{"id":107006,"date":"2022-04-04T07:23:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T05:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=107006"},"modified":"2022-03-29T14:55:56","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T12:55:56","slug":"the-race-to-upcycle-co2-into-fuels-concrete-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/the-race-to-upcycle-co2-into-fuels-concrete-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"The race to upcycle CO2 into fuels, concrete and more"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Tongyezhen is a town with coal in its bones. In this part of China\u2019s Henan province, people have been mining coal and smelting metals for millennia. Today, Tongyezhen hosts a sprawling industrial park where huge ovens bake coal and limestone into coke and lime, both key ingredients for producing steel. Unsurprisingly, it is one of the smoggiest places in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It might seem an unlikely venue for a clean-technology milestone. But later this year, a chemical plant here is set to become the world\u2019s largest facility for recycling carbon dioxide into fuel. It will combine CO2 from a lime kiln with excess hydrogen and CO2 from a coking furnace to produce methanol, an industrial chemical used for fuel and to make plastics. Carbon Recycling International (CRI), the Reykjavik-based firm behind the operation, says that the Tongyezhen plant will recycle about 160,000 tonnes of CO2 per year \u2014 equivalent to the emissions from tens of thousands of cars \u2014 that would otherwise go into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s an alluring idea: industrial CO2 emissions are warming the climate, and many countries are working on capturing the gas and storing it underground. But why not recycle it into products that are both virtuous and profitable? As long as the recycling process avoids creating more carbon emissions \u2014 by using renewable energy, or excess resources that would otherwise be wasted \u2014 it can reduce the CO2 that industry pumps into the atmosphere and lower the demand for fossil fuels used in manufacturing. That\u2019s a double climate win, proponents say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This kind of recycling (sometimes called upcycling) is an increasingly crowded field, as companies big and small race to market a bewildering array of products made from CO2. Some are boutique items for the climate-conscious shopper \u2014 vodka or diamonds, for example \u2014 but most are staples of the global economy: fuels, polymers, other chemicals and building materials. More than 80 firms are working on new approaches to using CO2, noted a 2021 report by Lux Research, a market-research company in Boston, Massachusetts. The market for these products is tiny today, amounting to less than US$1 billion \u2014 but Lux predicts that it will grow to $70 billion by 2030, and could reach $550 billion by 2040.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This activity is being driven by a fall in the cost of renewable energy, along with rising carbon taxes and other climate incentives that are persuading firms to avoid CO2 emissions. At the same time, chemists have improved the efficiency of the underlying technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Cement and steel \u2014 nine steps to net zero<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>But there are tough questions about whether CO2 recycling genuinely benefits the climate. Many of the products made this way only briefly delay carbon\u2019s journey into the atmosphere \u2014 fuels are burnt, products made from chemicals degrade and the CO2 consumed during their creation is released again. That will happen at Tongyezhen: much of the methanol produced is destined to be burnt as fuel in China\u2019s growing fleet of methanol-powered vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, some estimates suggest that the global market for recycled CO2 products is unlikely to lock up more than a few per cent of the CO2 that humans release into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, which totalled 36 billion tonnes last year. CRI\u2019s plant, for one, will convert the equivalent of a little over 2 minutes\u2019 worth of annual global CO2 emissions. \u201cWe can avoid a lot of that, for a lot less money, than we can by turning CO2 into stuff,\u201d says Niall Mac Dowell, an energy-systems engineer at Imperial College London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe assumption that we can fix this climate-change problem in an economically attractive and easy way \u2014 at best it\u2019s naive, and at worst it\u2019s actively disingenuous,\u201d he says. It\u2019s an argument that\u2019s heating up as CO2 recycling goes mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Premium product<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Using CO2 as a chemical ingredient isn\u2019t a new idea. Roughly 200 million tonnes of CO2 are used in a handful of processes each year, most of it reacted with ammonia to make urea for fertilizers. (Producing ammonia emits extra CO2, and urea\u2019s carbon is quickly released after it is spread on a field, so there are no climate benefits.) The petroleum industry also injects CO2 underground to help recover oil, but using that oil can generate more gas than is stored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\u2019s