Y Combinator
Request for Startups: carbon removal
None of these are our Plan A, but it’s time to get Plan B ready. In 2018 Y Combinator asked founders for frontier ways to take carbon out of the atmosphere. We designed the microsite that makes the case.
The brief
YC expanded its Request for Startups and nonprofits to frontier technologies for removing carbon from the atmosphere, and wanted a microsite to show where the openings are.
It had to make dense science readable: technically feasible solutions at realistic costs, the maths behind each one, and an honest list of what’s still unsolved.
Four technologies
Ocean phytoplankton, electro-geo chemistry, cell-free enzyme systems and desert flooding each get a colour and a landscape of their own.
Every page runs in the same order: what it is, how much CO2 it could absorb if everything worked perfectly, the science, and what makes it a frontier technology.
Illustrations
Flat, quiet drawings carry the science: a pipeline turning sand into oases, light falling through water, plankton under a microscope, a pH gauge for an acidifying ocean.
The science
A companion page explains the carbon cycle behind all four: CO2 and climate change, the ocean carbon pump, acidification, agriculture and enzymes.
The site reads as well on a phone as on a desk.
Credits
- Client
- Y Combinator
- Our work
- Microsite design, design for growth
- Design
- Max Marele
- Illustrations
- Vlad Omer
- Year
- 2018