Bezos Earth Fund GHG Removal Plan
by Dan Schmidt
Isthmus Energy Systems founder
(in prelaunch now)
Regenerative Agrivoltaic Carbon Removal Industrial Hub Microgrids are the future of human civilization.
Despite being a tongue twister, this arrangement has the potential to serve as the foundation for a sustainable self sufficient circular economy on Earth and beyond. Solar powered automation in agriculture and agrivoltaics combined with a regenerative permaculture design can transform landscapes from bare monoculture dirt and desert regolith to productive ecosystems while supporting a carbon negative economy that replaces the petrochemical industry.
I have worked as an electrician installing solar since 2016 with ambitions to develop my own clean energy projects. My plan is to develop agrivoltaic microgrids to produce carbon negative products while balancing the grid. My experience and network in complex solar project development gives me confidence to meet custom requirements for boutique solutions at existing facilities. If I was awarded the $4,000 I would build 2 prototypes; An autonomous rover and a plasma gasifier.
I would like to develop my own rovers for solar/industrial sites, agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. Infrared thermography sensors are valuable for both methane detection and electrical performance monitoring. A soil sample collection platform can also geotag and timestamp samples with a QR label to be sent for carbon, nutrient, and PFAS testing in a verifiable commercial grade standard. Agricultural and construction equipment can expand its capabilities. Whether I develop my own or build on an existing platform, solar powered autonomous equipment is only one piece of my overall plan.
I am hoping to eventually develop mobile gasifiers in retired school buses and contract Charm for their bio oil injection methods to seal abandoned wells with sequestered bio oil. I would specialize in on site bio oil production, remote methane monitoring from rovers or stationary sensors and agrivoltaic land management to produce biomass.
A conventional stationary gasifier with carbon capture can supply a chemical process facility or generator with syngas. Carbon capture on a syngas generator can produce many products. I’m especially interested in carbon neutral rocket fuel that will be carbon negative if sent to orbit to fuel the space economy.
Hazardous waste including otherwise indestructible PFAS can be neutralized by molecular dissociation using plasma gasification.
A DC arc flash method to produce high quality graphene flakes for industrial use can be a demand response load. Concrete, Tires, Polymers, and countless other materials can be enhanced with bulk carbon negative graphene.
I believe there is potential to produce flash graphene using a direct DC approach using photovoltaics and supercapacitors to avoid high equipment costs. Low cost solar modules can reach high voltages for electric arcs. Developing a prototype for a low cost commercial plasma gasifier is essential to building the farm of the future that I envision.
Personal Essay
I am the right person for the intersection of these industries because I am a systems thinker and I will never give up. The book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn made a significant impact on me at the age of 11 and I have been pursuing a sustainable society ever since. I studied sustainable agriculture and have made a career in the solar industry as a foreman journeyman electrician for almost 8 years. I am now the QAQC/Service Manager at Rethink Electric. I have an intimate understanding of electricity from my apprenticeship at the Associated Builders and Contractors and from work experience in the field. I intend to be hands-on everything that I do and build a small team with a mission driven mindset. In 2019 I discovered agrivoltaics, permaculture and carbon removal. I listened to Mark Shepard’s book Restoration Agriculture driving to jobsites. That book made me cry with an appreciation of nature to form symbiotic life supporting systems. Solar powered automation for perennial polycultures can replace monoculture commodity crops. I discovered the American Solar Grazing Association when it first launched in 2019 and I went through Airminers Bootup course in 2020 and again in 2023. My solar career has been demanding with rapid growth and I share developments in carbon removal and agrivoltaics with every industry peer that I meet. I attended the 2023 Solar Farm Summit in Chicago. A low cost rover for soil sample testing could verify rotational grazing of animals at solar sites or anywhere and I know many local companies interested in a robotic monitoring service. A local natural gas company pivoted to solar and serves concrete plants that I want to approach as well as transitioning ethanol plants to colocate plasma gasifiers to produce syngas/generators to inject CO2 into concrete and make graphene on site to add to concrete/polymers and make chemicals from syngas. I also have access to solar equipment and tools to make prototyping much easier and affordable.
Measurement Verification and Reporting
Measurement Verification and Reporting is a challenge that could be met with blockchain and the IOT. Commercial Revenue Grade Meters for carbon needs to pair with digital marketplaces and utility operating systems. Energy Web Chain has developed a platform capable of assigning detailed qualities to energy credits to track 24/7 energy production flow and origins to verify clean energy is being consumed. Credits similar to SRECs for green hydrogen and carbon removal can be developed on an interoperable platform. Ultimately, AI will likely be optimizing our grid and essential infrastructure using energy and resource value parameters that hopefully we can govern in a truly democratic and free market. I have another proposal about autonomous rovers and plasma gasifiers to enhance agrivoltaics and regenerative agriculture to supply a carbon negative microgrid using demand response to balance the grid. I think robotics will empower the small holder farmers, homesteads, permaculturalists, and independent communities. Small electric equipment can be affordable and self powered.
