Former Red Arrows pilot swaps being ‘bad boy of climate change’ to preventing emissions with navy grit

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Former Red Arrows pilot Justin Hughes is more used to soaring through the air than toiling in the dirt.

But the former fighter pilot of 12 years and member of the Royal Air Force aerobatics team is using his military experience in the fight to reduce carbon emissions, by setting his sights on agriculture, an industry that pumps out more carbon dioxide than aviation.

“Aviation is the traditional bad boy of climate change, together with various other big-ticket items,” Mr Hughes says. “But there are some massive under-the-radar pollutants that simply don’t get the same level of coverage – and this would be a great example.”

Synthetic fertiliser has helped to feed billions of people since the invention of the Haber-Bosch process a century ago, but its devastating impact on the climate now means that humanity likely must find a way to end its reliance on them.

For Mr Hughes, the key to disrupting that section of the industry – which is responsible for 2.1 per cent of all CO² emissions – may be a lesser-known bacteria, first discovered lurking in Brazilian sugarcane in 1988.

His company NetZeroNitrogen is now seeking to bring this bacteria, Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus, to a global market, to significantly reduce food producers’ reliance on synthetic fertilisers.

Mr Hughes is under no illusions that the road ahead will be “straight or easy”, he believes his own military experience bolsters his prospects of success.

“The reason start-ups fail is not necessarily because the idea’s poor, or science or concept is poor,” he said. “It’s execution – can you actually pull it off? It’s hard work, it’s ups and downs, you’ve got to build a team, drive it through, get s*** done – and I guess all those are things that, from my military background, play very well.”

After his time in the military, Mr Hughes set up a consultancy on building “high-performance cultures”, later working with corporations such as Microsoft, Mercedes and F1 – before being introduced to scientists interested in the G. diazotrophicus bacteria.

Along with water, sunlight, potassium and phosphorus, all plants require nitrogen to grow. But because agriculture disrupts the natural cycle of nitrogen returning to the soil once plants die, farmers have long used means such as manure, compost – and synthetic fertilisers – to restore their fields with nitrogen.

This process, and the way fertilisers are used, come at huge environmental cost, while the financial cost of fertiliser has also soared in recent years, particularly since the war in Ukraine.

Mr Hughes and his UK-based company are hoping to use the bacteria G. diazotrophicus, which allows plants to better absorb nitrogen, to reduce global reliance on synthetic fertilisers.

NetZeroNitrogen are focusing initial efforts on rice, the third most widely grown cereal crop in the world, with trials in the Philippines undertaken by local firm AgTrX showing the bacteria could reduce the amount of fertiliser required by at least 25 per cent.

“In the long term you’d hope to replace 100 per cent, but that’s quite a difficult challenge for a biological product. But we definitely feel that 50 per cent is within the realms of the possible,” said Mr Hughes.

NetZeroNitrogen is aiming to carry out full product trials in early 2025 before going to market in 2026.

Despite being a new firm, NetZeroNitrogen has already received interest from companies reviewing their environmental footprint and looming EU taxes on fertilisers, and who, according to Mr Hughes, “might back us to move quite quickly to a UK or European crop”.

“There are not many things that cross your radar that are genuinely a force for good,” he said.

“You look and think ‘if that works that could have a real impact – the sort of thing my kids would be excited about’.”