Carbon Engineering is a new start-up from Calgary, with a Pilot Plant located right next to us, in Squamish. The reason this company caught my eye was through its significant funding from Bill Gates, as well as the general business they are attempting to normalize and develop into consumers lives. What Carbon Engineering does, is take the Carbon from the atmosphere and create a synthetic fuel from it.
The mechanism works similar to wet scrubbers, which use a sticking solution and large fans, to push the carbon dioxide contaminated air through the device and allow the carbon to stick to the solution which is then later cleaned and separated while the carbon is remanufactured into synthetic fuel carbon pellets.
The thing that caught my attention the most about this company, is that they have absolutely no restriction to where the scrubbing facilities can be located to be fully efficient. These machine farms can be placed on completely unfruitful land with no other uses. This allows the company to maximize space and not harm the environment in setting up facilities.
With brand new start ups, especially in the technology and clean energy sector there is always some sort of problem. For Carbon Engineering I would say that the biggest problem they face, is the issue of demand. As aforementioned, they have started making synthetic fuel, which simply uses the carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere and remanufactures it into carbon fuel. This project is not about extracting the carbon necessarily, but to make use of the carbon that is already present, and diminish the amount added on a daily basis. There is currently no demand for this type of fuel, as to accommodate it, people would need to make drastic lifestyle and purchasing changes. Car manufacturers would need to change their technologies, people would have to go elsewhere to buy fuel and Carbon Engineering in general would need greater funding and promise to expand to a level where consumers and businesses deem it worthwhile.
Availability and accessibility are always key components to the shift in consumer behaviour, which is something that Carbon Engineering has potential to adopt. I am looking forward to see more of what this company and other companies come up with in the future of clean energy solutions.