I think the power of soil sample collection with a geotag, timestamp, and QR code with a series of photos for a record would be a good basis for a carbon removal standard. Affordable access to a revenue grade sample collector on an autonomous platform will be powerful. Soil samples can be sent to a lab for testing. I initially thought there should be a spectrometer or dry combustion chamber on board, but its probably better for standards and cheaper to have a sample sent back to the lab. An IR camera would be good for solar or industrial site monitoring and methane leak detection with a cellular or satellite internet connection to report in real time. A rover could work in tandem with a drone and both charge from mobile off grid solar as a unit.
Commercial/Industrial facility carbon sensor automation is another key necessity. The standards are still being created but the sensors and IOT technology already exists. What is missing is the interface to connect policy with industry and markets. Energy Web Chain has ways to do that within existing institutions and through creating parallel decentralized global economies of communities that form new institutions like DAOs. EWC is like an operating system for a smart grid. Information about industry can be encoded into tokens and used to optimize it for parameters we set. Hydrogen hubs can pair with carbon removal systems that communicate how to optimize the flow of molecules and energy with fluctuations in wind, solar, and grid demand being balanced with various steps in chemical industrial processes paired with energy storage and industrial district heating. Continuous monitoring of value flow in a blockchain format compatible for human and automated decision making will be very powerful.
Personal Essay
I have a good network around me that I believe will enable me to realize my goals. I do believe there is the potential to unlock billions of dollars with clean energy, carbon removal, regenerative agriculture, and automation but what I want to do is create a DAO that will keep reinvesting in productive ecological restoration projects. I am passionate about grazing sheep in solar arrays and bison in wind turbine farms. My biggest goal is to restore as much land to prairie and bison habitat as possible. Millions of acres if possible. There are 127 million farmable acres in the midwest and 75% is soy and corn monoculture. I do believe that agroforestry and regenerative agriculture with rotational grazing can replace much of that 75%. I’m also optimistic for automated marine agriculture and O’Neal Cylinder farms in space. I do actually have another plan to make carbon neutral rocket fuel and send carbon negative products off world to fuel the space economy. Each step we take towards a circular economy brings us closer and blockchain can empower a circular economy in a post national decentralized financial system resilient to any currency or market fluctuations potentially. I do think maintaining interoperability with global markets and blockchain platforms will provide security against uncertainty and instability. If I gained some momentum people in my business community and network could really step in to help. They need to see some results first of course and I have been developing plans but with little resources. I know someone working in blockchain who is skilled and could potentially help me directly otherwise I would focus on the sensors and seeking third parties. One goal is to get Also Energy involved in carbon monitoring and blockchain through Energy Web Chain. I have been working in solar as an electrician since 2016 and now recently in the office. My connections through the solar industry could really help make this a reality.
Carbon Removal Gasifier EV Hybrid Mobile Platform
I have heard that Charm Industrial has encountered a bottleneck in their development. Transporting bio oil to site is challenging. Hyperscalable mobile gasification and chemical process facilities are possible through fleets of school buses that are soon retiring.
ICE buses are being replaced with EVs. Edison Motors is selling easy to service kits for heavy duty truck EV retrofits. Building a mobile gasifier bio oil well injection platform that has been converted to electric motors and batteries could use a gasifier to run a generator with CO2 capture to recharge while a large gasifier could be used to produce bio oil at a well site to be injected directly, sequestering the carbon that originated in the atmosphere. Charm can do the gasification at the well site so the bio oil retains low viscosity while it is still hot and fresh. Once the EV conversion step is mastered, converting buses into EVs for municipal use can accelerate the electrification of school bus fleets. Hydrogen fuel cell battery EV hybrids have potential.
Agricultural equipment can be supported using a hybrid bus as a platform too. Harvesting and delivering large volumes of biomass may be assisted by modified buses using solar and gasifiers to recharge EV batteries without ever needing to plug in. An autonomous fleet can be deployed on leased land with mobile microgrid infrastructure. This is similar to the Energy Observer boat in development by Engie. The powertrain system Edison Motors has developed can also be a platform for a highly mobile solar powered autonomous farm operation that integrates into regenerative agrivoltaic carbon removal industrial microgrid hubs that can scale from very small microgrids to very large systems supporting an on site commercial/industrial 120/208 or 277/480 electrical service eliminating the need for a transformer.
