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Algae-forestry, bioenergy mix may help make CO2 vanish from thin air
"Algae may be the key to unlocking an important negative-emissions technology to combat climate change," said Charles Greene, Cornell professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and a co-author of new research reported in Earth's Future [open, DOI: 10.1002/2017EF000704] [DX], published March 24 by the American Geophysical Union.
"Combining two technologies – BECCS and microalgae production – may seem like an odd couple, but it could provide enough scientific synergy to help solve world hunger and at the same time reduce the level of greenhouse gases that are changing our climate system," Greene said. Based on an idea first conceptualized by co-author Ian Archibald of Cinglas Ltd., Chester, England, the scientists call the new integrated system ABECCS, or algae bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.
The ABECCS system can act as a carbon dioxide sink while also generating food and electricity. For example, a 7,000-acre ABECCS facility can yield as much protein as soybeans produced on the same land footprint, while simultaneously generating 17 million kilowatt hours of electricity and sequestering 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
The ABECCS system's economic viability depends on the value of the nutritional products being produced and the price of carbon. Even without a price on carbon, microalgae production – in a fish-farming, aquacultural sense – is commercially viable today if the algae are priced as a fishmeal replacement in aquafeeds.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:38PM
There's something of a flaw in your post. The available habitat of humans isn't shrinking. It isn't really projected to shrink, either. Land that is currently uninhabitable is supposed to become arable, in the future. So, if the oceans rise, we'll just have to trade submerged land, for newly-thawed land. There's one hell of a lot of tundra in the north!
But, all of that aside - do you have any idea how recently the global population of humans reached the 1 billion milestone? https://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm [vaughns-1-pagers.com] That chart puts it at about 1810. It took until about 1930 to reach 2 billion, and about 1960 to reach 3 billion, then it only took until 1980 to exceed 4 billion.
I, for one, don't believe the earth can sustain our population, no matter what science may claim. I fully expect a die off sometime in the mid future. Some new disease, quite likely, or a new twist to an old disease like the flu.
Of course, as with any "prediction", only time will tell how accurate the prediction is.