In late January, Elon Musk announced on Twitter
that he would donate $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology.
The announcement immediately brought attention to a concept that it’s not
new but remains relatively unknown. And no, we’re not talking about trees, but about a process to
capture carbon emissions and store or reuse them, which could help tackle climate change.
What exactly does this mean? Let’s take a look.
This plant behind me would capture 1 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year.
So that's the equivalent of about 40 million trees.
This is Steve Oldman, and he’s the CEO of Carbon Engineering,
which is a Canadian company that has been working on carbon removal
for the past ten years, and it’s now planning its first commercial facility in Texas.
Carbon dioxide is one of the primary greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global warming.
It’s not the only one. We have methane as well, for example, and it is a huge problem. But CO2 is
the largest single one, and that’s why reducing the levels in the atmosphere is so important
And you may notice that we’re talking about a few different things here.
Elon Musk's first reference to this prize, in a tweet, mentioned carbon capture. A couple
of weeks later, the official announcement arrived, saying that the organization XPRIZE
would be managing the prize. A $100M for a gigaton scale carbon removal challenge.
Now, these concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, but they’re not the same.
Carbon capture and storage refers to a process where the carbon dioxide that
is released when burning fossil fuels gets captured and stored. This prevents carbon
from entering the atmosphere but doesn’t reduce the CO2 levels already present in the atmosphere.
In the case of carbon removal, the CO2 typically comes from the atmosphere,
in what is called direct air capture.
No matter where the carbon is coming from, it can be recycled and used to make
products such as fuel or carbon fiber, or even hand sanitizer. This is called carbon capture and use.
These distinctions are important.
Removing carbon that is already in the the air is not the same
as preventing it from entering the atmosphere. Storing carbon for a long period of time
is not the same as making fuel with it.
The company Carbon Engineering was founded in 2009
by Harvard professor David Keith. Besides the
carbon removal, they have also developed a technology to produce liquid fuels from CO2
captured from the air. The plant that Steve Oldman showed
will come from a partnership with 1PointFive, which has the energy company Occidental behind it.
And you can say that carbon capture and carbon removal are having a moment,
and not just because of Elon Musk. Bill Gates, who has his new book out,
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, has been very vocal in his support.
Even Jenniffer Granholm, President Biden’s pick for Secretary of Energy,
mentioned these technologies in her confirmation hearing, and
this was celebrated in the carbon capture and carbon removal communities.
We're really excited that the new Administration has put climate front and center.
In this effort, they've also called out the need for things like carbon removal and negative
emissions technologies, which is really exciting. The Department of Energy has had a lot of success
in bringing down the cost of different kinds of clean energy technologies. Solar is a really
good example: they played an enormous role in driving down the cost of solar panels.
Carbon180 is a non-profit based in DC and a spin-off of a UC Berkeley research center. It works with
scientists, businesses, and policymakers to influence policy in support of carbon removal.
We can think about the places where direct air capture might be deployed and how those
could create really high-paying Union jobs or how those can help redress environmental injustices.
Carbon capture at the source has a longer history,
but direct carbon removal from the air is at a much earlier stage. In 2017,
the European company Climeworks opened the first commercial carbon removal plant,
but there are still very few companies working in the field and the market is very small.
The Carbon Removal XPRIZE funded by Elon Musk will run for four years, and teams
will have to come up with a working prototype capable of removing at least one ton a day.
Besides that, they’ll have to demonstrate that their solution can scale to the gigaton level.
That is one billion metric tons. Over two trillion pounds. For reference,
Climeworks new plant, opening this year, is expected to remove 4,000 tons of CO2 per year.
Here in the US, Carbon Engineering’s plant won’t be operational until 2024.
XPRIZE is an organization that sets up prizes to incentivize innovation. It has
worked on topics like ocean exploration, space technology, and AI. And it’s
not the first time that it has focused on carbon. This earlier competition is still running,
but it seeks to develop technologies that can convert CO2 emissions into usable products.
Now, not everybody thinks this is a good idea. The cost is high, the technologies are challenging
to implement, and capturing or removing carbon itself needs energy, which can be renewable,
or not. Critics say that these investments would be better spent implementing renewables.
Mark Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
In 2019, he published a study that suggested that these technologies
could cause more harm than good. According to his research, the cases he studied reduced only
a small fraction of carbon emissions while at the same time, increasing air pollution.
I don't think of it as being critical. I just think I’m being factual about the
reality of carbon capture and direct air capture. They can have all the lobbyists in the world to
push their technology but they're just lying to the public about the benefits of it. It's like
trying to clean up the mess after the fact, why not just don't have the mess in the first place.
And we can do that by transitioning to clean, renewable energy.
This is it's technically possible, it's economically possible, will
reduce costs, save consumers money, create jobs, reduce air pollution deaths significantly...
Last year, NRG Energy decided to shut down its Petra Nova carbon capture project.
It captured CO2 from a coal-fired power plant to produce oil,
and it required a new natural gas power plant for its own power.
Proponents of these technologies, either carbon capture, carbon removal, or both,
say that renewables won’t be enough and that carbon is such a big problem,
that investing and developing these methods is worth it.
Marcius Extavour is one of them. He’s the lead for energy, climate, and environment at XPRIZE
and the Executive director of the XPRIZE carbon prize to turn CO2 into usable products.
We absolutely have to reduce our emissions. Period. That is the most important thing.
The question is how. We actually can focus on more than one thing at once, and to solve this climate problem
we’re gonna have to focus on many things at once. There are some emissions that are very
easy to turn off, or reduce, immediately, and we are doing that and we need to do more of that.
There are other sources of emissions that are not electricity that are much harder, for instance,
flight. Or driving. All our manufacturing. Most of it doesn’t run on electricity. It runs on
heat. Where does that heat come from? Fossil fuels. There is no single method that is going
to get us over the finish line because frankly, the pile of CO2 we have to deal with is so massive.
Despite disagreements, all actors in this field, just like the scientific consensus, say that the earth is warming, human
activities are the main cause, and climate change is a problem we must address. The question is how.
So... what are your thoughts about carbon capture and carbon removal?
Yes, no, maybe, it depends?
Let us know in the comments!