Atmospheres Vacuum?
Countries that have consistently remained the biggest polluters on a global scale have not been very good at keeping their promises. We are dangerously close to crossing the 2°C limit set by the Paris Climate Agreement. With humans producing over 40 trillion kgs of carbon dioxide every year, there is very little hope left in the situation. However, there is one technology that was created to directly combat the threat posed by carbon dioxide.
It’s called direct-air capture, and it consists of machines that work like a tree does, sucking carbon dioxide (CO2) out from the air, but way more effective—capturing thousands of times more carbon in the same amount of time. One company, Climeworks, has very effectively utilized this technology to create both the world’s first commercial carbon-capture plant in Switzerland and the world’s first “negative-emissions” carbon-capture plant. This negative-emissions plant is a geothermal power plant in Iceland that can remove an estimated 50 metric tons of CO2 from the air in a year. It pumps the collected gas deep into the island’s volcanic bedrock, where it reacts with basalt and essentially turns the carbon into limestone.
Other companies are trying to develop technologies similar to that of Climeworks. Companies may also contract Climeworks to buy their way into programs that cut their emissions. The delivery company DHL, for example, has committed to reaching zero emissions by 2050. But even if they move their entire road vehicle fleet to run on all electric cars, there is currently no technology to cut emissions from the airplanes DHL relies on. DHL plans on paying Climeworks to bury those excess emissions into the ground.
Academics used to think that direct air capture would be too expensive for any practical purposes and hence an unfeasible solution to the carbon problem. But what Climeworks and its competitors are showing is that, if direct air capture can be made cheap enough for there to be commercial interest, then the economics of carbon capture will likely work, too. And if nothing else, the existence of direct air capture gives humanity a high-premium insurance policy against mother nature’s increasing and impending wrath.
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