{"id":97995,"date":"2021-10-01T07:20:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=97995"},"modified":"2021-09-28T12:43:53","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T10:43:53","slug":"climate-crisis-do-we-need-millions-of-machines-sucking-co2-from-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/climate-crisis-do-we-need-millions-of-machines-sucking-co2-from-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate crisis: do we need millions of machines sucking CO2 from the air?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/a><\/a>Does the world need millions of machines sucking carbon dioxide directly out of the air to beat the climate crisis? There is a fast-growing number of companies that believe the answer is yes and that are deploying their first devices into the real world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From turning CO2<\/sub> into rock in Iceland, to capturing the breath of office workers, to \u201cputting oil back underground\u201d, their aim is to scale up rapidly and some have already sold their CO2<\/sub> removal services to buyers including Bill Gates, Swiss Re, Shopify and Audi. Prices, however, are sky high \u2013 $600 (\u00a3440) per tonne and more. Given that humans emit about 36bn tonnes a year, that is problematic. .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is not super intuitive,\u201d says Jan Wurzbacher at Climeworks, which just opened the world\u2019s biggest Dac plant in Iceland<\/a> and recently hosted a conference for the Dac industry. \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean it is hard. There is no physical reason it can\u2019t be done for $100\/tonne in the next 10-20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direct air capture (Dac), as the technology is known, is challenging in more ways than just financially. Despite its potent climate heating properties, CO2<\/sub> makes up just 0.04% of air and so trapping a tonne of the gas means processing a volume of air equivalent to 800 Olympic swimming pools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>The Dac industry is still young and there is a proliferation of technologies and business models, though most use modular machines that should be easier to manufacture and stack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Gauges,
Gauges, valves and pipes for water, heating and CO2 at the Gebr Meier greenhouse in Hinwil outside Zurich. The heating and the CO2 is sourced from the local waste incinerator, where the CO2 is collected by the Swiss company Climeworks.\u00a0Photograph: Orjan Ellingvag\/Alamy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Climeworks\u2019 units use fans to pass air over a solid material that absorbs CO2<\/sub>. When the material is saturated, it is heated to 100C (212F) and releases a stream of pure CO2<\/sub>. Its Orca plant in Iceland uses renewable geothermal energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Canadian firm Carbon Engineering\u2019s pilot plant pellet reactor and associated equipment.\u00a0Photograph: Carbon Engineering<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The CO2<\/sub> is then taken by a partner company, Carbfix, and put underground with water, where it solidifies into rock in two years. About 4,000 tonnes a year will be captured and the company is also working on projects in Oman and Norway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canadian firm Carbon Engineering takes a similar approach to CO2<\/sub> capture but is looking to bury the CO2<\/sub> in depleted oil and gas reservoirs in the US and the North Sea off Scotland, effectively reversing the flow in existing pipes. \u201cRather than the transportation of gas in, it\u2019s the transportation of CO2<\/sub> out,\u201d says Amy Ruddock, the company\u2019s European head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cImportantly, there is a huge overlap between the skill sets required to do Dac and traditional oil and gas, so it really supports the green transition,\u201d she says. The company aims to bury 1m tonnes a year in the US in 2025, at about $300\/tonne. The company also wants to use its technology to provide CO2<\/sub> as a feedstock for producing low-CO2<\/sub> jet fuel. \u201cThat\u2019s the largest market we\u2019re seeing at the moment,\u201d Ruddock says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Charm Industrial, has an even more striking pitch: \u201cWe put oil back underground.\u201d The company takes agricultural and forestry waste that would otherwise rot \u2013 emitting CO2<\/sub>\u00a0\u2013 and heats it to create \u201cbio-oil\u201d that is then pumped back into empty oil reservoirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first injection took place in Oklahoma in January and the equivalent of 1,400 tonnes of CO2<\/sub> has been buried this year, at a cost of $600\/tonne. \u201cObviously there is a long way to go \u2013 it\u2019s a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the problem,\u201d Reinhardt says. But if 500,000 machines are deployed, he says, a billion tonnes could be buried at $50\/tonne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CarbonCapture Inc, a US firm, is using \u201cmolecular sieves\u201d called zeolites to capture the CO2<\/sub>. Handily, zeolites are already produced in huge volumes for use in laundry detergents, oil refineries and sewage plants. In the Netherlands, Carbyon hopes using thin-film technology will make its machines faster at separating the CO2<\/sub> from the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rendering
