change. It is also used in agriculture in various ways; increasing yields, water storage capacity of soils, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions such as methane and nitrous oxide.
In our application, we have used 7 tons of biochar-based product to create a total of 700 square metres of a final product which is a pressed, formed façade panel, similar to a rainscreen panel that is highly durable, dense and naturally coloured in black.
We have provided this panelling solution to Audi for its car dealership in Trudering, outside of central Munich at a full installed cost lower than the conventional façade panelling systems that Audi has used in the past.
Our product achieved a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of -1.95 kg CO2 eq. / kg, meaning for each kg unit of its application, it has removed a net -1.95 unit of CO2 from the air. In this case, the 7 tons of material has removed around 14 tons of CO2.
Having achieved a successful pilot and excellent customer relationship, we are in the process of scaling this application across Audi’s global dealerships as well as their vehicles and other infrastructure.
Key objectives for sustainability
We are in business to reverse climate change. Through a process of pyrolysis, we take the carbon stored in plants and permanently store it in our biochar-based product. Our process through which we create our end-product captures more CO2 than it emits; thereby creating a carbon-negative cycle.
Our key objective is to replace high carbon-emitting materials in the built environment and bring a new, long-lasting material to the market that sequesters, permanently stores and sinks carbon. In order to achieve this through a whole-life-cycle, we work with partners and customers to ensure the final product remains carbon negative through its end-of-life and is sunk back into nature.
Our vision for the utilisation and long-term storage of carbon dioxide begins with photosynthesis. We sustainably store carbon through the large-scale deployment of bio-based negative emissions systems.
Our main raw material is wood-based biomass waste that we source locally – by putting biomass waste into our production process, we utilise biomass which would otherwise go to landfill, get gasified or burned, releasing the CO2 it has photosynthesised back into the atmosphere.
Our pyrolysis is hugely exothermic, producing energy, as well as raw materials. This produced energy is utilised to provide the energy required for our processes while the excess can be put back into the electricity grid for local energy consumption purposes.
Finally, we benefit the local economy and the ecological supply chain, while minimising our transport-related emissions. This means that we valorize local waste to produce high value materials, form said materials locally, and then apply them to use cases locally. This all happens while replacing high emitting and non-local existing materials.
By harnessing the unparalleled efficiency of the biosphere in the sequestration and transformation of carbon, we hope to incentivise the maintenance and cultivation of our natural habitat.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Our product is black, a pure neutral colour that represents elegance. Even though it’s a sustainable substitute to plastics, it has a smoother-than-plastic form and a fine, almost porcelain-like feel to it with a consistent density. It’s beautiful look at and highly visible in its distinctive appearance.
Its solidity and stability communicate that the carbon held within will be safely stored for generations. Likewise, it is beautiful to look at. As an external cladding material, it is immediately and highly visible with a distinctive appearance. This can contribute to a cultural shift towards creating additional climate-positive functionality for products in the built environment.
It has become a widely recognised visual asset. Both as a brand for our company and for those within the built environment and construction sectors, from researchers to developers who utilise the visuals to represent advancements in biomass technology in presentations.
In addition to its aesthetic value, our material is highly durable. It has passed a number of durability tests including weathering and UV for the Audi project. Since its installation in May 2021, it has withstood a number of weather cycles, preserving its aesthetic as well as mechanical properties and quality. The client has expressed interest in rolling out the design for other similar physical assets in its portfolio.
Thanks to its flexibility, it can be formed into various forms. As is exemplified in this project, it can be tailor-made to suit the branding standards of any application and therefore complement and enhance its image.
Its installation process is no different than typical cladding applications. It can create the sensation of completeness, a balanced encapsulation, or a porous but protective skeletal layer that complements the geometry of the shell it wraps itself around.
Key objectives for inclusion
Due to its ability to be formed with a wide range of readily available methods, our material can take many final forms, naturally lending itself to inclusive ideation and development. Our process is inherently designed to be collaboratively enhanced, transformed and improved so that other initiatives and institutions can join us in this journey to decarbonise and reverse climate change.
As it can be formed with a wide range of readily available methods, it is accessible for community members and craftspeople – it doesn’t require specialist experience.
Our main goal is to create an end-product that is financially affordable and logistically accessible. With our Audi project, we have achieved near price-parity with the conventional cladding materials used for a similar application. As we scale our production, we will further reduce costs and improve accessibility to smaller companies and communities seeking to utilize sustainable materials. We anticipate expanding to other geographies within Europe, and will continue to utilize locally appropriate, non-food biomass waste streams as well as investigate opportunities for circular production within our partners’ supply chains and waste streams. In doing so, we aim to preserve universal design in a localized context.
As carbon policy evolves, we will be able to provide a valuable and appreciating asset in the form of carbon credits that will provide further financial benefits to the users and owners of our end-product. To do so, we will partner with organisations who are driving innovation at the forefront of carbon accounting. This will enable the creation of a product that will allow multitude of stakeholders in the built environment to address their decarbonisation challenges without compromising quality of life or accessibility goals.
