Towards a restless retirement
Marco Mazzotti will be conferred emeritus status at the end of January 2025. A good reason for a portrait of this dedicated process engineer, who came to his field of research quite unexpectedly.
“I can’t retire with peace of mind,” says Marco Mazzotti of his soon-to-be-conferred emeritus status. Unlike those who are now enjoying their well-earned retirement, Mazzotti still experiences a deep-seated feeling of unease. “I am a baby boomer and, to be honest, it was primarily our generation that ruined the planet. Since I was born in 1960, 83% of all cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions have been released into the atmosphere, and 45% of them have occurred since 1997, the year of the Kyoto Protocol and the year I arrived at ETH Zurich.” This is something of a benchmark for the Professor of Process Engineering, whose work has focused on crystallisation and carbon capture and storage – areas of research that barely existed in Switzerland beforehand and in which ETH Zurich is now a world leader.
A balancing act between science and society
Halting climate change as effectively as possible remains his biggest motivation. “We’ve generated a certain momentum with climate technologies. But we need to implement them faster if we still want to achieve as much as possible and prevent the cost of preserving our habitat from becoming even greater.” Mazzotti argues that it is not politics that is too slow, but rather society as a whole. “How can it be that there are still some people who think that climate change is not a problem?” he asks himself with a certain bewilderment. He believes there is room for improvement in the relationship between science and the public sphere. “The model whereby we, as scientists, simply provide insights and contribute to sound decision-making no longer works. The insights have been there for decades, but things aren’t changing fast enough,” he insists, his emphatic gesticulation conveying the sense of urgency he feels regarding this issue.
Changing the world through knowledge
The urge to change things is something Mazzotti has never let go of in his career as a researcher. Most recently, he has been working with doctoral students to develop a process for carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). Together, they launched the project DemoUpCARMA with the goal of demonstrating that CCS works in practice. With support from the federal government and in collaboration with industry, they overcame hurdles throughout the entire value chain and proved that CO2 can be stored by the tonne using CCS. “A demonstration of this kind isn’t the only initiative that scientists can adopt in order to speed up the deployment of measures to counteract climate change, but it’s a persuasive example of what’s possible and necessary today.”
What is CCS?
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from emissions sources such as industrial processes before it enters the atmosphere. The captured CO2 is transported to storage facilities, often deep underground, where it is safely entrapped. By preventing CO2 from entering the atmosphere, CCS helps to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases and therefore to slow down global warming. This technology could play a key role in achieving net zero emissions, particularly in sectors where emissions reduction is difficult, e.g. in cement or steel production or waste incineration. An extension of CCS involves the removal and subsequent storage of CO2 from the air in order to offset greenhouse gas emissions, e.g. from agriculture or aviation.
Only openness can lead to new solutions
It is indeed projects like these that make Mazzotti sad to leave behind his work as a professor. He has enjoyed nothing more than the freedom to work in new fields of research and the challenge of being confronted with problems that no one had been able – or willing – to solve previously. “For me, that freedom – which is particularly nurtured at ETH Zurich – comes with a great responsibility. A responsibility to science and to society.” It is precisely this responsibility that he wants to convey to young people, as well as the motivation to tackle environmental challenges. “The message I want them to take away is that they should do something that has an impact. An impact at the global level that will continue to have an effect in the future.”
IPCC – what?
At Politecnico di Milano, Mazzotti himself was influenced above all by Massimo Morbidelli and Giuseppe Storti, both of whom went on to become ETH professors at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences. When asked about the most important recognition he received in his career, he walks purposefully to the door, next to which hangs a Nobel Prize certificate. In 2005, he was Coordinating Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on CCS, thereby contributing to the Nobel Peace Prize that the IPCC received in 2007. However, Mazzotti came to this area of work somewhat unexpectedly. “When I received the invitation to contribute to the special report in 2002, I had no idea what the IPCC was. I left the email unanswered for some time until they inquired again and I spoke to Christoph Schär, who was a professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at the time and already a contributor to the IPCC. He persuaded me immediately,” says Mazzotti. “Back then, I’d only just begun working in the field of CSS, and I only came across the topic myself because of a doctoral student. He was determined to do something relating to the environment, and we came up with the idea of using crystallisation to store carbon dioxide. That was the start of research into carbon mineralisation.” Ultimately, Neustark, which has commercialised this technology and its later developments, has become one of the best-known ETH spin-offs in the CCS sector. Mazzotti remains a scientific advisor at the company, which was founded by one of his over 60 doctoral students.
A family farewell
On 22 November 2024, he will now bid a personal farewell to ETH Zurich, which has always been much more than an employer for him. His wife also works at ETH Zurich, and his children did their doctoral studies here – indeed, the Mazzottis can be described as an ETH family through and through. He will use his farewell lecture to explain why research is necessary and the significance of his field of research for society one last time. “Twenty years ago, no one wanted to know about CCS, even though we were aware of the underlying problem. If we’d solved it back then, I’d be able to retire with peace of mind. As things stand, however, I’m still a bit concerned.”
Farewell Lecture
On Friday, 22 November at 5.15 p.m., Professor Marco Mazzotti will give his farewell lecture entitled Interpolations, extrapolations in the Audi Max of the ETH main building.
The event will also be streamed live at: external page http://bit.ly/audimax-stream.