Please describe your company and its contribution to hitting the Net Zero target.
PhycoWorks is an early-stage, venture-backed biotech start-up based in London. We believe that industry should integrate with the environment rather than degrade it. Our mission is to accelerate humanity’s transition to a sustainable bioeconomy, by using AI and synthetic biology to optimise algae production at industrial scale and develop algae strains that transform CO2 into valuable products. We are building the platform that will make algae-based products cost-competitive with carbon-intensive products, ultimately displacing them with carbon-neutral products.
What changes have you seen in the growth of climate tech companies in the UK?
Post-Brexit there was and still is much uncertainty around the UK’s association to Horizon Europe. This uncertainty has created a lot of extra work for UK startups. In our case, it resulted in added bureaucracy from needing to apply for the UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee and now fulfilling reporting obligations with both UKRI and EU governing bodies.
Similarly, it is unclear whether UK national policy will diverge from EU policy with regards to GMOs and biotech in general. Finally, more work is needed to shorten the timelines involved with hiring talent internationally given the significant reduction in the talent pool since Brexit. Supporting the UK startup ecosystem to navigate these issues could help accelerate the UK’s transition to net zero.
Please describe why algae is fundamental in combating the climate crisis.
Algae have the potential to be a sustainable source for a range of biochemical products, from fuels and materials to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. They are particularly notable in their ability to produce these products from waste streams, such as CO2 and wastewater. PhycoWorks is part of a Horizon Europe grant aimed at redirecting agricultural effluents that cause harmful algal blooms in the ocean towards controlled environments, where they can be used to grow algae for useful applications, such as fertiliser or sustainable aquaculture feed. However, scaling algae production is hard and their potential impact has yet to be fulfilled. Applications for algae are currently limited to products with high margins but low impact (e.g. nutraceuticals) rather than high-impact, low-margin products (e.g. fuels, commodity chemicals, and materials). We are unlocking the full potential of algae by developing strains and processes that make algae work at scale.
Please describe the main challenges you are encountering in scaling your business.
We face technical challenges in the long development times associated with biotech - setting up experiments, collecting and analysing data, interpreting results. We address these challenges by running our lab in a high-throughput manner, using project management techniques borrowed from software engineering. As a platform company, we also face the commercial challenge of choosing the right vertical in which to validate our platform. We address this challenge by speaking to customers early and narrowing down on verticals where algae have a clear competitive advantage today. Finally, we face longer-term regulatory challenges surrounding GMOs, their protection as IP, and their perception by the public.
To the best of your knowledge, what is the emissions reduction potential of your company?
According to the IEA, the chemical sector is the largest industrial energy consumer and the third largest industry subsector in terms of direct CO2 emissions, emitting 925 Mt of CO2 in 2021. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) expects the market for algae fuels and chemicals to grow to $200 billion by 2030 and estimates the associated GHG mitigation potential to stand at 2 billion metric tons of CO2 per year. For these projections to materialise, algal products will have to be powered by novel strains that are purpose-built for industrial production, and advanced industrial control strategies. These are the solutions we are building at PhycoWorks that, if successful, will contribute to the mitigation of a significant portion of 2 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.