Results in relation to category
We have made a carbon-negative product. Each ton of Made of Air HexAudi panels remove 2 tonnes equivalent of carbon dioxide from the air and permanently sequester it in the façade panels that now live on the exterior of the Trudering car dealership. This footprint figure is based on a pre-check LCA done with the 3rd party consultancy, Sphera.
We have used 7 tonnes of our material for about a 700 square metres of area size application and therefore managed to remove 14 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
In the process, we have managed to bring to use ~30 tons of wood waste that would have otherwise been burned for energy, or otherwise released it’s CO2 back to the atmosphere.
In similar future applications, we will be generating excess amount of energy as byproduct for every unit of biochar production. We will repurpose a portion of this back to our own production processes and the excess amounts will be fed into the grid, decarbonizing and localizing the region’s energy.
Most importantly, what we have achieved in the Audi project is a showcase that demonstrates that carbon negative building is achievable at scale, cost parity, and within standard construction practices. This proof point will represent a critical milestone in the path to proliferating the global use of carbon negative building materials.
How Citizens benefit
The production of the Audi project was a combination of efforts from a wide range of stakeholders. To start, the project was initiated because of a local regulation that would not allow Audi to use their typical aluminum façade. Without this regulation the idea of decarbonizing their buildings would likely have not gained traction so quickly. This regulation represents a critical role for society to play in the greater decarbonization efforts of the world. Not only do significant policies need to be enacted but also public perception and influence will be critical. This also played a non-trivial role in Audi’s larger context. With their very public need to decarbonize and consumer pressures to do so, we were also able to leverage the importance of this project for them.
Additionally, the actual production of Audi would not have been possible without the support of the community around MOA. This included friends, former colleagues, and other freelancers. Some took active roles in the production process of the panels themselves and others supported as they could with engineering and design. If it wasn’t for the support and belief of these individuals this project would not have reached fruition.
By having a wide range of stakeholders involved, we were best able to understand the problems and perspectives of a diverse set of individuals and organizations. This is core to a wide reaching, cross cutting technology such as ours. It is critical to understand the needs and perspectives of everyone from the corporate with sustainability goals to the installer of the product to the manufacturing support on the ground. Each of these unique views represents a larger contingent who has a role to play in bringing carbon negative materials to the globe.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Our project replaces traditional construction materials used for exterior facades with a carbon-negative product produced from biomass waste, effectively transforming a functional component of a building into an engineered carbon sink. We estimate a saving of 13 tons CO2e / ton of material with our material compared to similar aluminum-based products and 4 tons CO2e / ton of material compared to HPL panels. This represents a monumental shift in building products, transforming them from sources of emission to sources of removal.
To ensure that the utilization of biomass results in long-term carbon storage, we require a method to prevent its environmental degradation. By controlling the thermal decomposition of biomass at elevated temperatures in an inert atmosphere, we transform biomass into a solid material with massively enhanced stability and resistance to environmental decomposition, preventing the re-emission of stored carbon into the carbon cycle.
Our end-of-life strategy is markedly different from conventional construction materials, as we see a pathway to the ground as a key component of closing the carbon cycle. At the end of the product’s useful life, we will use chemical recycling to separate the biomass derived carbon-containing constituent of our material from the reusable binder. The char component will then be buried in landfills or decommissioned salt and coal mines. This strategy will ensure the circular use of the bioplastic component of our material, while ensuring that with each use of our material, atmospheric carbon is returned to it’s original source underground.
Based on the predicted landfill permanence of the char component of our product, we expect a minimum persistence of 300 years for our products, with potential to store carbon for thousands of years.
Learning transferred to other parties
We are deliberately conscious of the idea that we are only one player in an ecosystem of like-minded players whose collective efforts can have the lasting and scalable impact in reversing climate change.Therefore, partnerships and collaboration sit at the core of our strategy in the built environment. This could apply to the advancement and the application of our technology, diversification of our product range, or collaborations with other, complimentary products within the built environment value chain.
Additionally, as part of remaining carbon-negative on the entire life-cycle, we must reduce the cost, energy and emissions associated with the transportation of biomass derived from existing waste streams in geographically diverse locations. For this, we need local partners along the vertical value chainand along the horizontal chain (within built environment and broader) outside of our core operating geography.
In addition to our collaborative product development approach that seeks to address hard-to-abate emissions, we are committed to advancing knowledge production in the field of carbon-negative materials. We are currently engaged with research science institutes and industry groups in Germany, and we plan to make our Lifecycle Assessments for our materials publicly available in the next year.
Lastly, we are in the process of completing our first partnership in this space to help accelerate the scale and adoption of carbon negative materials. This represents the first of many partnerships to come and will be publicly announced in the next months.
