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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: 2) by choose another one on Thursday September 09 2021, @10:16PM (1 child)
Yeah but no.
Renewable energy (with geothermal as in TFA being a notable exception) has an intermittency problem. Sun doesn't always shine (on your panels), wind doesn't always blow, etc.
They try to reduce the chance of blackouts by having lots of types of renewable, but that also means when everything is working there is too _much_ power - here they (we) often pay
wind power producers to turn the turbines _off_ on days of plenty.
A lot of the big power consuming processes require reliable non-intermittent power. Shut down a blast furnace and it takes weeks (and lots of power and $$$) to restart.
So you absolutely need reliable base load providers - mostly nuclear or fossil fuel (burning biomass also, but that has now got a dodgy less-than-green rep, geothermal only works in limited locations.
A better idea would be to continue to have fossil, nuclear etc. for reliable & base load, top up with lots of renewables _and_ use the surplus energy when the renewables are all online to power carbon capture to offset the fossils use. That is _if_ the carbon capture process is one of those that can be turned on/off at will and not something which needs continuous reliable power itself... (I don't know if that's the case or not)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 09 2021, @11:20PM
Deep shaft geothermal can be built just about anywhere.