Rendering showing what will be the world\u2019s largest Dac plant, currently being engineered by Carbon Engineering and 1PointFive.\u00a0Photograph: Carbon Engineering Ltd<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Energy use is a big concern if Dac is to be deployed at massive scale and Mission Zero Technologies uses electrochemical processes to release the captured CO2<\/sub>, which it says means 3-5 times less power is needed than for heat-based processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another firm, Heirloom, does away with fans and allows heat-treated rocks to passively absorb CO2<\/sub> over a couple of weeks, before more heating liberates the gas. \u201cWe are trying to turn this Dac problem from a chemical engineering problem into an industrial automation problem,\u201d says Shashank Samala. \u201cImagine white powder on cookie trays in cafeteria tray racks \u2013 it\u2019s pretty simple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also other business models. Soletair Power\u2019s approach is to turn buildings into CO2<\/sub>-capturing machines. The CO2<\/sub> in exhaled breath makes offices stuffy and can reduce worker productivity, says CEO Petri Laakso. \u201cBasically people are more stupid indoors and that means thousands of dollars of loss for companies in offices,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have a different business logic: we sell fresh indoor air as a service.\u201d The company\u2019s current office unit can capture a kilogram of CO2<\/sub> every 8 hours.Advertisement<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lack of commercial CO2<\/sub> supply recently hit the UK<\/a>, and AirCapture, based in California, is developing onsite machines that suck CO2<\/sub> from the air to produce streams for businesses such as drinks companies. Most CO2<\/sub> today is produced from fossil fuels and has to be trucked to sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But can these systems really play a significant part in beating the climate crisis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pipework
Pipework inside a pod, operated by Carbfix, containing technology for storing carbon dioxide underground, in Hellisheidi, Iceland.\u00a0Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The biggest and most urgent task in beating the climate emergency is to slash the burning of fossil fuels to as close to zero as possible. The problem is that some sectors are very hard to decarbonise, such as farming, aviation and certain industrial processes, and these emissions have to be mopped up to stop global heating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also likely, given that CO2<\/sub> emissions are actually still rising, that the world will overshoot the carbon budget for the internationally agreed 1.5C target. This also means CO2<\/sub> is going to have to be pulled from the air. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2018 that billions of tonnes of CO2<\/sub> a year<\/a> may need to be captured and buried after 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnless affordable and environmentally and socially acceptable CO2<\/sub> removal becomes feasible and available at scale well before 2050, 1.5C-consistent pathways will be difficult to realise, especially in overshoot scenarios,\u201d the IPCC said<\/a>. \u201cRoughly, we need to take care of 10 billion tonnes of CO2<\/sub> each year in mid-century,\u201d says Wurzbacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dac, however, is not the only option. Growing crops, burning them to produce power, and burying the emissions also removes CO2<\/sub>, but scientists worry about the huge land and water requirements. Growing trees \u2013 the original CO2<\/sub>removal machines \u2013 is also an option, but also requires a lot of land, takes time and the forests then have to be protected for decades or the CO2<\/sub> goes up in smoke<\/a>.Advertisement<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof Thomas Crowther, an ecologist at ETH Zurich and prominent backer of reforestation<\/a>, says: \u201cWe cannot simply plant a blanket of trees across the planet and hope to save the world \u2013 nature isn\u2019t going to do this alone. We are undoubtedly going to need thousands of solutions.\u201d He says technology for drawing down CO2<\/sub> has immense potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christoph Gebald at Climeworks is bullish about his company\u2019s technology: \u201cWe are very confident we can achieve million-tonne [per year] capacity in the second half of this decade, and billion-tonne capacity by 2050.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Businesses are increasingly buying offsets to claim carbon neutrality<\/a>, often via schemes that claim to protect forests, plant trees or install renewable energy. But many offset schemes are criticised as smoke and mirrors<\/a>. Gebald argues that, by contrast, Dac with underground burial offers immediate, permanent and easily measurable CO2<\/sub> disposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, direct air capture is like trying to bail out the Titanic using an eyedropper – Robert Rohde, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Will the financials add up? For all these companies, scaling up to crush the cost of their technologies is critical. Hans De Neve, founder of Carbyon, says solar panels were originally extremely expensive but have plummeted in price, falling by 80% in the last decade alone: \u201cI see no fundamental reason why this can\u2019t happen for the Dac industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gebald says Dac will need a subsidy phase. \u201cSolar PV in the 2000s was receiving subsidies well north of $500 per tonne of CO2<\/sub>, and with the support of billions of dollars annually over 10 years, this really helped the industry to scale and drive down costs.\u201d Ruddock highlights the cost of unchecked global heating<\/a>: \u201cThe benchmark I would throw out there is what is the cost of going above 1.5C or 2C?