Power plants: the green way to sustain the global energy transition

When Professor Caitlin Byrt learnt about the concept of taxes early in primary school, she was adamant that she would avoid the daily grind and become a hermit living in the wild.

“I was horrified,” she recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘What do you mean? You slave away at work to earn money to live, but one third of it’s taken away?’

“My younger self would be very shocked that I am now participating in society, paying my tax bills and working in front of a computer in an office most of the time.”

But as a researcher at The Australian National University’s Research School of Biology, Byrt is doing far more than just contributing tax to society.  She’s using science to change the world.

As a biologist, she’s using the power of plants to create sustainable technology solutions for some of the world’s most complex and pervasive challenges. Her research encompasses finding new ways to extract value from wastewater, optimising crop productivity and figuring out how to grow plants on the moon.   

It’s by no means easy work, but Byrt – once called to live in nature – is now planting scientific seeds to protect it.

Protecting what we love

A self-described foodie with a love of nature, Byrt says her research focus arose from her fears about unsustainable resource consumption, the destruction of our natural environment and the real risk that vulnerable communities will run out of food and water.

“The places I love are being destroyed. The opportunity to enjoy nature and eat great food is massively at risk because of the way that we do things.

“And so, I studied agricultural science and then ended up in bioengineering, in a field which directly relates to needing to understand how we can function differently and in a more sustainable way.” 

Time, energy and water management play key roles in sustainability solutions. The problem is our access to these components is finite.

“If you had unrestricted time, energy or clean water you could fix anything,” Byrt says. “The issue is that we have limited time, energy resources and clean water.”

Sustainable solutions

Powering the global energy transition will require an increase in extraction of the key metals needed to build solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. Extracting these resources will create wastes that must be managed carefully.

“As we’re trying to move away from fossil fuels, extracting all the resources we need for clean energy technologies could inadvertently cause environmental problems, similar to how fossil resource consumption inadvertently led to greenhouse gas emissions and climate disruption,” Byrt says.

“We need to make sure that environmental problems are prevented as our raw resource needs and technologies change.

“Our resource management has previously been structured so that a few powerful players can make the most money out of resource industries, rather than focusing on sustainably and ethically delivering resources for the common good.

“We see the consequences of that. We have been destroying the planet, and then in turn, destroying our opportunity for happy, healthy lives.

“Analysing the impacts of our planned actions before and during any extractive activities and as new technological innovations are tested is important.”

That’s where plants come in. It’s not just traditional mining excavation processes that can unearth important minerals – plants and microbes have related abilities on a different scale.

Byrt and her team of researchers are looking at the mechanisms used by plants to separate molecules containing nutrients, metals and minerals. The learnings from their research could be applied to the creation of scalable technologies that will help us sustainably manage the resources we need for food, energy and water security.

“People might think ‘we need copper for its conducting processes’, well plants use copper molecules too,” Byrt says. “Humanity is interested in rare earth elements. Plants use rare earth element properties too.

“In diverse life forms, there’s been evolutionary selective pressures to be super-efficient with the management of resources, and we can learn from this efficiency and apply the learning to how we plan resource management going forward.

Investing in a better future

Byrt and her team have received significant funding from global mining group Rio Tinto as part of their $A240 million collaboration with five partner Universities including the ANU.

Their work as part of the Rio Tinto Centre for Future Materials will involve determining how best to extract the materials we need for the energy transition.

“In this project we are going to be looking at how living organisms are able to uptake, exchange, separate, sequester and modify critical resources,” Byrt explains

“Copper is a key part of this first challenge. Understanding the processes that enable living organisms to manage copper as a critical resource is what we are going to explore.”

From there, the plan is to find ways to undertake remediation at sites with a history of copper mining, cleaning up wastes in such a way that ensures these sites can continue to supply this critical resource.

“What Rio Tinto is investing in and what the team is working on is a fantastic step towards creating a better future,” Byrt says.

But she notes that with a climate disaster unfolding in front of our eyes, more needs to be done, and faster.

“It’s the type of responsible investment that needs to be made by every entity of scale, every government, every institution that can possibly help. We need to be focusing all of our attention on setting ourselves up for a sustainable environmentally friendly future.

“When you read in the news about the activities that are in direct conflict with what we know needs to happen in terms of the clean and green energy transition and how we manage our resources, it does cause a lot of concern in terms of running out of time to protect diverse life on our planet and the climatic conditions that support life.

“We should all be on the same page in addressing sustainability challenges and looking after this planet that keeps us alive.”