A foundational whitepaper for structural Defossilisation

ZEPS™: Correcting the Boundary Error in Energy and Industry A Foundational Whitepaper for Structural Defossilisation Industrial civilisation did not fail because of malice. It failed because of a boundary error. For more than a century, we have drawn system boundaries too narrowly. We optimise within the plant, the refinery, the turbine — and treat everything beyond the fence line as external. Fuel enters. Energy leaves. Emissions are discharged. The atmosphere becomes “elsewhere.” This is not merely an environmental oversight. It is a thermodynamic and economic misclassification. In thermodynamics, every system is defined by a boundary. Everything outside that boundary is the surroundings. Modern industry has drawn that boundary incorrectly: extraction upstream, combustion onsite, emissions external. But physics does not recognise accounting categories. Carbon atoms do not vanish when labelled externalities. They accumulate in the surroundings — which ultimately define the operating constraints of the system. Decarbonisation addresses emissions intensity. Defossilisation addresses fossil dependency. ZEPS™ — Zero Emission Power System — is built on a corrected boundary definition. Renewable electricity produces hydrogen. Hydrogen combines with captured CO₂ to form renewable natural gas (RNG). RNG provides firm, dispatchable power. CO₂ is captured and recycled back into the system. The carbon atom remains inside the engineered boundary. Energy flows. Carbon circulates. Markets reward resilience, predictability, and structural risk reduction. Heavy industry requires molecular fuels, continuous high-temperature processes, and firm capacity. Electrons alone cannot replace all molecules. ZEPS™ provides baseload reliability, embedded long-duration storage, reduced fossil volatility exposure, and structural mitigation of carbon pricing risk. Carbon is not the enemy. Fossil extraction is. When we stop extracting new fossil carbon and begin circulating what we already use, energy, industry, and atmosphere can coexist in structural balance. ZEPS™ is not disruption for its own sake. It is architecture refinement. The transition to green metals and resilient industry will not be solved by slogans. It will be solved by boundary-correct engineering and disciplined economics. ZEPS™ stands at that intersection.