I really don’t know what to make of this – direct air capture to remove carbon dioxide as an Xmas gift. It’s a sign of the times I guess, in more ways than one.
‘Tis the season for over-consumption and various other silliness once again, with a wildcard this season being a rejiggered lurgy that could do really well given our habit of congregating in small spaces during festivities.
But we can make ourselves feel a bit better about the dire situation we (and the planet) face with a new indulgence.
“This festive season, give your loved ones an eco-friendly gift which is also a gift for the planet. You can give the gift of carbon dioxide removal and inspire climate-positive action,” says ClimeWorks.
Yes folks, for just €25 (around AUD $40), you can sponsor the removal of 25kg of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology. That works out to be approximately $1,600 a tonne. But a nice card for the recipient is included in the deal – and thankfully it’s not a picture of ClimeWorks’ DAC facility above.
What Is Direct Air Carbon Dioxide Capture?
Swiss company ClimeWorks’ technology consists of stackable modular CO₂ collection devices powered by renewable energy or energy-from-waste. Air is drawn into the collectors by a fan and the carbon dioxide is captured on the surface of a highly selective filter material contained within. After the filter is full of the stuff, the collector is closed and its temperature raised to between 80 and 100 °C; releasing the carbon dioxide. The high-purity CO₂ is then collected.
In 2017, ClimeWorks launched the world’s first Direct Air Capture plant in Switzerland. The CO₂ captured by that plant has been used for applications including fertiliser production and for carbonated beverages.
In September this year, ClimeWorks launched “Orca”, the world’s first climate-positive direct air capture and storage plant. The facility consists of eight collector containers, with an annual capture capacity of 500 tonnes each. ClimeWorks partner Carbfix mixes the collected carbon dioxide with water and pumps it deep underground. The carbon dioxide reacts with basalt rock and “turns into stone within a few years”.
Here’s a virtual tour of the Orca plant and more detail on the ClimeWorks DAC process.
DAC CO₂ Removal For Christmas Clever, But…
The various issues surrounding carbon capture and storage aside, including it being abused in order to keep burning fossil fuels, the carbon removal for Christmas is a clever marketing move. ClimeWorks will make a few bucks from it and gain some additional attention for its tech.
But there’s something else highly effective at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – plants and trees. For example, hemp (no, not that type – the low THC variety).
A single hectare of hemp can absorb 22 tonnes of CO₂, with multiple crops per year possible in some places. Hemp can be used in myriad applications including building materials such as insulation and hempcrete, which is comprised of the woody inner part of the hemp stalk, lime, sand and water. Hempcrete is particularly intriguing stuff in that it keeps sequestering additional carbon dioxide for years.
While ClimeWorks’ DAC tech is interesting and mopping up emissions with trees is great, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – or in the case of climate change given our current predicament, a ton.
The world shouldn’t lose focus on stopping emissions being generated in the first place using tried and tested tech including solar power in favour of what could be a siren call from solutions that amount to a band-aid over a gangrenous wound.
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“The world shouldn’t lose focus on stopping emissions being generated in the first place using tried and tested tech including solar power in favour of what could be a siren call from solutions that amount to a band-aid over a gangrenous wound.”
Indeed. IMO, DAC CO₂ removal is futile without inclusion of rapid and deep cuts of human-induced GHG emissions ASAP.
The Climate Council has published a new report today by Professor Will Steffen, Professor Hilary Bambrick, Dr Annika Dean, Dr Wesley Morgan, Dr Simon Bradshaw, Tim Baxter, Dinah Arndt and Dr Martin Rice, titled Crunch Time: How Climate Action in the 2020s Will Define Australia. The news release for this report included (bold text my emphasis):
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/crunch-time-climate-action-2020s-define-australia/
It depends on how “temporary” is defined. It’s not clear whether the Climate Council means it’s for years, decades, or perhaps centuries or millennia?
Evidence I see indicates the +1.5 °C warming threshold is likely to be breached BEFORE 2030, regardless of what we/humanity does or doesn’t do in the interim.
See Table 1 at: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-253-2021
Also see Figure 2 in: http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/Emails/July2021.pdf
Per NOAA:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
To limit the Earth System’s time of overshoot above the +1.5 °C global mean warming threshold (relative to Holocene Epoch pre-industrial age) requires:
1. A rapid and deep reduction of human-induced GHG emissions to zero ASAP;
2. Atmospheric carbon drawdown at large-scale (with technologies yet to be invented and deployed) to concentrations of CO₂ equivalent below 350 ppm; and
3. Maintain arctic summer sea ice cover (with technologies yet to be invented and deployed).
Hm-mm – I wonder how much non-renewable power they use, to power the DAC plant? Could the net CO2 capture be actually < 0? Would it possibly be far better to use renewable energy to replace COAL and NG sources?
I guess the problem to solve is still what you do with the captured CO2
I'd have thought using it in carbonated beverages, simply returns the captured CO2 back into the atmosphere – at the expense of any additional CO2 generated to make the plant, and run it? I guess even fertiliser could ultimately return much of the CO2 to the air – if the grown crop waste is burned.
Thought maybe it was April 1.
Mind you – if we had massively dense sources of low CO2 energy available, then yes, even air liquefaction plants could recover CO2 from the atmosphere.