Even with the effects of climate change worsening, use of fossil fuels continues to accelerate globally. This has paralleled the proliferation of renewable energy sources like wind and solar as economic and population growth drives the world’s hunger for energy amid a climate crisis that requires immediate action. One such course of action is to scale up the use of carbon capture technologies alongside renewables to remove the excess carbon dioxide already emitted into the atmosphere.
“There is no way to decrease CO 2 emissions quickly enough without doing carbon capture,” said Gernot Wagner, associate professor at New York University’s Department of Environmental Studies and co-author of Climate Shock . “It’s always been wishful thinking but more recently it’s become more imminently clear that there’s simply no way to decrease CO 2 emissions without capturing CO 2 that’s part of the fossils fuel supply chain. It should objectively be part of the equation because of how late in the game we are."
Carbon capture employs technology to suck excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to either be stored underground or utilized in manufacturing to help reduce the carbon dioxide that’s currently in the atmosphere causing ecosystem destruction. The climate crisis depends on switching to renewable energy sources, however the transition is decades behind. Presently the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a temporary drop in carbon emissions, however it has come at the cost of tremendous human suffering.
According to Wagner, carbon capture technology represents a form of capital intensive investment that’s well-suited for implementation post-pandemic. “When we talk about jump starting the economy let’s invest in carbon capture and storage as well because it takes capital investment and capital is cheap right now with interest rates at zero percent in some parts,” he said. “It’s also a productive way to employ people who are out of work right now because of low oil prices, low demand.”
Carbon capture technology, far from perfected, has been criticized by environmental activists. It’s been labeled a “moral hazard” or “mitigation deterrent” because it could allow continued polluting. Leakage of the captured carbon is also a risk, and if the technology itself is powered by fossil fuels instead of renewables than the net benefit could be negligible. Beyond improving the technology, governmental policy is needed to balance between negative emissions and promoting renewables.
One of the main barriers to the effectiveness of carbon capture is that it’s very expensive to scale up. One way to circumvent this is instead of storing the captured carbon underground where it could potentially leak, it can be converted into hydrocarbon liquid fuel, concrete and other materials that can be sold as commodities. A NECOC research project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in partnership with INERATEC GmbH and Climeworks is currently working on converting captured CO 2 into a “highly pure carbon black powder” that can be used in electronics, printing or construction.
“Solid carbon is far less difficult to handle than CO 2 and can even be used as a resource. So far, carbon black has been produced mainly from fossil petroleum. That is why our process represents a technological approach for a sustainable future in several respects. It combines the direct contribution to solving the climate problem with a process for post-fossil resource supply,” says Dr. Benjamin Dietrich (TVT), project coordinator of NECOC.
Carbon capture may hold promise however some (though not all) of the companies who are leading the effort like ConocoPhillips and Halliburton have profited off of fossil fuels. “Nobody is going to magnanimously suck billions of tons of CO 2 out of the air without being paid to do so,” commented Wagner. “How much money they should make and whether we should be making billionaires out of people who take CO 2 out, who previously struck it rich by putting CO 2 in the atmosphere is a big political question. Yet someone ought to be paid for doing so, otherwise it’s not going to happen.”