Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report 2021

• Pro-Manchester Green Technology Conference 2021 blog article

Worldwide industrial and consumer activities are having a significant impact on the environment.  A ‘race-to-green’ mandate is now a permanent part of the global agenda – a must-do that requires immediate action.

There has been a lot of rhetoric about the need for action, with some recent progress made toward establishing shared targets.  However, the reality is that if we wish to achieve these targets while also maintaining a recognisable way of life then a raft of new technologies will be required.

Green innovation can be conceived as any technology aimed at limiting negative environmental impact created by human activity.  Some of the new ‘green’ technologies will be headline news, but most will not.

Appleyard Lees’ Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report 2021 contributes to the race-to-green conversation by using patent filing analysis to get behind the rhetoric to shed light on the state of progress in the development of these new technologies.

To give us a starting point, we focused on the areas we judged to be some of the most pressing and widely relatable issues facing us today: plastics, food production and energy in the renewable age.

Within these crucial areas, what are the ‘hot’ green technologies that are showing growing levels of R&D activity and investment, and where are they being developed?

Below is a selection of our report’s main findings

Read the full report here.

Plastics

Bioplastics

The concerns associated with plastic use are well publicised.

The race is on to develop the next generation of more environmentally friendly bioplastics, but that’s not enough. In reality, to present a viable alternative to traditional plastics, bioplastics must also match the functional performance of traditional plastics and be inexpensive to produce.

Since 2014 there has been a global upturn in the number of year-on-year global patent filings relating to bioplastics, after a period of stagnation, led in particular by corporate applicants from South Korea, Europe and Japan. While there will no doubt be major breakthroughs to come, the bulk of patent filings is likely to continue to be toward smaller iterative and bespoke improvements across a wide range of application areas.

Recycling

Bioplastics’ performance does not yet consistently match traditional, petrochemically-derived plastics, and the use of traditional plastics will be required until bioplastics catch up. Recycling can partially mitigate the effect of continued use of plastics, however of the 380m tonnes of plastic produced annually worldwide, reportedly only sixteen percent is currently recycled.

 Chemical plastic recycling technologies, such as depolymerisation, offer much potential, but significant progress is still required to develop widely applicable and commercially viable plastic recycling technology.

Following an explosion of patent filings relating to plastic recycling innovation in the early 90s, the technology plateaued and declined over subsequent decades. Since 2017 however, there has been an upsurge in patent filings in several areas of recycling technology, and early filings in new technology areas from universities,

Much progress remains toward developing a strong circular plastic economy, but the signs are that the on-going challenges may be starting to be addressed with renewed vigour.

Read more about bioplastic and recycling innovation here.

Food production

The human population has expanded dramatically over the past hundred years, and promises to continue to do so for the next hundred. Delivering food in a sustainable way to a growing global population is a central issue facing the world’s agriculture and food industries.

Conventional agriculture

How can conventional agriculture be improved to feed our growing population in a sustainable way?

While patent filings toward conventional agricultural innovation have on the whole plateaued over recent decades, some green technology areas are seeing upsurges in global filing numbers.  In particular, innovations relation to agricultural drones and CRISPR genetic manipulation of crops stand out.

Drones

Agricultural drones facilitate precision agriculture – including fertilisation, irrigation and pesticide application – utilising greater data and intelligence collection. This technology could eliminate guesswork and help farmers become more accurate, efficient, and therefore more sustainable. The underlying technology is yet to mature, however once it does the focus of innovation will likely move to management of large reams of data.

Leading corporate patent filers in China and Japan are innovating in areas such as drone capabilities to carry and dispense treatments, and drone management, respectively. Deere & Co. also stand out as high filers, with innovation focussing on precision farming across the spectrum of sowing, treating, and harvesting.

CRISP

CRISPR is an exciting technology allows precise genetic manipulation (GM) of crop species. Though GM of crops has existed for a number of years, CRISPR could address many issues with GM crops (e.g., the use of agrochemicals and retention of antibiotic-resistant genes making GM highly regulated and costly).

