Fluid carbon capture company4/25/2024 ![]() Pulling CO2 straight from the air is expensive, but it can be done nearly anywhere, with easily quantifiable results. But these methods don’t touch legacy CO2, which is more dilute in the atmosphere. But the amount of carbon stored by nature can be hard to estimate and uncertain: A wildfire can wipe out a forest, for example.Īccording to the IEA, capturing CO2 directly from the flue stacks of power plants and other industrial operations, like concrete plants, which are hard-to-mitigate sectors, should be used to soak up nearly 4 billion metric tons of CO2 a year by 2050. ![]() The IPCC’s 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5☌ calculated that up to 11 billion metric tons of CO2 could be drawn down in this manner per year by 2050, a huge chunk of today’s roughly 35 billion metric tons in emissions. Planting and protecting forests and other ecosystems - called nature-based solutions - is relatively cheap, can be done at large scale, and has a heap of side benefits, including the provision of habitat for endangered species, flood protection, or increased food supplies for humans. There are plenty of ways to remove carbon from the air, each with pros and cons. Researchers are working hard to come up with new materials and systems to lower that price tag, encouraged by government prize money and rising tax breaks and carbon credits. Building and operating an air capture plant is about 50 times more expensive than planting trees per ton of CO2 taken up. Though the concept is simple, there are still plenty of hurdles. Globally, more than 100 plants are at some stage of development. Now, direct air capture is seriously ramping up, with about 20 plants in operation across Europe, Canada, and the U.S., where the Department of Energy is funding four regional direct air capture hubs. After years of lab tests and experiments, these efforts started to gain commercial traction a few years ago. In the face of skyrocketing global temperatures and CO2 levels, the idea is simple: remove some of that CO2 from the air and either bury it underground or turn it into a saleable product. The concept of direct air capture has been around for decades. That’s 125 times more CO2 than the next-largest direct air capture plant. Last April, the Texas-based company 1PointFive broke ground on a direct air capture facility called Stratos that, by 2025, aims to absorb 500,000 metric tons of atmospheric CO2 each year. Texas is by far the top emitter of greenhouse gases in the United States: The oil-rich state releases twice as much carbon dioxide as the runner-up state, California, and as much as the entire country of Germany.īut the air in Texas may soon get a slight reprieve.
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