Carbon Capture

CDR encompasses myriad techniques and technologies: direct air capture, carbon storage and sequestration in natural basins, bioenergy with carbon capture, reforestation, carbon-friendly soil management practices, ocean enhancement, and many more. Each method has different rates of CO2 uptake, land requirements, energy demands, storage permanence, a... See more

That’s called carbon capture and storage, and it involves installing special devices at fossil-fuel plants to absorb emissions. These “point capture” devices have existed for decades, but they’re expensive to buy and operate, they generally capture only 90 percent of the greenhouse gases involved, and power companies don’t gain anything from instal

... See more

direct air capture. It involves exactly what the name implies: capturing carbon directly from the air. DAC is more flexible than point capture, because you can do it anywhere. And in all likelihood, it’ll be a crucial part of getting to zero; one study by the National Academy of Sciences found that we’ll need to be removing about 10 billion tons…

So

... See more

Companies are working on new materials that are better at absorbing carbon dioxide, which will make both point capture and DAC cheaper and more effective. In addition, today’s approaches to DAC require a lot of energy to trap the greenhouse gases, collect them, and store them safely. There’s no way to do all that work without using some energy; the

... See more

The key challenges to large-scale removal of carbon dioxide from the air are both technical and sociological. They include: 1) lack of knowledge – about the technologies needed, or how much capital will be necessary to pay for vital infrastructure; 2) fear – of unintended consequences, and that a reimagining of our global energy system will result ... See more

But it’s one thing to be able to pull carbon out of the air and quite another to be able to pull this off at scale. Burning fossil fuels generates energy. Capturing CO2 from the air requires energy. So long as this energy comes from burning fossil fuels, it will add to the carbon that has to be captured. A second major challenge is disposal. Once c

... See more