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Unpacking clean hydrogen.
Morning Brew May 27, 2022

Emerging Tech Brew

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Happy Friday. And if you’re in the US, happy Friday before the long weekend. We hope that reading this newsletter is the last productive thing you do before unplugging for the next few days.

To that end, we’re not publishing on Monday due to the Memorial Day holiday. Catch us back in your inbox next Wednesday!

In today’s edition:

What is clean hydrogen, and why does it matter?
🖐 Buying with biometrics

Grace Donnelly, Dan McCarthy, Katishi Maake

CLIMATE TECH

A primer on the most common element in the world

solar panels for green hydrogen production in mallorca Picture Alliance/Getty Images

The lightest and most abundant element in the universe could become an important energy source in a decarbonized future.

Hydrogen is already used today to refine fuels and create ammonia, but “virtually all of it is made from fossil fuel,” Janice Lin, founder and president of the Green Hydrogen Coalition, told Emerging Tech Brew.

Now, companies and researchers are working on how to produce cleaner hydrogen and use it to power difficult-to-electrify sectors and store energy from intermittent renewable sources.

The long view: Although it’s not expected to be a dominant energy source, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that hydrogen could account for about 10% of global energy consumption by 2050 in a net-zero future.

Like fossil fuels, hydrogen is energy-dense and can produce very high temperatures when combusted.

  • This makes it a potential substitute in industrial processes that require extreme heat, such as steel-making, or for long-haul transportation needs that can’t be met with today’s battery technology, like aviation, heavy trucking, and shipping.

While it is actually more energy-dense than natural gas, hydrogen doesn’t exist naturally on its own. It’s commonly found coupled with oxygen in water (H2O) and with carbon in methane (CH4).

“It’s not a fuel on its own, and it takes energy to make energy,” Anne Robba, manager of future energy signposts at S&P Global, told us. “To get a lower carbon-intensity hydrogen, you need renewables, and you lose about 30% of your energy with that.”

Big picture: Robba said most hydrogen today is not produced in a “clean” way, using renewable energy. But since 2021, S&P Global has tracked a 350% increase in announcements for low-carbon projects.

“The lower-carbon hydrogen is really in the beginning stage of its development. I would say 5%–10% is made from green hydrogen,” she said, referring to hydrogen created without emitting CO2.

Read the full primer on clean hydrogen, a potential key to a net-zero future.GD

        

BIOMETRICS

Biometric buying

An illustration of a fingerprint on a blue background. Getty Images

It takes at least 10 muscles to smile—and now, to check out your groceries. Mastercard is piloting a program that allows shoppers to pay using facial recognition or fingerprint scanning.

It’s underway at five grocery stores in Brazil, and Mastercard plans to debut it globally later this year.

  • Customers need to snap a selfie or scan their fingerprint to try the tech. A credit card linked to their biometric data is then created.

Facing the future: Mastercard believes consumers want an even easier way to checkout and are confident in the technology’s adoption. An overwhelming majority (86%) of shoppers are interested in using biometrics to make payments, according to a Visa survey.

  • Plus, the contactless biometric payments market is expected to reach $18.6 billion by 2026, Mastercard noted in its release.

“All the research that we’ve done has told us that consumers love biometrics,” Ajay Bhalla, Mastercard’s president of cyber and intelligence, told CNBC. “They want making a payment at a store to be as convenient as opening their phone.”

About two-thirds (67%) of consumers express interest in using fingerprint scanning to make payments, as opposed to 36% who show interest in facial recognition, per the Visa survey.

  • Mastercard says customer data is encrypted for privacy protection, and the biometric data is replaced with a “token,” or set of alphanumeric characters, for security, according to CNBC.

Zoom out: Mastercard is the latest to push into biometric payment systems. There’s also the tech that Amazon has deployed at its Go stores, which are creeping into suburbia. Increased adoption of cashierless checkout is one reason why Amazon is trying to get out ahead of the competition, Richard Kestenbaum, co-founder and partner at Triangle Capital, previously told Retail Brew.

“Once your competitor across the street has it, you have to have it. Knowing full well that convenience is so critical to consumers, there’s no reason to stand in line anymore in most retail stores,” Kestenbaum said.

Click here to read the story on-site, from Retail Brew.KM

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

  • Google created its own art-generating AI to compete with OpenAI’s Dall-E model. In other Google news, Street View turned 15 earlier this week, and the company gave it a few updates to mark the occasion.
  • Niantic released a location-mapping platform for augmented reality, which will allow developers to tie AR experiences to specific geographic locations.
  • Walmart is expanding its drone-delivery partnership with DroneUp to cover 34 stores across six states—and claims it will reach 4 million households with drone delivery by the end of 2022.
  • SpaceX reportedly raised a new round of funding, nabbing another $1.5 billion to bring its valuation up to…$125 billion.
  • More carbon-removal commitments: Alphabet, Salesforce, and Microsoft announced a combined $500 million in funding for carbon removal at Davos.

TOGETHER WITH BETTERHELP

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BITS AND BYTES

Jasondoiy/Getty Images

Stat: Samsung says it will raise its spending by 30% over the next five years, investing a total of $360 billion across its various lines of business.

Quote: “We believe blockchains will power the next major computing cycle. That’s why we’ve decided to go big.”—Chris Dixon, managing partner and founder of Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto division, after the firm announced a massive $4.5 billion crypto fund

Read: A screed against in-car touch screens.

Voice is becoming vital: Why are so many enterprises now investing in voice innovations, and how important will voice technology be to your specific industry in the new work-from-anywhere era? Find out in RingCentral’s ebook here.*

*This is sponsored advertising content.

GOING PHISHING

Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

  • A blockchain-based carbon-credit platform that’s backed by Adam Neumann has raised $70 million.
  • A moon-mining company raised $12 million.
  • As part of Google Street View’s 15th anniversary, the company added a “metaverse layer” that allows you to see who owns your home in the virtual world.
  • Dyson, not content with vacuum cleaners, is building household chore bots.

WEEKEND READS

  • At last, laser beams could become part of our daily lives. (IEEE Spectrum)
  • Bolivia’s treasure trove of lithium could be a mirage. (Reuters)
  • The “scaffolding” that props up large-scale AI systems. (Emerging Tech Brew)
  • Jerry Chow is building the future of quantum for IBM, qubit by qubit. (Emerging Tech Brew)
  • A new pro-nuclear energy movement is forming. (Washington Post)

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GOING PHISHING ANSWER

No such “metaverse layer” was announced for Street View.

 

Written by Grace Donnelly and Dan McCarthy

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