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DAC has always promised a seductive narrative: the ability to suck carbon out of the sky, store it underground, and buy ourselves a climate mulligan. It promised to clean up after fossil fuels without requiring too many lifestyle changes. It was a technology that said yes — to oil companies, to airlines, to governments slow-walking their emissions policies. And for a time, it looked like it might work. Big names like Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify lined up to buy carbon removal credits at $600 a ton or more. Government agencies began pouring in cash. The US 45Q tax credit was sweetened to $180 per ton. Europe and Japan set aside funds. And dozens of startups bloomed. But beneath the marketing sheen, the physics was never on DAC’s side.
Removing CO₂ from ambient air is a thermodynamic slog. The concentration is a measly 0.04% — less than one molecule in 2,500. Capturing it means moving vast volumes of air across chemically active surfaces, then applying heat, vacuum, or electric fields to regenerate the sorbents. The most mature systems, like Climeworks’ solid sorbent modules or Carbon Engineering’s hydroxide-calcination loop, require on the order of 2,000 to 3,000 kilowatt-hours of energy per ton of CO₂. Even newer concepts that promise electrochemical capture still hover around 700 to 1,000 kWh per ton. And that’s just to capture it. Compressing, transporting, and injecting it underground adds another layer of complexity and cost. Back in 2019, I analyzed Carbon Engineering’s system in detail and concluded that it wasn’t ready for prime time. The energy requirements were steep, the system architecture was complex, and the economic case relied heavily on theoretical scale and generous subsidies. Fast forward to today, and those conclusions still hold. Carbon Engineering’s Squamish pilot captured a few hundred tons over several years. Its first commercial plant, Stratos in Texas, is still under construction. Occidental Petroleum acquired the company in 2023 not because it had a viable climate solution, but because it had a narrative that could buy time for oil and gas. Stratos, too, will run on natural gas. The captured CO₂ will be injected underground and earn 45Q credits, while Occidental continues to sell hydrocarbons. This isn’t carbon removal. It’s corporate theater wrapped in a green ribbon.
Both Climeworks and Carbon Engineering rely on energy-intensive processes that significantly affect their net CO₂ removal performance. Climeworks uses solid amine sorbents that require low-grade heat, typically around 80–100 °C, to regenerate. While its Icelandic operations claim to run on geothermal heat and renewables, life-cycle analyses show that even with clean power, the system still re-emits about 10% of the CO₂ it captures — due to embedded emissions in materials, equipment fabrication, and operational energy overhead. When fossil-derived heat or grid power is used, the carbon intensity increases sharply.
Carbon Engineering’s system is even more demanding, using around 8.8 GJ of thermal energy and over 360 kWh of electricity per ton of CO₂ removed. In its commercial configuration, it burns natural gas to provide high-temperature heat for calcination, capturing the resulting CO₂ from combustion alongside that from the air. While this design recovers some of the emissions, the system still emits roughly 0.1–0.2 tons of CO₂ for every ton it captures — less if powered by renewables, more if grid electricity or inefficient fuel use is involved. In both cases, without access to extremely low-carbon energy, the DAC process risks becoming a net emitter or offering only marginal removal at best. That low-carbon energy is much better used to power electric cars or heat pumps to avoid more CO2 being emitted in the first place, rather than used to extract homeopathic amounts of CO2 from the air.
