For millions of years the earth has been perfectly good at absorbing carbon
dioxide our forests seas and streams suck the gas up acting as natural carbon sinks that
was until humans came along and tipped the scales if we
Continue to burn fossil fuels at ever rising rates
We could warm the planet by 7 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century and the impacts of that would be catastrophic
there have been various attempts to capture this harmful co2, but they've all come with significant compromise until
now
Five four three two, one igniter on
The reason this team is so happy is because they've just
Completed the first successful ignition of the first co2 powered turbine in the world's first carbon neutral
Natural gas power plant, their company is called net power
It'll be the first truly zero emission power plant in the world
in a traditional gas power plant
The burning gas creates steam which turns a power generating turbine creating a lot of excess co2 in the process
Previous attempts to capture that co2 have reduced efficiency and led to higher costs of production
Generally, it was thought that carbon capture on natural gas was not economic
So what we had to do was start with a blank sheet of paper
enter this man Rodney alum
He developed the system now referred to as the alum cycle. I set myself the objective of
Devising something which would remove hundred percent of the co2 from the fossil fuel with no increase in the cost of electricity
Rodney actually did most of his work on what's called quadrille paper
He has a point five millimeter mechanical pencil and a four function calculator
And booked tables to look up his data when a complex computer model was created to check Rodney's calculations
Rodney's pretty much right I
Selected co2 is the fluid in the turbine rather than the steam or air which we use
previously in steam systems or gas turbine systems
And it worked
We in effect turned the problem into the solution
In Rodney's design since the co2 is used to spin the turbine and as part of an entirely closed loop it never enters the atmosphere
It's captured by default
And because the co2 power system is just as efficient as traditional natural gas plants the cost per kilowatt hour is the same
We've designed a power cycle that is cheaper and cleaner rather than more costly
imagine when you have
economics driving a solution instead of policy aspirations
Although the co2 never enters the atmosphere the alum cycle still generates a carbon by-product
Which leaves us with the problem of what to do with all that carbon?
4,000 miles away engineers in Iceland have an interesting take on how to keep the captured co2 out of the atmosphere
Shoving it directly into the ground
Perfect is an R&D project that we started about 12 years ago with the objective of developing methods and technologies for
capturing otherwise emitted co2 injecting it into
basaltic formations
we know that certain chemical processes are already happening in nature for example in vicinity of
Volcanoes this year - dissolves into groundwater and forms new types of rock by interacting with themselves
And we thought why not try and accelerate this process at an industrial scale
Very simply carb fix takes the captured carbon and mixes it with water which
basically creates Seltzer
They then take the fizzy liquid and inject it deep into the earth where the carbon chemically bonds to the basalt rock
Instead of co2 turning into rock in hundreds to thousands of years
This would happen within the timeframe of a few years
Here we have an example of a vein
This is then a small fracture
Where we would have dissolved part of the Passats and then we fill it up again with the carbonates and that's where we see these
pores filling up with cold sites
If we take all passes available on earth, theoretically we could use it to
Permanently store much more than all co2 that we would emit from burning all fossil fuel available globally
But carb fix is still operating at a small scale and it would take
Serious interest from industries and governments to grow to a size that would affect climate change worldwide
In
The meantime net power won't be burying its co2 under the ground. They'll be selling it for cold hard cash
But cause for the first time we capture carbon dioxide it
very inexpensive prices
We open up whole new industries for reuse and recycling co2 that can be useful in building materials
chemicals plastics in a myriad of other applications
But one of the most common uses of industrial co2 is actually extracting fossil fuels from the ground
In the u.s. You're actually injecting over 20 million tons a year of co2 for enhanced or recovery at the moment. I
Think I think if you do if you're sensible about the way that hydrocarbons are used and you have a
integrated idea as to how you're going to how you're gonna
utilize that hydrocarbon in a clean way and that part is key if net powers excess co2
Essentially leads to more oil being extracted. It's not a stretch to imagine
It will mostly be used in traditional carbon spewing plants not clean ones like net power
It very much appears that you know, the age of fossil fuels is likely coming to a close
some of these technologies for
capturing a sequestering carbon
Might help provide sort of that bridge
It's gonna take a decade or two to to really make that transition in our global energy economy. I'm very optimistic
All the technologies there and we just need the will
That's really happening now
If we really want to succeed in in fighting climate change and we need to bring down the co2 levels in the atmosphere
There is no silver bullet. There is no one solution. We have to use all the methods available