changing now is the sheer number of firms that are moving new CO2-recycling methods towards the market and touting their climate benefits. Approaches range from co-opting biological processes to using electrochemical cells or catalysts (see \u2018Reusing carbon dioxide\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20261980.jpg\" alt=\"Reusing carbon dioxide: Flowchart showing the processes by which CO2 can be captured and reused. Adapted from ref. 10\" class=\"wp-image-107030\" width=\"563\" height=\"1058\" srcset=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20261980.jpg 751w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20261980-160x300.jpg 160w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20261980-545x1024.jpg 545w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20261980-80x150.jpg 80w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20261980-144x270.jpg 144w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 563px) 100vw, 563px\" \/><figcaption>Reusing carbon dioxide: Flowchart showing the processes by which CO2 can be captured and reused. Adapted from ref. 10<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of the bigger players use catalysts that help to combine CO2 with hydrogen to make fuels and commodity chemicals. Their main costs revolve around the energy needed to make hydrogen, capture streams of CO2 and break this molecule\u2019s strong carbon\u2013oxygen bonds to forge new molecules. That is why so many early plants are located where there are plentiful streams of high-purity waste CO2, widely available spare hydrogen and heat (which powers the methanol production at Tongyezhen), or low-cost renewable electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>CRI, for instance, opened its first CO2-to-methanol plant in 2012, next door to a geothermal power station in Iceland. There, boreholes tap into hot water and steam that come with unwanted CO2. CRI\u2019s plant relies on Iceland\u2019s relatively low-carbon electricity grid to create \u2018green\u2019 hydrogen from water by electrolysis. Then the gases are combined, heated, pressurized and passed over a catalyst that eases the breaking of CO2 bonds. Each year, the Iceland plant recycles 5,500 tonnes of CO2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257942.jpg\" alt=\"Carbon Recycling plant with Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant in the background, Reykjanes, Iceland\" class=\"wp-image-107029\" srcset=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257942.jpg 800w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257942-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257942-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257942-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257942-360x270.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption>CRI\u2019s first CO2-to-methanol plant was built near a geothermal power station in Iceland.Credit: ARCTIC IMAGES\/Alamy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis is more expensive than producing conventional methanol, there is no doubt about it,\u201d says Emeric Sarron, chief technology officer at CRI, who declines to say how much more expensive. \u201cBut companies that need to source renewable fuels are willing to pay a premium for it.\u201d And the firm has customers: as well as the facility in Tongyezhen, CRI is working on other full-size plants in China\u2019s Jiangsu province and in northern Norway. Other consortia projects involving companies in Belgium, Sweden and Denmark will all recycle CO2 to methanol for use as a chemical feedstock and shipping fuel, and aim to start operations between 2023 and 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Electrochemical fuels<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Rather than building such large, centralized projects, some start-ups think it will be cheaper and more efficient to convert CO2 inside smaller, modular electrochemical cells. California-based start-up firm Twelve, for instance, aims by the end of this year to have an electrolyser system the size of a shipping container that uses electricity to process more than one tonne of CO2 each day into syngas. This mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is widely used to make other chemicals, including fuels. Twelve plans to offer CO2 conversion as a service to firms wanting to reduce their emissions; it could charge per tonne converted, and sell its end products to cover costs. In July 2021, it raised $57 million in venture-capital funding. \u201cWe definitely see ourselves being a player in greenhouse-gas emission reduction,\u201d says Etosha Cave, the company\u2019s co-founder and chief scientific officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Syngas is conventionally made by an energy-intensive process that crushes methane and water together at high temperatures and pressures. Twelve, by contrast, uses a modified commercial electrolyser, which normally splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Adding a metal catalyst to one of the device\u2019s electrodes (the cathode) enables it to simultaneously convert CO2 into CO, so that the system produces syngas at room temperature. Twelve aims to use renewable electricity sources to run these CO2-recycling units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"680\" src=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253354.jpg\" alt=\"A single Twelve catalyst unit.