Magic carpets, magic insects, and other tricks of the zero-carbon building trade

(Dec. 2024) If you’re in the real estate business, decarbonizing your buildings while remaining profitable is no mean feat.

But in China, one company has managed to pull it off. 

“Because of our innovations, and the energy-efficiency improvements to our buildings, we have reduced their carbon footprint by 93%,” says Tim Feng, Chairman of DeepRock Group.

Launched in 2017, DeepRock’s mission, as Feng puts it, is “to decarbonize the whole life cycle of the built environment.”

“We’re increasing the use of renewable energy, such as solar panels,” he told Huawei Editor-in-Chief Gavin Allen in a recent Transform Talks. “Along the coastline of Shenzhen in southern China, we've created something called ‘wave energy generation.’ It’s a platform on the ocean. As the waves fluctuate, the platform produces energy, floating on the waves like a magic carpet.”

DeepRock also recycles food waste. “In China, food waste contains a lot of salt and oil,” Feng says. “If you put it into fertilizer, it’s bad for the soil. But we found a magic insect called the black soldier fly. It eats thousands of times its body weight, consuming and converting the food – including oil and salt – into biomass. Eventually it becomes a really useful fertilizer. When it dies, you can freeze it and use it as a protein source for animal feed.”

Implementing these innovations requires no financial sacrifice on the part of suppliers. “Solar panel producers and similar companies work with us,” Feng says, “because their financial payback period shrinks considerably.”