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The trouble with climate change is that we're going to reach tipping points. If we don't get a move on it's actually going to be too late.
  
We have to take gigatons of CO2 out of the atmosphere. When you look at all of the projects that are going on around the world, most of the time they don't even add up to millions of tons.
  
When you produce 1 kilo of algae you sequester 2 kilos of CO2. They can be a very powerful solution to capture a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere.
 
Essentially if you want to combat climate change, algae is your number one potential tool to do that.
  
Just about everything is made from fossil fuels. It makes our plastics, it makes our lubricants and oils, our clothes, medicines.
 
Algae can be used in every single one of those products in a way that captures carbon dioxide and has some other positive downstream effect.
  
There are two big reasons that algae has not taken off. It's extremely difficult to scale to really really large volumes and even if you do that it's really expensive.
  
Algene is a startup to create technology that can grow algae and cyanobacteria uniquely cheaply. And if we can do it cheaper than we can do it from fossil fuels, we actually have a chance of saving the planet.
 
The background to our journey started when we developed the fundamental science and engineering behind what this this company would be.
  
And then that became a series of patents that we could offer to a startup.
  
We have been working so hard to invent the technology we need to achieve our goals. And the first job was to invent the helix.
 
The concept of what Algenie has got is the technology to create a very very thin layer of water that the absorption of light energy is extremely efficient.
 
What we are making here is this extended wide very thin channel shape that we make on an extruder.
 
It took us actually a few tries to even get here and then essentially about every month we made little improvements.
  
The way of making this is actually one of the cheapest manufacturing methods that exists once you get to scale.
 
When you want to have good impact for the planet we really need solution that are scalable. Algenie has this potential to be scalable.
  
If we were wildly successful, this would change the entire underlying structure of our global economy. And if we can compete on price, it's way more sustainable so there's no reason to not switch.
 
We are exploring a number of option that would allow us to look at wastewater where we actually have a lot of nutrients and we need to remove nutrients before we release wastewater into the environment.
  
If we utilize that nutrient for growing micro algae that is beneficial downstream. We also see the potential of solar energy to generate the necessary input into the production of micro algae.
 
The whole process of Algenie is part of UTS's sustainability push. We got massive support because UTS is leading in sustainability.
  
We know that we're totally aligned in terms of our mission. It's really great to have a partner that has that deep science.
 
I think the most exciting thing is seeing the translation of great science into a company that then has massive impact.
  
It's going to be a massive game changer for everyone.