\" class=\"wp-image-107028\" srcset=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253354.jpg 800w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253354-300x255.jpg 300w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253354-150x128.jpg 150w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253354-768x653.jpg 768w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253354-318x270.jpg 318w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption>An electrochemical cell used by Twelve to turn CO2 into chemicals and fuels.Credit: Twelve<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Academic chemists have pressed the case for electrochemical recycling by making significant improvements to cathode catalysts. A key metric known as Faradaic efficiency \u2014 the proportion of electrons that go into producing CO rather than unwanted by-products \u2014 is now more than 90% in some cases1. Chemists are also making headway on another front \u2014 improving the ability of catalysts to support a high electric-current density. This allows a given area of electrode to convert more CO2 molecules. Nevertheless, many catalysts struggle to work for more than a few hundred hours before they start to degrade, says Jan Vaes, programme manager for sustainable chemistry at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) near Antwerp, Belgium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Electrochemists aren\u2019t only targeting syngas. Avantium, a renewables chemical company in Amsterdam, is using improved catalysts2 to make formic acid, which can be converted into more-valuable chemicals. It is currently testing an electrochemical reactor at a fossil-fuel power plant in Germany.<br>Interior of one of Avantium&#8217;s Volta Technology containers for converting CO2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" src=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253420.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-107027\" srcset=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253420.jpg 800w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253420-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253420-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253420-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20253420-400x267.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption>An Avantium mobile container unit converts CO2 from an industrial plant\u2019s carbon-capture unit into formic acid. Credit: Avantium<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>And some chemists are hoping to make more complex carbon molecules that could command higher prices. Larger molecules can be more troublesome to make this way \u2014 with more chemical bonds, there are more opportunities for electrons to be diverted into side products, reducing efficiency \u2014 but progress is being made. This year, for instance, electrical engineer and materials scientist Edward Sargent at the University of Toronto in Canada and his team unveiled an electrochemical system that converts CO2 and water into ethylene oxide, which is widely used to make polymers. The team\u2019s catalyst achieved a record Faradaic efficiency of 35% for the conversion3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Life-cycle arguments<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether products recycled from industrial CO2 emissions actually protect the climate is unclear \u2014 because the CO2 they capture will still be released into the atmosphere if the molecules are burnt or broken down. Drawing CO2 directly from the atmosphere could have clearer climate benefits, but capturing the gas from air is extremely expensive, as are products made that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Proponents argue that recycling industrial CO2 into chemicals can reduce emissions in another way \u2014 by avoiding some fossil-fuel-based production. \u201cOur process helps keep fossil fuels in the ground by tapping into existing streams of CO2,\u201d a spokesperson for Twelve told Nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The stringent way to examine this is through a life-cycle analysis (LCA) \u2014 a detailed accounting of the carbon involved in making and using a product, from the origins of its CO2 to its final fate. Many CO2-recycling firms say they have done these audits, but don\u2019t publish them because they contain proprietary information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Climate pledges from top companies crumble under scrutiny<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>One firm that has released LCAs is LanzaTech, headquartered in Skokie, Illinois. The company uses bioreactors filled with Clostridium autoethanogenum bacteria to ferment industrial CO2, CO and hydrogen waste emissions into ethanol. Its chief executive, Jennifer Holmgren, notes that this kind of bioconversion can handle messy waste-gas streams, such as those from municipal waste gasifiers, better than chemical processes do. The firm\u2019s reactor at a Shougang Group steel plant near Tianjin in China has been producing ethanol since 2018. A second plant began operating at a Chinese alloy plant last year, and commercial plants in Belgium and India are expected to come online by the end of this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On 8 March, LanzaTech announced that it would become publicly