World’s biggest carbon-sucking machine turned on in Iceland

Direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere has been started.

 World’s biggest carbon-sucking machine turned on in Iceland

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Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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• The story: To battle climate change, the world has to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere rapidly, to avert the worst of global warming. The fossil fuel economy must be run in reverse, effectively.
• How to do it: The simplest way to do that—planting trees—requires a lot of land relative to the scale of intervention that’s needed. Some companies have been tinkering with “direct air capture” (DAC)—essentially, big CO2-sucking machines.

1. The largest DAC plant in the world opened in Sept. in Iceland, operated by the Swiss engineering startup Climeworks
2. The plant, known as Orca, will annually draw down a volume of emissions equivalent to about 870 cars
3. Orca will boost total global DAC capacity by about 50%, adding to the dozen or so smaller plants that are already operational in Europe, Canada, and the US. (all together, this is puny)

• Structure of the plant: The plant is composed of eight boxes about the size of shipping containers, each fitted with a dozen fans that pull in air. CO2 is filtered out, mixed with water, and pumped into deep underground wells, where over the course of a few years it turns to stone, effectively removing it from circulation in the atmosphere.
• Too costly: Sadly, the whole process is quite costly. The business model being used is the sale of offsets. The alternative is to sell the captured CO2 to manufacturers who can use it as a raw material for cement and other products, or to oil companies that use it to help dredge up more oil. But those customers are more accustomed to prices around $100 per ton.

1. Since the carbon offset market, as a whole, is riddled with cheap, dubious offsets, some emitters might be willing to pay top dollar, for a rock-solid offset.
2. That capital, in turn, will help DAC scale and bring the cost down; experts predict it could reach $150 per ton in the next 5-10 years.

• EXAM QUESTIONS: (1) Explain the various ways global warming can be contained, and reversed. (2) What are the problems in capturing CO2 directly from the atmosphere? Explain.

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

#Carbon #GlobalWarming #Iceland

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