Enter Stardust Solutions. The company has operated quietly for several years, but this year it began talking more publicly about its work. In October, it announced a significant funding round led by some of the leading players in climate investing. “Stardust is serious, and now it's raised serious money from serious people,” as James puts it in his new story.
This makes some experts nervous. Even those who believe we should pursue geoengineering are concerned about what this means for private companies.
“Adding business interests, profit motives, and wealthy investors to this situation only creates more cause for concern, complicating the ability of responsible scientists and engineers to do the work needed to advance our understanding,” write David Keith and Daniele Vizheni, two leading figures in geoengineering research, in recent opinion For MIT Technology Review.
Stardust insists it will not move forward with geoengineering until the government mandates it to do so and there are regulations and authorities in place to govern the use of the technology.
But it is unknown how financial pressure may change the situation in the future. And we are already seeing some of the problems that private companies face in this area: the need to maintain trade secrets.
Stardust is not currently sharing information about the particles it plans to release into the sky, although it says he plans to do it as soon as he receives a patent, which could happen as early as next year. The company says its patented particles will be safe, cheap to produce and easier to track than the already abundant sulfur dioxide. But at the moment, external experts are not in a position to evaluate these claims.
As Keith and Vision put it, “Research is of no use unless it is trusted, and trust depends on transparency.”
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