listed, a move that values the company at $1.8 billion. This year, it reported that with genetic modifications, its bacteria could make larger molecules such as acetone and isopropanol, too4. Conventional production of acetone and isopropanol generates copious CO2 emissions. By contrast, LanzaTech\u2019s LCA suggests that its route is carbon-negative \u2014 consuming much more carbon than it emits4. But this analysis did not include what would happen to the CO2 when the products were used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Holmgren thinks that CO2-based products will save on emissions anyway, by displacing their conventionally made equivalents. But she concedes that it is hard to be certain this is true \u2014 CO2-based products might simply add to the growing global consumption of fuels and other chemicals, rather than displace incumbent production. It\u2019s also tricky to pin down direct evidence for displacement in such a nascent market, adds Sarron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe problem is that people use displacement with the idea that the market will do it, somewhere around the globe,\u201d says Andrea Ram\u00edrez Ram\u00edrez, who studies low-carbon systems and technologies at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. \u201cBut how do you monitor displacement? That\u2019s very, very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A greater availability of supposedly guilt-free CO2-derived products might also lead to increased consumption of those resources, she adds. Anyone who is trying to limit their international flights, for instance, might fly more often if their airline boasts of its climate-friendly fuel. This \u2018rebound effect\u2019 has been observed for some energy-efficiency measures, Ram\u00edrez Ram\u00edrez says, although it hasn\u2019t been studied for CO2-based goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In her view, negative emissions5, such as those claimed by LanzaTech, \u201cshould mean real CO2 removal from the atmosphere, that you can actually measure physically\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Locking carbon down<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>To maximize climate benefits, it makes more sense to lock recycled CO2 into products that last for decades. That\u2019s where polymers come in. \u201cYou\u2019re making products like insulation foam, mattresses, soft furnishings, that have quite a long lifetime,\u201d says Charlotte Williams, a chemist at the University of Oxford, UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Williams develops catalysts that can incorporate CO2 into polyols, which are used to make polyurethane foams. Polyols are usually made from expensive chemicals called epoxides, but her catalysts help CO2 to take the place of some of these in the polymer chain. This traps CO2 and reduces the consumption of epoxides \u2014 which themselves have a big carbon footprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Concrete needs to lose its colossal carbon footprint<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Williams has founded a spin-off company, Econic Technologies. In September 2021, it signed a deal to build a pilot plant in India, and then retrofit an existing plant to incorporate waste CO2 into polyols. Other companies are seasoning polymers with CO2 in similar ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite this progress, projections suggest that using CO2 as a polymer ingredient would lock up only around 10 million to 50 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 20506. So, is it really worth it? \u201cI think it\u2019s the wrong way of looking at the problem,\u201d Williams says. \u201cWe have to make massive cuts in CO2 emissions across the board, but we also have to invest in some technologies that can directly use it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The biggest opportunity to incorporate CO2 into products lies in concrete and other building materials, says Runeel Daliah, a senior analyst at Lux Research, who is based in Amsterdam. The technology is proven and scalable, and could feed an enormous global demand for concrete, giving it the potential to dominate the CO2-conversion market. \u201cConcrete is really the only one where you have permanent sequestration of CO2 in the product,\u201d Daliah says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the leaders in this sector is Canadian company CarbonCure in Halifax. Founded in 2012, it pumps waste CO2 into fresh concrete to form nanoparticles of calcium carbonate. This improves the compressive strength of the concrete, so that less cement is needed7. Because cement-making accounts for most of concrete\u2019s carbon emissions, the company says this could reduce the carbon footprint of every tonne of concrete by around 5% (or 6 kilograms of CO2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257940.jpg\" alt=\"CarbonCure concrete is poured during construction of Amazon HQ2 in Virginia.\" class=\"wp-image-107026\" srcset=\"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257940.jpg 800w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257940-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257940-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257940-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/media\/2022\/03\/d41586-022-00807-y_20257940-360x270.