Since 2012, the US have led a rapid increase in patent filings toward the application of CRISPR in agriculture. Research using CRISPR in agriculture is working towards introducing important agricultural traits into many economically important crops. End products developed using CRISPR include a waxy maize plant, browing resistant mushrooms and false flax with enhanced Omega 3 oil.

Emerging agriculture technologies

Moving away from improvements to conventional agriculture, what about emerging alternative methods of agriculture and food production?

Two areas stand out here in the patent filings: cultured meat and vertical farming.

Cultured meat

Cultured meat, i.e. meat produced from cells by in vitro culture methods, is known by many names, including the current industry favourite, ‘cultivated meat’.

Despite this technology being a commercial reality already, questions remain as to whether cultured meat can ever be a mass-market affordable alternative to animal-sourced meat (not unusual in emerging technologies). Nevertheless, innovation in this area is clearly accelerating, with dramatic increases in recent year-on-year global filing numbers, coming predominantly from the US, China and Europe. An initial wave of companies are also innovating in areas that could reduce production costs.

Vertical farming

Vertical farms grow produce indoors, using closely situated racks of stacked soilless growing equipment, typically stacked hydroponic systems, and require careful control of conditions such as airflow, light, temperature, and nutrition.

Innovation in this area has taken off since 2013, at first patent applications were focussed on lighting-based innovation, but have since developed into environmental control, data collection/sensors and autonomous monitoring systems. It continues to be an increasingly active area of innovation.

The race is on to see whether ‘ultra-high tech’ controlled environment agriculture – such as cultured meat and vertical farming – can meaningfully compete with (and complement) conventional agriculture.

Read more on innovation in agricultural technology here.

Energy in the renewable age

The growing proliferation of electric vehicles (EVs), while vital to reduce polluting emissions from motor transport, raises questions about one of their most critical components: batteries.

EV batteries need to have high capacity, short recharging cycles and long life. They should also be environmentally friendly to produce and offer the ability to recycle. Of course, in reality, they also need to be cost effective.

Short-term energy storage

Lithium-ion batteries are the current industry leader, while solid state batteries are an up-and-coming technology that may offer an alternative EV battery technology. Solid state batteries offer the potential for larger capacities and longer lifespans.

Global levels of patent filings in Li-ion battery technology outside of China peaked in 2011, with numbers waning since. More recently, patent filing numbers for solid state technology have shown rapid recent year-on-year growth, led by applicants in Japan, China and the US.

Short-term energy storage for use in EVs is a particularly hot area of green innovation. With on-going iterative improvements to mature Li-ion technology while in parallel an emerging alternative develops.

However, renewable energy does have an Achilles heel – consistency of supply.

Long-term energy storage

Renewable energy generates electricity less reliably than traditional, fossil fuel technology. We need storage that can hold energy on a large scale for months, rather than just weeks.

Long-term energy storage solutions may be found with technologies such as compressed air energy storage systems (CAES) and pumped hydro-storage. These technologies have been a staple of energy storage for decades, and patent data indicates considerable on-going innovation in these fields.

As with all energy solutions, efficiency is everything, and the patent data in these two technology areas shows that the drive towards more efficient energy storage solutions is on-going. The challenge for innovators is often to identify incremental improvements that can – ultimately – create a commercially viable impact.

Read more on innovation in energy storage here.

Final thoughts

It is apparent then that many industries are rising to meet the challenge of developing the new green technologies that will be necessary to help us to achieve our targets.  In some industries, such as plastics, it appears that efforts are being renewed in recent years after a period of stagnation, while in other industries, such as agriculture, we are seeing radically new technologies emerging.

Across all industries we can expect progress to be in the form of many iterative improvements combined with a scattering of ground-breaking paradigm shifting innovations.  The importance of both forms of innovation should not be overlooked.

We look forward with great interest to working with some of these innovators in the coming years and to tracking progress in subsequent Inside Green Innovation reports.