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Innovative Carbon Capture Solutions Proposed To Help Achieve Net-Zero World

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While heavy industries such as oil and gas exploration-and-production companies seek ways to reduce carbon from their emissions using industrial-scale plants, a loosely knit network of academics, technology companies and entrepreneurs are working on the next-generation of solutions toward achieving a net-zero carbon world over the next three decades.

Increasingly, climate experts are saying that the world must achieve net-zero emissions – by removing all manmade greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – in order to stave off the worst effects of global warming.

A recent report from the International Energy Agency found that carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) projects “will need to form a key pillar” of efforts to achieve this ambitious net-zero emissions goal.

“A net-zero energy system requires a profound transformation in how we produce and use energy that can only be achieved with a broad suite of technologies,” the report states. Carbon capture “is the only group of technologies that contributes both to reducing emissions in key sectors directly and to removing CO₂ to balance emissions that cannot be avoided.”

More than 30 commercial facilities have been announced across the world in the last three years. Potential investment in CCUS projects is estimated at around $27 billion, more than double the level of investment planned in 2017. “This portfolio of projects is increasingly diverse – including power generation, cement and hydrogen facilities, and industrial hubs,” the report states.

These proposed projects, if built, would double the current level of CO₂ captured globally, from around 40 million metric tons to 80 million tons, the equivalent of removing 17.2 million passenger vehicles from the road for one year today. 

However, even at this rate of projected growth, planned CCUS projects can only account for a small fraction of the global carbon problem. Currently humanity’s collective emissions of greenhouse gases is equivalent to around 50 billion tons of CO₂ each year. Clearly, much more has to be done, and quickly.

Investment for start-up projects

Big Oil has long had access to financing sources to pursue its mega-sized carbon capture projects. For example, in 2016, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a consortium of 10 international oil and gas giants, established a $1 billion fund to invest in low-carbon intensity projects.

More recently funding streams have begun to open up to provide financing for small-scale cutting-edge technological developments in carbon capture and other green technologies. In January, Microsoft announced the launch of its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund, which over the next four years will invest $1 billion “in new technologies and innovative sustainability solutions,” such as CCUS projects.

In August, online payments platform Stripe announced it would invest $1 million in negative emissions-technologies. Stripe also offers its customers the opportunity to donate a fraction of their payments to fund frontier carbon-removal technologies.

One promising technology being developed with Stripe funding is coastal enhanced weathering. Developed by San Francisco-based nonprofit organization Project Vesta, the low-tech solution involves distributing naturally occurring igneous rocks, composed of the mineral olivine along beaches. Incoming waves grind down the olivine, increasing its surface area. As the olivine further breaks down, it captures atmospheric CO₂ from within the ocean and stabilizes it as limestone on the seafloor.

Tom Green, Project Vesta’s executive director, said the approach offers a non-technological solution to removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, rather than capturing emissions from an industrial source.

“We’re at the point now where reducing emissions will not be sufficient to avoid the worst effects of climate change. It’s like filling the bathtub to where it’s now overflowing. We can turn the tap down, reduce emissions, but that’s not going to take water out of the tub,” he said in an interview.

Project Vesta plans its first pilot project using the coastal enhanced weathering process on the beaches of a pair of bays on an undisclosed Caribbean Island. One bay will serve as the test site, where the project designers will deposit the olivine, while the other will serve as the experiment’s control site.

Green said if the experiment is successful, it could pave the way for the development of a cheap, natural way to capture carbon directly from the atmosphere. “We think that at scale, this will be as cheap as $25 per ton,” he said. “If everything goes really well and we get to maximum scale, we think it will be closer to $10 per ton.”

On a global scale, the use of only 2% of world’s beaches would be enough area to capture 100% of humanity’s carbon emissions, Green said. As an added environmental benefit, coastal enhanced weathering de-acidifies the ocean. “Ocean acidification is a major problem impacting a lot of different species,” he said. “By de-acidifying the local ocean areas, we hope this will be beneficial to shellfish, crustaceans, oysters.”

From biomass to bio-oil

Another innovative approach to carbon capture is being taken by Charm Industrials, of San Francisco, which converts biomass – agricultural waste products — into bio-oil, a synthetic substance that’s chemically close to crude oil, but with a higher oxygen and water content. The bio-oil can then be further processed to produce hydrogen, which can be used as a fuel, said Shaun Meehan, Charm’s cofounder and chief scientist.

In addition, because the CO₂ bio-oil is a liquid, it would be easier to sequester deep underground than CO₂ captured through other technologies, which is produced in a super-critical state, somewhere between a liquid and a gas, Meehan said. In May 2019, Charm filed for a provisional patent on its technology and is hoping to get it commercially deployed this year.

The company anticipates being able to remove about 25,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year per facility built using its technology. Meehan said the process is initially expected to cost about $600 for each ton of CO₂ produced and sequestered. But with the economies of scale he expects the cost to drop to between $45 and $50 per ton of CO₂. This would make it economical for a project developer to build a plant by taking advantage of a $50 tax credit offered by the federal government.

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