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption>CarbonCure concrete is poured during a construction project. Pumping CO2 into concrete locks up the gas for many years, or even centuries. Credit: CarbonCure Technologies<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The company has installed more than 550 of its CO2 injection units at concrete plants around the world, most of them in North America, which has avoided and mineralized 150,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions so far. But with some 100,000 plants worldwide churning out roughly 33 billion tonnes of concrete per year, \u201cwe\u2019re really just scratching the surface\u201d, says Jennifer Wagner, CarbonCure\u2019s president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ram\u00edrez Ram\u00edrez says that converting CO2 into minerals offers a much clearer climate benefit than converting it into fuels. \u201cIn the life-cycle analysis, you can see the benefits are much larger, and I think much more robust.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Carbon-removal incentives<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>When it comes to making fuels and other chemicals, most CO2-derived products are currently more expensive than their conventional rivals, says Josh Schaidle, who led an analysis by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, of 11 products made by CO2 conversion8. Yet they could still have a strong business case, if they can take advantage of low-cost renewable electricity, as well as the tax breaks, subsidies and quotas that aim to wean the world off fossil resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the European Union, for instance, a broad package of policy incentives under the banner of the European Green Deal aims to make the bloc climate neutral by 2050. Pending legislation specifies quotas for the use of CO2-derived fuels in aviation. There will be reduced taxes on CO2-based fuels, and the promise of plenty of innovation funding to help technologies to market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Microsoft\u2019s million-tonne CO2-removal purchase \u2014 lessons for net zero<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In the United States, some companies say that a tax credit called 45Q is helping to encourage CO2 conversion. It pays industries $50 for every tonne of CO2 they store permanently underground, or $35 if they put the CO2 to use. In China, there has been relatively little commercial activity in developing CO2-conversion technologies9. But in 2021, key players in China\u2019s gigantic chemicals industry pledged to invest in CO2-based chemical production, a move that could win financial support through the country\u2019s carbon-trading market, which launched last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The success of the CO2-conversion businesses, however, could rest on LCAs and other measurements of carbon flows. The European Commission, for example, is developing a carbon-removal certification mechanism to provide a more rigorous framework for verifying whether a process is genuinely carbon negative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So far, LCAs offer a rather downbeat assessment of most CO2-conversion strategies. In a report10 published in February, environmental scientist Kiane de Kleijne at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and her colleagues scoured dozens of published LCAs to compare CO2 conversion routes with conventional ways of making the same products. Then the researchers compared CO2 savings from the recycling processes with the 2015 Paris agreement targets of halving global CO2 emissions by 2030, and of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. \u201cWe found that very few of those routes are able to meet the criteria for Paris compatibility,\u201d says de Kleijne. Routes that made the grade did so by storing CO2 permanently \u2014 mixing the gas with slag from steel mills to make construction blocks, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Climate-focused academics conducting LCAs often note that geological storage of CO2 is better than conversion because it offers much greater reductions in emissions. That might be true, but it ignores a brutal economic reality, says Sarron. \u201cPutting carbon back into the ground is expensive, and is not happening at a meaningful scale. The alternative to what we are doing today is not storage, it\u2019s emission to the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if the global economy does eventually end its reliance on coal, oil and gas, industries of the future might need these CO2-conversion processes to produce the polymers and other chemicals we depend on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>De Kleijne says that all too often, the academics performing LCAs and companies developing CO2-conversion systems end up talking past each other on these issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there is at least one point of broad agreement: that CO2 recycling technologies should eventually draw as much of their feedstock as possible from the atmosphere, rather than from waste industrial gases. A project called Norsk e-Fuel in Oslo is taking a step in that direction with a pilot plant in Her\u00f8ya, Norway, which aims to start turning CO2-derived syngas into jet fuel. Some of the CO2 will come directly from the air, snared by carbon-capture technology developed