Direct air capture, like the broader class of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, has been used less as a mitigation tool and more as a justification tool. Capture projects at the smokestack were supposed to save coal. They didn’t. DAC was supposed to save aviation. It isn’t. Now it’s being positioned as the backstop for net-zero oil and gas production, a way to square the carbon ledger while the meter keeps running. The problem is that the math never adds up. To remove even one gigaton of CO₂ annually — the lower end of what IPCC pathways suggest we might need by mid-century — we would need thousands of DAC plants the size of the one Climeworks can’t get to work. That would require hundreds of terawatt-hours of energy annually, roughly equivalent to doubling the electricity use of a mid-sized industrial nation.....read on https://cleantechnica.com/
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- Written by: Glenn and Rick
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Iron fertilization: Scientists want to add the element to the ocean to capture carbon. Adding metal to marine life. By Devika Rao, The Week US Oct 21,2024 The climate is warming, and much of the increase is due to greenhouse gases, the most prevalent gas being carbon dioxide. Methods for removing existing carbon from the atmosphere are in the works, and some experts are arguing in favor of iron fertilization, a geoengineering approach which would help oceans trap atmospheric carbon. While the method has potential, the consequences of implementing it are still largely unknown. Iron in the ocean.....An article published in the journal Frontiers in Climate lays out a program for implementing iron fertilization to help fight climate change. Ocean iron fertilization (OIF) is a "technique where small amounts of micronutrient iron are released onto the surface of the sea to stimulate the growth of marine plants known as phytoplankton," said Euronews. "This rapid growth removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. When the plankton die or are eaten, some of that carbon is captured as it sinks deep into the ocean." Geoengineering like OIF has long been in discussion as a way to mitigate carbon emissions."Given the ocean's large capacity for carbon storage … enhancing the ocean's natural ability to store carbon should be considered," Paentific community has come together to endorse a specific research plan for ocean iron," Ken Buesseler, the study's lead author and executive director of the ExOIS project, said in the statement. The program wants to raise $160 millioul Morris, one of the authors of the study and the project manager for international experts group Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions (ExOIS), said in a statement. ExOIS wants to conduct iron fertil time in over a decade that the marine scin for the trial and has already received a $2 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.....read on https://theweek.com/
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Butter made from CO2, not cows, tastes like ‘the real thing’, claims startup. Savor, backed by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, says the product has a lower carbon footprint as it doesn’t need cows/ Guardian Butter made from air instead of cows? A California-based startup claims to have worked out a complex process that eliminates the need for the animals while making its dairy-free alternative taste just as good. Savor, backed by the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, has been experimenting with creating dairy-free alternatives to ice-cream, cheese, and milk by utilising a thermochemical process that allows it to build fat molecules, creating chains of carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen. The company has now announced a new animal-free butter alternative. Reducing meat and dairy consumption is one of the key ways that humanity can reduce its environmental impact, as livestock production is a significant source of greenhouse gases, and Savor says its products will have a significantly lower carbon footprint than animal-based ones. The “butter” could potentially come in at less than 0.8g CO2 equivalent per calorie. The standard climate footprint of real unsalted butter with 80% fat is approximately 2.4g CO2 equivalent per calorie. Meat and dairy alternatives have become more and more popular in recent years, but some fall short in terms of flavour. Savor says the flavour of its butter is more exact. “So far, we had informal taste panels with tens of people,” Alexander said. “We expect to perform a more formal panel as part of our commercialisation and scale-up efforts.” The question now is whether buyers will take to such synthetic fats. Getting people to give up their favourite dairy and meat items for more “experimental” foods may pose a challenge. Advocating for the initiative in an online blogpost, Gates wrote: “The idea of switching to lab-made fats and oils may seem strange at first. But their potential to significantly reduce our carbon footprint is immense. By harnessing proven technologies and processes, we get one step closer to achieving our climate goals. https://www.theguardian.com/
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Google’s emissions climbed nearly 50% in five years due to AI energy demand. Tech giant’s goal of reducing climate footprint at risk as it grows increasingly reliant on energy-hungry data centres. Guardian Don Milmo Tue 2 Jul 2024 Google’s goal of reducing its climate footprint is in jeopardy as it relies on more and more energy-hungry data centres to power its new artificial intelligence products. The tech giant revealed Tuesday that its greenhouse gas emissions have climbed 48% over the past five years. Google said electricity consumption by data centres and supply chain emissions were the primary cause of the increase. It also revealed in its annual environmental report that its emissions in 2023 had risen 13% compared with the previous year, hitting 14.3m metric tons. The tech company, which has invested substantially in AI, said its “extremely ambitious” goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2030 “won’t be easy”. It said “significant uncertainty” around reaching the target included “the uncertainty around the future environmental impact of AI, which is complex and difficult to predict”. Google’s emissions have risen by nearly 50% since 2019, the base year for Google’s goal of reaching net zero, which requires the company removing as much CO2 as it emits.
The International Energy Agency estimates that data centres’ total electricity consumption could double from 2022 levels to 1,000TWh (terawatt hours) in 2026, approximately Japan’s level of electricity demand. AI will result in data centres using 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030, according to calculations by research firm SemiAnalysis. Data centres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers the ChatGPT chatbot. Microsoft admitted this year that energy use related to its data centres was endangering its “moonshot” target of being carbon negative by 2030. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, admitted in May that “the moon has moved” due to the company’s AI strategy.Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates, said last week that AI would help combat the climate crisis because big tech is “seriously willing” to pay extra to use clean electricity sources in order “to say that they’re using green energy”. Big tech companies have become major purchasers of renewable energy in a bid to meet their climate goals.However, pledges to reduce CO2 emissions are now coming up against pledges to invest heavily in AI products that require considerable amounts of energy for training and deployment in data centres, along with carbon emissions associated with manufacturing and transporting the computer servers and chips used in that process. Water usage is another environmental factor in the AI boom, with one study estimating that AI could account for up to 6.6bn cubic metres of water use by 2027 – nearly two-thirds of England’s annual consumption.......read on https://www.theguardian.com/
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