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!