Renaud de Richter is a scientific advisor to Methane Action. Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Renaud has lived in France since 1973, and graduated from the organic chemistry department of the engineering school of chemistry of Montpellier, France in 1985 with a Master’s degree in chemistry. His PhD thesis was on organoborane asymmetric synthesis. Renaud received his PhD degree in 1989 from University of Science and Technology in Montpellier, France. From there until 1991, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the medicinal chemistry laboratory of the school of pharmacy of Minneapolis, Minnesota, led by Prof. P.S. Portoghese, former editor in chief of Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. A team member of a pharmaceutical start up in Paris, working on vanadium and tungsten complexes, he is co-author of several patents.
In 1995 Renaud moved to Montpellier to work for the French governmental agency in charge of health products, where he served as Department Manager from 1998 until 2004, supervising a team of 33 people in charge of the physicochemical quality control of medicines. During this period, every year he also supervised two to four engineering or pharmacy students during their last year of studies.
His current research interests include the application of photocatalytic chemistry and processes for environmental protection to fight climate change and for remediation purposes. He is a former expert at the European Pharmacopoeia at the Council of Europe. He is the co-author of a book published in 2010 about unusual renewable energies.
Renaud de Richter also cooperates as an unpaid researcher volunteer with a team based at the Engineering School of Chemistry of Montpellier University, where he has a wide-spectrum engineer approach to propose innovative breakthrough techniques to fight global warming.
He and his coauthors in France and China were the first to propose feasible and scalable technologies to enhance outgoing infrared energy from the Earth to outer space, in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (March 2014). Then, together with UK and German coauthors, they were also the first to propose two different methods to remove several greenhouse gases at a climatically significant scale, such as methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons (May 2017); methane, tropospheric (surface) ozone, and soot (August 2017); and methane and carbon dioxide (March 2021). Both methods allow the stratospheric ozone layer to recover faster. They also proposed a breakthrough method for direct atmospheric CO2 capture to transform carbon dioxide back into fuels and useful chemicals using sunlight.
Renaud de Richter was a member of the committee producing the official 2014 French report on “Challenges and methods of environmental geo-engineering.”
Among Renaud’s other key contributions to science are his proposals to improve solar updraft chimneys in order to produce CO2 free renewable energy and fresh water in arid regions. View the list of Renaud’s scientific peer-reviewed publications.
Renaud’s most relevant peer reviewed scientific articles for Methane Action are the following ones proposing atmospheric methane removal:
- de Richter, R., Caillol, S. “Fighting global warming: the potential of photocatalysis against CO2, CH4, N2O, CFCs, tropospheric O3, BC and other major contributors to climate change.” Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology C: Photochemistry Reviews, (2011), 12(1): 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphotochemrev.2011.05.002
- Ming, T., Davies, P., Liu, W., & Caillol, S. Removal of non-CO2 greenhouse gases by large-scale atmospheric solar photocatalysis. Progress in Energy and Combustion Science. (2017), 60, 68-96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecs.2017.01.001
- Ming, T., de Richter, R., Oeste, F.D., Tulip, R. and Caillol, S. A nature-based negative emissions technology able to remove atmospheric methane and other greenhouse gases. Atmospheric Pollution Research, (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apr.2021.02.017