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other critical factor for large-scale Dac is the creation of a market for CO2<\/sub> disposal. Jet fuel and clean office air might raise some funds in the near term, but not enough to get to removing billions of tonnes of CO2<\/sub> a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s no price on CO2<\/sub>, it\u2019s going to be extremely difficult to establish these technologies,\u201d says Prof Reto Knutti, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich. \u201cSo I think that governments have to say, yes, there is a price for CO2<\/sub>, and then the private sector can come up with fancy innovative solutions.\u201d Negotiations over rules for an international CO2<\/sub> market<\/a>will be one of the main issues at the Cop26 summit in November, and the backers of Dac will be hoping for success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early adopters of Dac, like Microsoft<\/a>, are already pushing funding into the sector, and both Elon Musk<\/a> and the UK government<\/a> have launched technology competitions worth $100m and \u00a3100m respectively. There are also some early offset customers, such as insurance giant Swiss Re, which has signed a 10-year deal with Climeworks, and Shopify, both attracted by the certainty of removal.Advertisement<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jens Burchardt of Boston Consulting Group, another customer, says: \u201cWe think it\u2019s something that the world undoubtedly needs to get to net zero and we are one of not-so-many companies in the world who can afford to give this a push at a time when its economics are not yet where they need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate campaigners, such as Greenpeace, have argued that Dac could be a dangerous distraction<\/a>. \u201cWe simply can\u2019t wait until tech like Dac is finally affordable or widely available if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change,\u201d says Charlie Kronick, senior climate adviser at Greenpeace UK. \u201cIf overhyping Dac encourages delay and dithering on the necessary action to cut emissions then it will make the situation worse, not better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and author of The New Climate War<\/a>, says: \u201cOf all of the geoengineering schemes, Dac seems the safest and most efficacious. It could, along with natural reforestation, be an important component of broader efforts to draw down carbon from the atmosphere, a strategy that arguably belongs in any comprehensive climate abatement program. But since we\u2019re only talking about capturing 10%, at most, of current carbon emissions, this obviously cannot be a primary strategy for cutting emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDac would be an amazing weapon in the fight against climate change,\u201d says Robert Rohde, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth. \u201cHowever, it remains very small-scale and high cost. Current global capacity for Dac is about 12,000 tonnes of CO2<\/sub> per year. Each year, human activities release 40bn tonnes. So, right now, Dac is like trying to bail out the Titanic using an eyedropper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe industry needs to find a way to rapidly grow many thousands of times larger, and cut costs by about 80%, if they are going to have a real hope of making a tangible impact in the fight against global warming,\u201d says Rohde. \u201cIt will be great if they can make it work, but I am not optimistic, and most of the world\u2019s attention should be focused on reducing emissions because we don\u2019t have time to wait.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scaling up rapidly will require huge investment, but Adrian Corless, CEO at CarbonCapture<\/a>, points out that many trillions of dollars have been invested in oil and gas infrastructure, which is the source of much of the climate crisis. \u201cI don\u2019t think it should scare or surprise anyone that to solve the climate problem it will need an industry on the scale of the oil and gas industry,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Does the world need millions of machines sucking carbon dioxide directly out of the air to beat the climate crisis? There is a fast-growing number of companies that believe the answer is yes and that are deploying their first devices into the real world. From turning CO2 into rock in Iceland, to capturing the breath of […]<\/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":"From turning CO2 into rock to capturing the breath of office workers, a growing number of companies think the answer is yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[5571],"tags":[10744,10416,10743],"supplier":[19108,774,12638,12454,14320,10148,18622,17703,5419,277,17834,3345,10771,7016,18296,19078,3334],"class_list":["post-97995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co2-based","tag-carboncapture","tag-circulareconomy","tag-useco2","supplier-aircapture-california","supplier-audi-ag","supplier-bill-gates","supplier-boston-consulting-group","supplier-carbfix","supplier-carbon-engineering","supplier-carboncapture","supplier-charm-industrial","supplier-climeworks","supplier-eidgenoessische-technische-hochschule-zuerich-eth-zuerich","supplier-greenpeace-uk","supplier-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-ipcc","supplier-microsoft","supplier-pennsylvania-state-university","supplier-soletair-power","supplier-swiss-re-group","supplier-uk-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97995","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=97995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97995"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=97995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}