The next generation of infrastructure drives economic growth through purposeful design.
— Jim Carroll
The opportunity
Remove legacy CO2 directly from the atmosphere, providing a tool to address climate change by actively reducing greenhouse gas concentrations.
From “Decoding Tomorrow: 30 Megatrends - #9 Climate-Positive Technologies: “The next generation of infrastructure will drive economic growth through purposeful design.”” (July 2025)
What exactly does ” climate-positive ” mean? It transcends the idea of net-zero carbon emissions by actively generating environmental benefits, specifically by extracting additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Direct Air Capture: Chemical capture of CO2 from ambient air, followed by storage or utilization.
How about “Carbon-Negative Concrete?” These technologies transform concrete from an environmental liability into a tool for carbon sequestration through CO2 mineralization. Companies like CarbonCure inject captured CO2 into concrete mixes during production. The CO2 forms calcium carbonate minerals that become permanently embedded within the concrete, enhancing its strength. This offers economic value through the generation and sale of high-quality carbon credits, reduced cement usage due to enhanced strength, and the sale of carbon-negative aggregates, all contributing to circular economy benefits from waste concrete utilization.
From “Megatrends One Year Later – #9: Climate-Positive Technologies – What I Predicted, and What’s Actually Happening” (August 2026)
What exactly does “climate-positive” mean? It transcends the idea of net-zero carbon emissions by actively generating environmental benefits, specifically by extracting additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Direct air capture is the cautionary tale in the same trend. Climeworks’ flagship Mammoth plant in Iceland captured only about 750 tonnes in its first ten months against a 36,000-tonne nameplate — roughly 2% utilization — though its next-generation tech claims to halve both cost and energy use, and the wider sector now counts 84 DAC plants operating worldwide. Enhanced rock weathering is moving faster: Lithos Carbon’s basalt-on-cropland approach delivered over 5,000 certified tonnes of removal in a single batch, seven times any prior delivery, with Climeworks now buying in as a partner.
Verdict: Real, but running at six different speeds. Concrete and rock weathering are ahead of plan, direct air capture is proving harder than the demos suggested, and green hydrogen’s cost curve hasn’t bent yet — exactly the uneven, technology-by-technology reality “purposeful design” always implied.
From “The BIG Future: New Materials Science” (February 2023)
The thing is - there are some amazing ideas, fascinating discoveries, and accelerating opportunities coming together. Consider the amazing science of solar cells - what if we could develop ” dual-sided solar cells .” What’s that? This! The idea is as straightforward as it is simple: If I can collect both direct sunlight as well as its reflection via the rear end of my solar cell, this should increase the yield of energy the cell produces. Potential applications are, for instance, building-integrated photovoltaics, agrivoltaics - the simultaneous use of areas of land for both photovoltaic power generation and agriculture - and vertically or high-tilt installed solar modules on high-altitude grounds. Enter the bifacial solar cell. According to the International Technology Roadmap of Photovoltaics, bifacial solar cells could capture a market share of 70% of the overall photovoltaics market by 2030.
Consider cement - it’s one of the largest generators of dangerous carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - but there are research programs underway that try to reduce that problem through the use of other materials: “Increase of carbon dioxide in the environment has been associated with the onset of global warming, the greenhouse effect. Portland cement manufacture is a very large contributor to the carbon dioxide emissions with approximately 0.9 ton of carbon dioxide emitted for every ton of cement made. Concrete is second only to water as the most consumed substance in the world (hundreds of millions of tons worldwide) and Portland cement, with its huge carbon footprint, is the principal ingredient in concrete.
“The chemical process of making Portland cement is the reaction of limestone (calcium carbonate) with clay (hydrated alumino-silicate) at high temperatures. This elevated chemical reaction, called calcination, releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at a very high rate, for example, about 60% of the emissions from a cement plant. The high temperatures used for calcination reactions require combustion of carbon based fuels and are responsible for about 40% of the emissions of the cement plant.
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Decoding Tomorrow: 30 Megatrends - #9 Climate-Positive Technologies: “The next generation of infrastructure will drive economic growth through purposeful design.”
Megatrends One Year Later – #9: Climate-Positive Technologies – What I Predicted, and What’s Actually Happening
The BIG Future: New Materials Science