by Climeworks, a company that was spun off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That technology is now in operation at Climeworks\u2019s first large-scale direct air-capture plant, which opened in September 2021 in Hellisheidi, Iceland. It will capture 4,000 tonnes of CO2 a year to be pumped underground. It costs $600\u2013800 to sequester one tonne of CO2 in this way \u2014 hardly cheap \u2014 but the company says it can slash that to one-tenth of the cost as it scales up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if there are limited climate benefits from converting today\u2019s fossil CO2 emissions into products, some companies argue that it\u2019s important to develop the technology so that it is ready to feed off CO2 from the air once direct air-capture technology matures. \u201cI do think it\u2019s a valid argument,\u201d says Ram\u00edrez Ram\u00edrez. \u201cBut we need to be careful that it is part of a transition, that we eventually replace the fossil carbon with sustainable sources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nature 603, 780-783 (2022); doi: <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/d41586-022-00807-y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/d41586-022-00807-y<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><br>References<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>1 Masel, R. I. et al. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41565-020-00823-x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nature Nanotechnol. 16<\/a>, 118\u2013128 (2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2 Phillips, M. F., Gruter, G.-J. M., Koper, M. T. M. &amp; Schouten, K. J. P. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1021%2Facssuschemeng.0c05215\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ACS Sustain. Chem. Eng.<\/a> 8, 15430\u201315444 (2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3 Li, Y. et al. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038%2Fs41929-022-00749-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nature Catal. 5<\/a>, 185\u2013192 (2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4 Liew, F. E. et al. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038%2Fs41587-021-01195-w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nature Biotechnol. 40<\/a>, 335\u2013344 (2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5 Tanzer, S. E. &amp; Ram\u00edrez, A. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1039%2FC8EE03338B\">Energy Environ. Sci. 12<\/a>, 1210\u20131218 (2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6 Hepburn, C. et al. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038%2Fs41586-019-1681-6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nature 575<\/a>, 87\u201397 (2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7 Monkman, S. &amp; MacDonald, M. J. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016%2Fj.jclepro.2017.08.194\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cleaner Prod. 167<\/a>, 365\u2013375 (2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8 Huang, Z., Grim, R. G., Schaidle, J. A. &amp; Tao, L. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1039%2FD0EE03525D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Energy Environ. Sci. 14<\/a>, 3664\u20133678 (2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9 Jiang, K. et al. Renew. Sustain. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016%2Fj.rser.2019.109601\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Energy Rev. 119<\/a>, 109061 (2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10 De Kleijne, K. et al. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016%2Fj.oneear.2022.01.006\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">One Earth 5<\/a>, 168\u2013185 (2022).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tongyezhen is a town with coal in its bones. In this part of China\u2019s Henan province, people have been mining coal and smelting metals for millennia. Today, Tongyezhen hosts a sprawling industrial park where huge ovens bake coal and limestone into coke and lime, both key ingredients for producing steel. Unsurprisingly, it is one of [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Companies are scrambling to turn the greenhouse gas into useful products \u2014 but will that slow climate change?","footnotes":""},"categories":[5571,17143],"tags":[10744,10416,5627,10743],"supplier":[3564,13047,5419,6265,5585,2622,336,2392,2101,10771,371,20444,17158,18767,2802,1305],"class_list":["post-107006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co2-based","category-recycling","tag-carboncapture","tag-circulareconomy","tag-energy","tag-useco2","supplier-carbon-recycling-international-cri","supplier-carboncure-technologies-inc","supplier-climeworks","supplier-econic-technologies","supplier-european-union","supplier-flemish-institute-for-technological-research-vito","supplier-imperial-college-london","supplier-lanzatech","supplier-luxresearch","supplier-microsoft","supplier-national-renewable-energy-laboratory-nrel","supplier-nature-journal","supplier-norsk-e-fuel-as","supplier-twelve-formerly-opus12","supplier-university-of-oxford","supplier-university-of-technology-delft-nl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107006"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=107006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}