This is a platform for a range of mobile chemical process facilities capable of moving a point source and disposing a waste stream while capturing all of the emissions to convert into new raw materials. One other branch of this technology is to serve the cannabis and hemp industry. The biomass waste from large operations can be gasified with the syngas used to drive a generator that has CO2 capture tech on it that can then sell food grade CO2 back for extraction methods for clean high value thc and cbd products. This provides a holistic solution to waste management while creating a CO2 neutral source that can be made negative if the end of life of that carbon is sequestered in a durable form. A mobile facility will empower waste management services to produce supercritical CO2 for extractions and other chemical and carbon products. There is incredible potential with concrete facilities and graphene.
This can also serve to demonstrate modular circular economies that can be packaged into a form capable of being directly loaded into a rocket and sent to support a GHG removal space industry.
Personal Essay
I recently entered an online electrical and computer engineering bachelors program through National University. I should complete it in 2 years, which will keep me on course. I may continue to study chemical engineering with an emphasis on electrochemistry. I consider myself a lifelong learner and always intended on returning to school, but going the trade route was the best decision I ever made. In 2016 I began my electrical career at a solar installer and entered an ABC apprenticeship program. In 2020 I finished as a Journeyman. I have been passionate about solving our collective culture’s disharmony with nature since I was young. My grandfather instilled a sense of civic duty in me and my mother involved me in social and environmental activism throughout my early life. My dad inspired me to be a lifelong learner and to find my own voice through songwriting and poetry. I pursued sustainable agriculture and found my way into solar with philosophy and a hitchhiking phase in between. I’ve submitted 2 previous related ideas and this one could be developed in tandem with the plasma gasifier and autonomous rover. I will start with the rover and a conventional gasifier for the bus and work up to the plasma gasifier and chemical process facility. I’ve been reading cleantechnica, greentech media, rocky mountain institute, rethinkX, and other greentech blogs and think tanks for over a decade and airminers has blown my mind over the past few years as the potential has been sinking in. Modular systems for a carbon negative circular economy will be so powerful and they can support a network of microgrids for total resiliency. Is it too perfect? Well it’s not enough for the scale of carbon removal we need but it’s one part of the catalyst we need to go the rest of the way. I do truly believe the space industry has the potential to some day deliver limitless energy and resources to allow for complete control of the atmosphere and irradiance of the Earth. We need to ignite a spark that accelerates the carbon removal circular economies that will make that a reality.
Carbon Neutral Rocket Fuel
There is potential for carbon-neutral rocket fuel to empower the space industry to transform the world with limitless energy and resources while offworlding a significant amount of greenhouse gasses. Synthetic methane can replace fossil gas and tighten up our infrastructure. Point source CO2 capture tech can synthesize the methane on site or integrate into a nearby microgrid hub. Pipelines can be reduced and eliminated as modular facilities become more cost effective than centralized infrastructure. Maybe there is even a way to capture the methane leaking from the melting permafrost while building infrastructure to refreeze the permafrost at the same time. The space industry is a catalyst for climate change mitigation in many ways. I have a plan to develop a prototype gasifier in an EV converted school bus that can serve as a platform capable of integrating various chemical process systems or energy assets to convert the syngas into a desired product.
Our modern understanding of ecosystem sciences allows us to both establish habitats in space and restore habitats on Earth. Permaculture and regenerative design must be applied in space habitats and sending biochar soil amendments to space is literally removing CO2 from Earth. Circular economies with perfect recycling of materials are being developed so we have zero pollution. Advanced carbon negative materials can be developed and sent off world to be literally carbon negative while stimulating new industries on Earth.
Agrivoltaics in the desert is almost like a simulation of potential agriculture on the moon or Mars. Large solar arrays create microclimates that allow grasslands to transform the landscape. The great green wall in Africa can have power and permaculture reversing desertification. We can “terraform” earth to pristine ecological health and put all toxic heavy industry in space. We can even build gargantuan cylinder Farms in space that displace millions of acres of farmland to be restored with agroforestry and ecological land management. Hydrogen and methane fuel cells in the desert can have a virtuous water cycle that begins with electrolysis of ocean water and ends with fresh water irrigating the agrivoltaics by washing the solar array with pure clean water.
We must apply our most advanced science to restoring Earth!
The space industry continuously advances our capabilities as a civilization and will give us access to unlimited resources and energy.
First, we need to make the space industry carbon neutral. Then we can make it significantly carbon negative with the increasing payload capacity of Starship class vehicles. More significantly, the advancing science of the space industry will be a powerful catalyst for terrestrial carbon removal and circular economies, especially if there is some technological guidance towards carbon removal systems for rocket fuel. Every other industry has fuel emissions standards so this seems pretty reasonable.
