Solve for X: Innovations to Change the World

The future of the automobile is electric. Yet the surge in electric vehicles raises critical concerns regarding battery creation, disposal and recycling. What will happen once all those cars reach the end of the road? In this episode of Solve for X, we address the environmental footprint of EV batteries, confront the challenges posed by the existing regulatory landscape and highlight opportunities...

Wastewater, the world’s dirty (not so little) secret, consumes nearly 3 percent of the global electricity demand. It’s a staggering statistic, and yet much of what actually happens with wastewater remains a mystery. Treatment plants typically purify water by infusing it with oxygen, creating an environment where bacteria can break down waste. But without proper sensors or data, the method is incre...

The next pandemic — it’s a question of when not if. Climate change is shifting the patterns of how and where diseases spread, and our insatiable love of travel means that viruses are now showing up in places they’ve never been before. Forecasting future outbreaks is becoming increasingly complex. But as infectious disease specialist Kamran Khan explains, this is where AI can help. Machine learning...

Scientists are finding that ocean alkalinity enhancement is one of the more promising solutions for permanently storing carbon from the atmosphere. And not only could this emerging technology help with the climate crisis, it could also address another key problem: acidity in the ocean, which is endangering ecosystems. In this premiere episode of the second season of Solve for X: Innovations to Cha...

Solve for X is your window on the future. Each episode, journalist Manjula Selvarajah goes behind the hype and headlines to make sense of how new technologies are reshaping our world. Can we predict the next pandemic? What if we geoengineer the oceans to stop climate change? Could robots help preserve wildlife? Find answers to these questions and more in the new series of Solve for X. Solve for X...

Jessica F. Green was among 400 Canadian climate scientists who called for the government to scrap a proposed tax credit for carbon capture last year, claiming it would underwrite the oil and gas industry. Yet policy is a key component to a successful transition away from fossil fuels — and we need regulation. In this special episode of Solve for X, the University of Toronto political scientist and...

What will it take to get to a world where we have all the energy we need — without the emissions, smog and other climate impacts? The shift requires a rapid draw-down on carbon-based fuels and the use of energy storage technologies. And while lithium batteries have been instrumental in the transition, supply chain and sustainability issues are of increasing concern. We need to think beyond the bat...

Humans generate an incredible amount of trash. In Canada alone, 35 million tonnes of food is wasted every year. That’s a lot of energy spent growing, processing, packaging and delivering food that ultimately goes uneaten — and all that waste creates a lot of greenhouse gases. To fix the climate, we have to redefine our relationship with waste; that means doing more with what we already produce. In...

As we start to feel the effects of climate change, it’s clear we need to find ways to adapt our communities and lighten the impact on the planet. It can be tempting to just start over somewhere fresh — to build a fully optimized city that’s decked out with the latest technology to be sustainable and efficient. But as we’ve seen in one smart city development after another, these projects often fail...

Our energy grid is something most of us only think about when it isn’t working. But growing demand for electricity is placing an even greater strain on a system that’s already facing increased pressure from extreme weather events. Can we build a more sustainable and dependable grid? In this episode, we explore how when it comes to climate change, the challenge of greening the grid is as much an is...

This week we’re on pause, returning September 15th to our regular schedule. Exciting things are in the works: in coming episodes I’ll be talking to a scientist behind a robot lab and exploring how we can extract value from waste — even in space. But we also want to hear from you: what climate solutions are you interested in? Is there a certain technology that needs decoding? Send us a note at medi...

To take new climate solutions from the lab out into the world can take hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. But as the pressure intensifies to hit our climate targets, the rapid commercialization of clean technologies is critical. On this special bonus episode, guest host Lara Torvi sits down with cleantech investor Susan Rohac to discuss the opportunities and challenges Canada faces to...

Humans are wired to want more. More time, more resources, more money. But what if we could do more with what we already have? When we innovate for resilience, we often think big — bypassing solutions in our own homes. Today, we’re looking at the design of objects (like electric cars and heat pumps) and discovering their purpose can go far beyond the original intent. As we move to more sustainable...

Net-zero commitments are a critical first step in the fight against climate change. But to stave off the worst effects of a warming planet, we actually have to ensure countries and corporations live up to those promises. In this episode, we chat with Catherine McKenna, head of the UN Task Force against greenwashing, about regulations and accountability when it comes to net-zero targets, as well as...

Trees have an incredible ability to absorb carbon — which means protecting, planting and restoring forests are a (relatively) easy way to address global warming. Climate change, however, is making it more complicated. Our forests are (quite literally) going up in smoke, which has far worse consequences than one might expect. In this episode, we explore the role forests play in carbon sequestration...

In the last 250 years, we’ve released more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in the previous 20,000 years. To make serious headway in meeting climate-change deadlines, experts are looking at technologies that go beyond simply curbing emissions to those that can also take carbon dioxide out of the air. In this premiere episode of Solve for X, tech journalist Manjula Selvarajah explores what w...

It’s now or never. Canada is warming at double the rate of other countries, and we have one of the highest GHG emissions footprints per capita in the world. The good news is much of the technology needed to solve the climate crisis already exists. A special new podcast series, Solve for X delves into these Canadian ideas and innovations that could help prevent the most disastrous consequences of c...