Equinox Reflection — 22 September 2026

Equinox Reflection — 22 September 2026 Today is the Equinox, a moment in the Earth’s journey when day and night come close to balance. Perhaps appropriately, a thought that has been developing for many years became particularly clear to me today. In developing Carbon Recycling Technology, I have always regarded carbon differently from the way our industrial civilisation has traditionally treated it. We have treated carbon as a source of energy: extract it, burn it, obtain useful work, and discharge the resulting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But carbon need not play that role. In CRT, the external source of energy is renewable energy. Hydrogen carries that renewable energy into the chemical system and provides the reducing potential required to perform useful work. Carbon can remain within the system, circulating through different molecular forms — methane, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide — without having to be continuously extracted from the Earth and ultimately released to the atmosphere. The distinction is fundamental: Hydrogen supplies the renewable reducing potential. Carbon serves as a recyclable process carrier. The carbon atom does not disappear when methane burns, when carbon monoxide reduces iron oxide, or when carbon dioxide is converted again into a useful carbon-containing molecule. It simply changes its molecular association. What matters is whether we allow that carbon to escape from the system or deliberately return it to the cycle. There is something deeper in this idea that extends beyond engineering. Nature itself is composed of cycles. Water evaporates, condenses, and returns. Carbon moves through the atmosphere, oceans, soil, and living organisms. Matter changes form continuously, while energy drives the transformations. Perhaps sustainable engineering must learn the same lesson. Instead of continually consuming matter, we should increasingly design systems in which matter circulates and renewable energy drives the cycle. The Equinox represents balance, but balance does not mean stillness. The Earth continues moving. Day becomes night and night becomes day. The apparent balance exists within continuous transformation. CRT may be understood in much the same way. Carbon is not stationary. It continuously changes form: CH₄ → CO₂ → CH₄ or CO → CO₂ → recycled carbon species → CO. The molecules change, energy flows, useful work is produced — but the carbon can remain within the cycle. Perhaps this is one of the lessons that science and nature repeatedly place before us: Sustainability is not the absence of change.
It is the ability to change while preserving balance. On this Equinox, that thought seems especially clear.