- Carbon capture is the idea of taking CO2
from the air and storing it.
Carbon conversion is taking that same CO2
and turning it into something useful.
CO2 can be used for a number of products,
but one of the most exciting
is alternatives to fossil fuels.
- If we look at what's possible with batteries today,
you can do a lot.
You can electrify certain portions of aviation,
but they're just never gonna touch
that jumbo jet full of a couple hundred passengers
going a thousand miles.
And that's where sustainable aviation fuels come in.
- That's Jason Salfi,
CEO of Dimensional Energy,
a company using artificial photosynthesis
to produce carbon-neutral alternatives to fossil fuels.
Their first product,
a carbon-neutral jet fuel.
This is Make It Count,
a series on environmental innovations
and the math it takes to bring them to the masses.
Using CO2 to store energy is not a new idea.
It's literally millions of years old.
Plants have been doing this for a long time,
taking CO2 from the atmosphere
and converting it into energy through photosynthesis.
Dimensional Energy is trying to do the same thing,
and they're using the same energy source,
the Sun.
- As we contemplate how to make
green hydrocarbons possible,
we took a look at how to do it
with one of the most elemental forms of energy,
direct sunlight.
We have a great relationship budding
with one of the best platforms
for concentrated solar collection.
They've got what they call a sunlight refinery
in the making,
and they're rapidly advancing their technology.
And it seems like a perfect partner for us to go with
in developing our platform.
- Low costs and renewable energies are the keys
to making this technology competitive with fossil fuels.
- With direct sunlight,
if we produce electricity on-site
with concentrated solar,
could take care of all the electricity needs
for our process
and remove the burden from the grid
to make green fuels happen.
- Early implementations of this technology
were able to produce fuels that cost about $60 a gallon.
And before you ask,
no, that's not competitive with fossil fuels.
But later versions dropped the price to $27 a gallon.
And their first large-scale plant is expected
to bring that down much further.
We could quickly see ourselves going
at the 100 barrel per day
at $4 per gallon,
and then the 1,000 barrel per day
at $1.60 a gallon.
So you could see
that we could quickly decarbonize
an entire industry.
- Dimensional Energy plans to scale their production up
to commercial levels by 2024,
aiming to hit a price close to a dollar,
which would make it cheaper than traditional jet fuel today.
- What you need to do is apply the same logic
that brought the scale and velocity
to our economy over the last century
to a renewable form of energy production,
and not just chip away at the niche sides of things
and sell renewable fuels at a premium.
If we can create fuels at cost parity,
it would be one of the largest industries to ever emerge
in such a short period of time.
- Making this process affordable
isn't just about finding better ways to convert CO2.
It's also about finding better ways to acquire it.
But by locating their refineries near industrial sources,
Dimensional Energy is further reducing
the cost of these fuels.
- Technologies are emerging today
for the removal of carbon dioxide from say, flue gas,
from industrial concrete sites or steel production
or power production.
Those are highly concentrated
sources of carbon dioxide
that can be reapplied to making things.
- The jet fuel produced by this process
will still release CO2 into the air when it's used.
But since it's equal to the amount taken out
of the atmosphere in the first place,
it's carbon-neutral.
This means you can make air travel sustainable,
while using the same planes and infrastructure.
- How can we decarbonize things like transportation
that can't be done with batteries?
How can we decarbonize our industrial sector?
We need to make these hydrocarbons
from a circular economy perspective.
- The circular economy is the idea of producing products
that instead of turning into waste
at the end of their life cycle,
can become a resource for other useful products.
- We've relied mostly on fossil fuels
to power our economy and advance
different technologies.
So now that industries
and the world is waking up to the fact
that CO2 is a dangerous greenhouse gas,
we have to come up with a way to close the loop
on industrial emissions
and turn those emissions into something new
and have a circular economy
approach to carbon management.
And if we can do that, then we can start to see
perhaps stemming the worst effects of climate change.
- Carbon-neutral jet fuel would be an incremental change
with a massive impact.
And as the technology improves,
it could soon be more affordable
than pulling it out of the ground.
- There are ways to do transportation without oil.
And we've been doing them more and more
since in the '90s.
Back then battery cars were a blip,
if anything, in people's eyes.
And now we're talking about creating jet fuel
from carbon dioxide.
We've really developed the technology internally,
and we'll be ready to show that to the world shortly.
- When I take a step back and look at the whole project
and how far we've come,
I'm proud of us.
- Jason is one of a number of entrepreneurs
looking to find technological solutions to climate change,
who realize that in order to make lasting change,
you have to align economic incentives
with what's good for the environment.
- This is an exciting space to invent within.
I hope we get a lot more people entering the space
of solving big, hairy problems like climate change,
because it's a place in which we can see
a new economy emerge.
And this is what we need to have future generations
enjoy the planet just as we have.