Pique Behind the Curtain Vol. 2

Pique Behind the Curtain

Welcome to our second edition of Pique Behind the Curtain, our weekly newsletter debuting new content, highlighting great storytelling, and sharing behind-the-scenes footage from our films. Scroll to the bottom for climate documentary recs and to share your own suggestions.

Nitricity: Decarbonizing Fertilizer

Do you have any idea how critical nitrogen fertilizer is? We didn’t. Turns out that we could only support about a third of our current global population without the production of nitrogen fertilizer. And that process contributes roughly 6% of annual GHG emissions because typical fertilizer production is highly centralized - there are only a few hundred Haber Bosch plants in the world, and this fertilizer needs to get to 4 billion acres of farmland. For every 1lb of fertilizer put into the soil today, as many as 8lbs of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are released into the sky.

Nitricity has a solution - produce fertilizer from just air, water & renewable electricity. But their technology is anything but simple. It’s revolutionary. Oh, and they create the fertilizer onsite too, eliminating transportation emissions and potential product loss.

What’s all that add up to? Founder and CEO Nico Pinkowksi explains that, “For the farms that convert to Nitricity systems, we can mitigate as much as 80% of the CO2eq emissions associated with nitrogen fertilizer.”

After seeing Nitricity’s process in action, Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, said “Capturing lightning in a bottle and turning it into fertilizer. Get your head around that...this is the future." Not too shabby. Watch the full film here.

We're looking through selects of a recent shoot with 75F, which is improving indoor air quality while reducing operational costs with their IoT Building Management System. We caught a flight with CEO and Founder Deepinder Singh, who is also a pilot, to get an aerial view of Minnesota.

We’re inspired by this feature from our friends at Imagine H2O on Epic Cleantec, a finalist of their recent Urban Water Challenge which is building the water future for buildings in the US. Jackie Haries also dropped the first episode of his series Seat at the Table, meeting with those on the frontlines of the climate crisis who often aren’t represented at COP26.

Every week we'll share recommendations from readers about climate films and documentaries to watch. This week’s rec comes from Arielle Tannenbaum from On Deck Climate Tech. Just reply here with your suggestion, if you've got one.

• Kiss the Ground - Activists, scientists, farmers, and politicians turn to regenerative agriculture to save the planet's topsoil and combat climate change. (Netflix)