Carbon Capture

Annual CO2 emissions may have leveled off for the time being at around 36 billion tons, but that’s still a lot of CO2 added to the atmosphere every year, and there is no sign of the precipitous plunge we would need to stave off the harmful outcomes. Instead, decarbonization needs to be helped along with pushes from policy and technology, an idea ca

first category focuses on economic policies aimed at raising the price of carbon dioxide (and other GHG) emissions or subsidizing the cost of carbon-free energy sources. The goal of a carbon price is to have the economic cost of burning hydrocarbons (coal, oil, and natural gas) reflect the actual harm their emissions cause to humans and society.

Finally, there’s the issue of cost. Pulling CO2 from the air takes money. Right now, a lot of money. Climeworks charges $1,000 a ton to turn subscribers’ emissions to stone. I used up my allotment of twelve hundred pounds to fly one-way to Reykjavík, leaving all the rest of my emissions, including those from my return trip and my flight to Switzerl

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

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