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The World's Biggest Plant to Suck Carbon Dioxide From the Sky Is Up and Running:
The world's biggest direct air capture (DAC) plant is set to come online in Iceland on Wednesday. The moment is an important one in developing new technologies to help suck carbon dioxide out of the air—but raises a whole host of questions on the future of how we're going to put those technologies to use.
The Orca plant, located about 20 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of the capital of Reykjavík, uses large industrial vacuums to remove carbon dioxide from the air. The plant's owners and operators, a Swiss startup called Climeworks, said that the plant can remove 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere, powered by hydrothermal energy. Climeworks has partnered with a carbon storage company to take that carbon dioxide and store it deep underground, where it turns into stone (whoa) after about two years.
Unlike other carbon capture technologies that prevent carbon dioxide from being released from dirty technologies in the first place—which are generally attached to fossil fuel facilities—DAC plants like Orca present the possibility of removing some of the damage we've already done. In theory, we could dot the earth with plants like Orca, resulting in what are known as "negative emissions." These types of technology aren't ready for primetime at scale yet, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said we need them to help meet the target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) outlined in the Paris Agreement (in addition to cutting emissions in the first place of course).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Freeman on Thursday September 09 2021, @09:36PM (3 children)
It seems like it would be better to focus on not putting excess carbon dioxide in the air. As opposed to slapping one of these facilities up. Require factories that produce the pollution to also capture said pollution, instead of just polluting.
So, we can convert that to 4,400 tons per year, per facility.
https://www.gotreequotes.com/how-much-co2-do-trees-absorb/ [gotreequotes.com]
So, that's about 440 hectares of trees worth of CO2 removal. Which converts to 1.69 square miles or 4.4 square kilometers of trees. That's not terribly impressive. Though, maybe useful for dense population centers and/or to be placed around an industrial zone?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday September 09 2021, @11:18PM
Or, compared to CO2 emission from cars at 122.3 grams/km (in Europe) [europa.eu], that would be 32,706,460 car kilometres or 20,339,838 miles. A yearly average of 13,476 miles per car (in America) [idrivesafely.com], such a plant would compensate for 1509 cars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday September 10 2021, @05:03AM (1 child)
Why is this an either-or choice? Do both.
The problem is that not all parts of the world are willing to cooperate on limiting their emissions, and the parts that are can only do so much with limiting their own emissions. Building plants to actually suck CO2 out of the air (assuming they come out carbon-positive (negative? whichever terminology is the good one)) helps out on top of that.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 11 2021, @08:11PM
The problem with that is that we still have a long way to go ourselves and projects like this take grant money away from other more beneficial projects. And that is assuming that this plant can sequester enough carbon over its lifetime to make up for its own construction.