Human activities over the past 150 years have led to large increases in carbon dioxide emissions that have contributed to climate change, with average global temperatures 1°C over pre-industrial levels. Emitting less carbon would help avoid severe climate change and a world with destabilized ecosystems, interrupted food supplies, and a historic refugee crisis. If the earth were a ship that carries all life, then we have put many holes in the boat with greenhouse gas emissions, and as a result we are quickly sinking. However, what if there was a way to not only plug those holes with renewable energy but also throw buckets of water out? Today, our best shot for doing just that is with carbon capture technology.
Carbon capture technology is fundamentally as simple as it sounds; CO2 is taken out of the air and either put into reservoirs or converted back into fuel. This can be done either at the source of CO2 emissions by attaching carbon capture instruments to the smokestacks of fossil fuel power plants or by pulling CO2 straight out of the atmosphere. The former has already been implemented in a variety of locations, but the latter, also known as direct-air capture, is a much newer and more unproven technology. A major drawback of direct-air capture is that it is quite expensive, at around $1200 per metric ton of CO2 extracted compared to $58 for conventional carbon capture. Advances in technology and utilizing efficiency of scale will be required for this technology to become more economically feasible, but thankfully scientists and engineers are doing just that. The company Climeworks has built a new direct air capture facility that costs around $600 per metric ton of CO2 extracted, so dramatic reductions in price are not out of the question for such a new technology. Solar panel technology has undergone a similar reduction in price over the past decade, with a drop in system price from $5.79/watt to $1.38/watt.
As the price decreases, the main issue for carbon capture technology will be what to do with the CO2 once it has been isolated. Today, companies have so far used this CO2 to carbonate beverages, fill extinguishers, push gas out of rock formations, and reform fuel, among other uses. However, these uses have been only marginally profitable when extracting carbon from exhaust, and they cannot hold the levels of carbon needed to remove significantly impactful amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
If we want to get serious about removing carbon from the atmosphere, we will need to put carbon into long-term storage. Carbon storage in saline aquifers presents a viable means of achieving globally significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. However, this removes the profit incentive for businesses, so the government would need to increase its role in carbon management via strengthened policies, payments for carbon that has been removed and/or punishments for polluters. It is my belief that this is not unreasonable given the effects of climate change are predicted to reduce the American GDP by 10% by the end of the century. Funding of this technology will reduce its price, making it more economically feasible and furthering advancements in technology that will help future generations as they continue on our voyage.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.