Tesla founder Elon Musk recently lifted a car for a technology. He said he would pay $100 million to reward the company with the best carbon capture technology. In fact, carbon capture technology has been around since the 1970s, but why hasn’t it been widely used? And why is it now attracting the attention of the world?
The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 415 ppm per million, the highest level in human history, and it is increasing every year. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly pointed out that emission reduction is no longer enough, and the world must actively remove carbon dioxide that already exists in the atmosphere. This process is usually called “negative emission”. From then on, the world began to notice carbon capture. technology.
The simplest carbon capture technology is to plant trees, but the problem is that tree planting is not a panacea. Extracting carbon from the atmosphere is considered a more realistic and faster approach. Musk thinks so too. He said, “Trees are part of the solution, but they require a lot of fresh water and land. In 10 or 20 years, we may need super large-scale industries.”
He is referring to carbon capture and storage technology (CCUS). According to the International Energy Agency (International Energy Agency), there are currently 21 large-scale CCUS commercial projects around the world to remove carbon dioxide from carbon dioxide emitted by factories.
According to a CNBC report, the first of these was established in 1972, mainly to increase oil recovery and to pump carbon dioxide into oil fields, which can help oil companies get more oil from the ground. It wasn’t until the 1980s that people studied carbon capture technology to mitigate climate change, but even so, this technology is still lacking.
Until the past few years, carbon capture and storage technology seems to have leapt onto the stage. Now everyone is concerned about capturing carbon directly from the air instead of capturing carbon from factory chimneys. It is called direct air capture (DAC), which means Any mechanical system that captures carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Current DAC plants use liquid solvents or solid adsorbents to separate carbon dioxide from other gases. Once the capture agent is saturated, heat is applied to release the collected carbon dioxide and the capture agent can be reused. The released carbon dioxide can be used or stored underground. There are currently 15 direct air capture plants in Europe, the United States and Canada.
The problem is that this is a very expensive technology. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is only 0.04%. The lower the concentration, the higher the cost to capture. Mainly still consumes energy. DAC machines need a lot of electricity because they have to deal with a lot of air. A study in Nature Communications found that direct air capture machines may consume a quarter of the world’s energy by 2100.
Scientists including MIT are now developing systems that can reduce energy consumption. Why do scientists think this kind of technology is necessary even if it is expensive? The reason is that in the past, humans released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but now they are surprised that the situation is serious, so they think that carbon dioxide should also be regarded as a waste management problem.
But like all waste management methods, no matter how cheap carbon capture technology is, there is a cost. Scientists believe that the best way is to price carbon. If the world is unwilling to price carbon, then even the best carbon capture technology is useless.
Recently, “Nature Communications” published an American study that found that the use of DAC technology can slow down the rate of global warming. DAC technology is also increasingly supported by large companies. For example, Microsoft included this technology in its carbon reduction plan last year. The Economist reported that by 2030, the global potential market value of DAC technology may reach 100 billion US dollars. DAC in the United States can bring at least 300,000 new jobs.
However, the scientist said, “Although the removal rate of the natural carbon removal process may be flattened as the available land is used up, the amount of carbon removal through DAC may increase over time.” Musk’s remarks also It reflects the maturity of private enterprises in climate change and investment. But even if we have the most advanced and cheapest carbon replenishment and storage technology, if we don’t have natural forests, what the earth would be like with large machines everywhere, I really can’t imagine.
(First image source: Flickr/Maxim Mogilevskiy CC By 2.0）
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