Procore BIM Energy Web Chain integration
Integrating Energy Web Chain dApps into BIM on Procore, CMiC, Autodesk and other Project/Asset Management software has incredible potential.
Interoperability with Autodesk BIM and other professional asset management tools like Also Energy will unlock cross corporate decentralized automation of smart grids and resource value flows. All of these PM platforms have some blockchain integration already, but there are significant hurdles to overcome widespread adoption. Integrating active site monitoring with robotics and a fleet of on site sensors can provide verifiable data to a shared BIM asset portfolio of energy, industrial, agricultural, and carbon removal projects that intersect each other with a range of asset owners. The verifiable data of active monitoring facilitates seamless operation of carbon removal projects integrated into existing facilities. For example, a concrete plant can enter a contract with a waste management service that uses a plasma gasifier to process material into syngas that is burned in a generator with the CO2 byproduct being injected into the concrete. The byproduct of this plasma gasifier may also be upgraded into flash graphene potentially with a pulsed reactor chamber, then added to the concrete to increase its strength (reducing the amount of concrete needed further reducing emissions). BIM modeling can provide transparency between asset owners of the performance of their assets contractual deliverables. Through active site monitoring smart contracts can automate the operation of a carbon negative molecular economy.
This will empower the hydrogen and carbon removal economy to fully transition the petrochemical industry to a sustainable future. Ultimately this is what replaces the petrodollar. Blockchain traces the intrinsic value of materials and energy, then works with AI and smart contracts to meet the parameters given by a governing DAO or stakeholders. Off grid or microgrid facilities can build circular economies of resources and energy that produce high value products from elements extracted from the air, biomass, and water. Offshore facilities can desalinate seawater and process the brine into raw materials. Various steps in the process can be regulated by smart contracts with demand response signals that balance the grid by modulating power consumption. The complex range of value flows and decision making parameters can be facilitated by blockchain architecture with active CTQ BIM site monitoring.
A fleet of rovers can be self-supported in the field and operated from within the PM platforms remotely for detailed inspections. Drones can be maintained by rovers with docking and charging stations integrated into the mobile platform like a fleet version of the Mars Ingenuity and Perseverance pair. A great number of special task robotics can be maintained by a single humanoid robot with near human capabilities. How do we avoid a robot take over?
Secure decentralized governance of assets to create a balance of power.
Sending GHG to the Moon
Even all of our best efforts with terrestrial GHG removal may not be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. The space industry not only allows for GHG to be literally sent off world, to advance technology, and standardize GHG neutral methane markets with fuel regulations, but the capabilities of infrastructure in space will enable incredible abilities to overcome future challenges. Orbital shades, mirrors, photovoltaic, and electromagnetic structures at the L1 LaGrange point’s have potential to regulate a planet’s irradiance and exposure to hazardous charged particles from solar flares and are completely reversible unlike atmospheric particle diffusion.
Farm in million+ acre O’Neal Cylinders allow monoculture to be brought offworld and regenerative agriculture, agrivoltaics, and ecological restoration to sweep across the whole of planet Earth. I dream of returning migratory bison to the great plains. With low cost carbon neutral rockets we can deliver carbon rich soil substrates to orbit. Permaculture has developed the science of soil generation to regreen the deserts and terraform mars. Biochar and compost can become a powerful export to orbit along with graphite for radiation shielding, batteries, and electrodes for electric arc furnaces made with carbon that originated in the atmosphere. Carbon negative graphite can make a variety of advanced materials and the potential for flash graphene is really beyond incredible. Electric arcs can be used to convert essentially any form of carbon, including mixed municipal waste and hazardous materials, into high quality commercial grade graphene. I’m optimistic this will coincide with a transition from ethanol towards the chemical process industry to make materials from biomass, electricity, and electrochemistry.
This one innovation can be the catalyst for a new era in humanity. Graphene is the strongest material ever measured and it can be made out of carbon removed from the atmosphere. Fuel emissions standards to catalyze carbon neutral methane synthesis for the space industry combined with a mandate to off-world carbon negative materials will drive the carbon removal industry to the forefront of our economy.
To materialize this vision, a crowdfunding campaign could enlist the support of a global community using social media marketing to advertise an exploration vehicle to be operated remotely by academics and the public with blockchain enabled decentralized access portals to extraterrestrial worlds.
This crowdfund campaign can legitimately deliver a functional rover as advertised but the real power would be to catalyze a cultural movement to envision our destiny triumphing over difficulty and exploring the universe. Mining vehicles using this technology are a real use case example, but crowdfunded exploration vehicles are such a cool way for the public to engage the space industry and make it accessible for any age range with automated control parameters embedded in the blockchain operating system.
Isthmus Evolving 